I admit it. The month of April got away from me. I wasn’t following the best diet (though in fairness to myself, I’ve done far worse!), my exercise routine dropped to, maybe 1 day a week at the gym and dancing dropped back to two nights a week. I did a lot around the house, moving boxes, dragging trash, cleaning out closets, necessary stuff which counts for something, but I needed to get back into my healthy routine.
So it’s now the first full week of May and I’m determined. No more excuses for missing my gym days. No more procrastinating finishing the edit of my book or doing the million and three things that need to be done before I even consider publishing. And I will keep up with my client work throughout the month too.
But let’s be realistic about this! I know that certain days are already half full with things I need to do on those days. OK, then. I don’t expect myself to do everything else on those days too. But with seven days in a week, I’m sure I can spread tasks out so that no day is overburdened, and I might even have a day to just sit, read and meditate. Such is the life of a woman who divorced herself from the rat race.
I ticked a few more things off of my To Do list today, though not as many as I might have liked. But that’s ok. I’ve learned that instead of berating myself for what I didn’t accomplish, I praise myself for the things I did! I’m a lot more inclined to take on some of those tasks tomorrow and the next day if I’ve given myself some praise. Not only that, I might, like today, do some things I hadn’t planned, but which have needed doing, without thinking about it. A little decluttering here, a neglected chore there. And eventually, it all gets done, and I have another list of things which has manifested while I was working my way through the old one.
As I was out running errands after a very good workout at the gym, I found myself smiling and enjoying moving slowly, getting things done but not in a hurry. I had time to appreciate the woman teaching her young daughters to help with the grocery shopping, and to recognize someone I’d seen at the smaller gym I belonged to years ago, and to acknowledge her, which made us both smile in rememberance. As a young woman looked at her watch in a panic because her hour lunch break was nearly over, I voiced my gratitude over being out of the rat race, and realized that it truly is worth not having a steady paycheck.
Some days, I just spend hours snuggling with the cats on the sofa, and others, I am up and down countless times, doing this task or that. But no matter what, it’s at my own pace and in my own time. Even commitments I’ve made to others are accomplished when I want to accomplish them instead of in accordance with someone else’s artificial idea of working hours and days. The days might run together for me now, but it’s not in a bad way. It is in a way that says, I can accomplish the things I need to at whatever hour of the day is comfortable for me, and on whatever day of the week suits me.
This, my friends, is what true freedom feels like. And I’m extremely grateful that I figured it out before I was too old and tired to appreciate it.
My gratitudes tonight are:
1. I am grateful for the freedom and looseness of my life.
2. I am grateful that the goals and expectations I live by now are only my own.
3. I am grateful for the new experiences and people which the changed lifestyle is bringing into my life.
4. I am grateful for new opportunities to learn and grow.
5. I am grateful for abundance, prosperity, health and joy.
Love and light
