week four recap

okay, i'll admit it: i let this week totally get away from me. work was crazy and stressful, life was crazy and stressful and i found it almost impossible to keep fun in mind at all, much less actually focus on it. i didn't complete a single challenge (food or declutter) nor did i do anything even remotely creative. i did however have a few small wins:

• drove up to petaluma with a friend to see avatar in 3-D and generally get out of town and get a new perspective. it was great (the movie, the change of scenery and spending time with my best friend)
• worked the hula hoop many mornings. i'm starting to get good. :)
• put together a camera that my brother sent me as an early birthday gift. it's all fancy and lets you do things manually instead of just point-and-shoot. it will definitely enable a higher level of creativity in at least that one area of my life. plus it works with my existing film camera lenses which is very cool.
• made lists of possible creative projects and places/activities that inspire (both generic and specific).
• agreed to set up an art day with my friend to help us both find more creative fulfillment.

these are all great things. and i need to remember that the goal is not to see how much fun i can have in a week, it's to see how much fun i can regularly infuse into my daily life. so in that context, i think i did just fine.

oh, and two big wins left over from the week of stronger relationships: spending time with my best friend and having one of the short-list friends i hadn't reconnected with yet contact me. :)  plus i was so heartened by those, i contacted another one on my list. sometimes these things just take a little time. and speaking of relationships, tonight is my grandmother's 100th birthday party. not only will it be great to celebrate our good fortune at having her with us for so long and still going strong, my uncle will be there giving me the opportunity to practice forgiveness. we'll see how it goes...

smile

last night i went to my first mindfulness-based stress reduction class (scheduled during week one). during the class we did a breathing exercise which the instructor ended by asking us to "invite in a gentle half-smile." now i did not feel like inviting in a gentle half-smile or a smile of any kind. i was grumpy, hungry, tired and uncomfortable from sitting in a cold room on an uncomfortable chair for too long. but i did it anyway. and you know what? it worked. just the simple act of smiling actually made me feel happier. who knew?

so this morning when i woke up on the wrong side of the bed, instead of putting on the all-brown outfit i'd laid out the night before, i decided to embrace the smile lesson and picked out a turquoise plaid tank top, my bright green tennies and my sunflower necklace. i immediately felt better.

and yes, i did hula hoop this morning and man, is that a workout. but fun! made me feel like a kid again.

week four: joie de vivre

i am so excited that it's finally week four, the week of all things joyful. in the spirit of this week i am actually going to limit myself to a single resolution: have fun. to get more specific, i plan to embrace creativity, seek inspiration, approach my daily activities with a sense of play (like tomorrow when i plan to replace my usual morning exercises with a good long hula hoop session) and seek joy wherever i can find it.

as for my weekly challenges, i've funned them up a bit too:
food: berries!
declutter: let's call it a treasure hunt for creative supplies and inspirations, the culmination of which will be the creation of an art box and inspiration binder

related reading:
the anti-coloring book
the artist's way
building self-esteem through the museum of I