(End of) Lent 2020

As I’ve explained in my annual Lent posts, my lack of religious adherence has not prevented me from taking the time between Ash Wednesday and Easter Sunday to reflect on my life and my habits and try to change things for the better.

In the past, I’ve always eliminated a bad habit that I have trouble doing in moderation. (I’m an abstainer, not a moderator.) I’ve done this with a lot of success in the past but was having a hard time connecting with a bad habit to eliminate this year. I’ve seen folks do an additive Lenten practice rather than a subtractive one, but a former coworker really sold me on the idea when he told me he practices Reverse Lent every year. Every year, he commits to adding a new habit or practice every day of Lent. One year it was baking, and he committed to being a better baker (specifically of pies).

Originally, I thought I would try to add meditation as a Lenten habit this year. It’s something I used to be very good at but have gotten a lot less good at as I have gotten older and, to be frank, would benefit more and more from meditating. But it just didn’t quite stick. I told myself I would purchase a meditation app but got some analysis paralysis as to which one would be best for me.

One habit that has stuck, however, is daily journaling.

person holding on red pen while writing on book
Photo: fotografierende

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COVID-19 Supplies

With the worst of my husband’s condition behind us, I thought I would take a little bit of time to talk about how we were able to get through this at all. Here is a short list of supplies I am incredibly thankful for having or having provided to us over the past 3 weeks. Most of these we already had, even before the pandemic hit, but some we did need to get replenished during the worst bouts of fever.Read More »

How I Weaponize My Pride to Stay Productive – My C/D System

I know that I’m in good company when I say that I have a really hard time staying focused and with procrastination. Recently, I’ve bungled together a strange system that works for myself and figured it might be worth sharing it in case it can help anyone else out.

Essentially, I guilt/shame myself into staying on task.

woman writing on notebook
Photo: J. Kelly Brito (Unsplash)

C/D System Instructions

Step 1. Using either a sticky note or a notebook (one that you will be using daily), designate a space and split it in half. You can use your entire sticky note if you have one, but I often like to draw a circle or a square about 2 inches wide and tall.
Optional. Write the date. This can be a good way to start your daily notes for the day if you are using a notebook/planner for your day-to-day.
Even more optional. Write your start-time.

Step 2. Split your designated space in half. Usually, I draw a horizontal line across the middle, but sometimes I do it diagonally. (Maybe that means something…? I wouldn’t know haha.)

Step 3. Label one half with a “C” and the other with a “D“. These stand for “Considered (a distraction)” and “Distracted“.

Step 4. Begin working and add tallies to the appropriate halves if needed. In action, here are some example scenarios would lead to tallies:Read More »

2019 in Books

2019 was a great reading year for me in that I didn’t feel like I read too many painful books. However, I am disappointed that I didn’t complete my Goodreads reading challenge, breaking my streak of exceeding my challenge 3 years in a row. Last year, I read 29 books and thought that, with my past pattern of exceeding my reading goal by a few books, I would be able to get to 30 this year. It seems that I may have plateaued at 29 for the time being, however, so I’ll need to re-evaluate how much reading time I have to achieve these goals.

Here are the books I read in 2019!

2019inBooks.jpg

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2019 in Film

Another year, another list of movies! This year marks the first full year I had AMC A-List, which I didn’t take full advantage of but did make it easier for us to watch more movies more spontaneously. I had thought that moving to New York would mean we would watch fewer movies but having A-List has meant that we spent more weeknights at the movies than at home.

(For every movie I saw, including movies released before 2019, and other media I consumed, please check out my Media Log.)

BeFunky-collage.jpgRead More »