Breakfast

Black coffee & pesto on sourdough. The world wakes in dew and frost. I sit by the window and watch the garden. Every other day this week I've eaten before the sun has risen; this is a rare treat. 

At the very last minute, I've decided to participate in the August Break. The idea is that you have a simple photo prompt and you can decide to write or not. If you're organised enough to have an editorial schedule it would be a nice break from the pressure of blogging.

But not only do I fail to keep to any semblance of an editorial schedule, I've also failed to hit the Publish button on a number of posts I've got sitting in my drafts folder in the last month or so. I've lost the habit and I think I've also lost a bit of confidence. I keep editing and editing (something I never usually do a great deal) but I never put these posts up because eventually I've edited my own voice out of my writing.

So rather than treating this like a break, I'm going to take this month of prompts to get back into the habit of blogging. I miss it. I'll write a little or a lot, but each day I will have a post up on the blog and hopefully I will remember what it is that makes this process so cathartic and rewarding.

reassessing my relationship with food

I read this article the other day about the differences in eating habits between French and American cultures. The whole time I was reading it, I was nodding along to all of the French eating habits as if I, too, maintained a healthy relationship with food.

But then a couple of days later I was serving a lady at the cafe and she was umm-ing and ahh-ing about a slice of cake. Finally she decided that she 'deserved to be a little naughty' and I laughed and agreed, but in that same moment I was having a bit of a head-slapping moment. Something shifted and I realised that, like her, I was actually subscribing to a very western relationship with food.

As a teenager I was dreadfully skinny. I could eat anything I wanted and never gain a pound. But times passes and bodies change and as a result so too has my relationship with food. At least this is how I've explained things to myself. It doesn't all come down to this, necessarily. I certainly did gain more womanly hips the closer I came to leaving my teens behind, but I also lost something: a regular and predictable routine. With the blessed benefits of hindsight, I can see that what really happened at this time was that my eating habits changed. I was no longer made to wait until the scheduled class breaks to sate my hunger; I ate when I felt the very first twinge of hunger. And quickly this proved to be every two hours when left to my own devices.

I found myself more and more inclined to purchase my lunch rather than to make it in the morning and I always had access to more food if I so desired.
I had unwittingly adopted the more detrimental of eating habits of out Western culture.
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new habits for a new month

I've been meaning to write my usual monthly 'looking back & looking forward' post, but I don't think the format is really working for me any more. Originally the idea was to look at the last month, what I enjoyed, what I did well and what I'd like to improve and to then move mindfully into the next month. This is not, however, what the series has become for me. It's a burden rather than a pleasure and is not promoting mindfulness.

I've decided, therefore, to start each new month with an intention, a focus around which I will create and maintain new habits that will enrich my life. And for this month...?

In June, my focus is to document simple day-to-day joys

This month I want to focus on the way I look at the world. I've fallen into a trap in recent weeks of allowing the negative to overwhelm the positive, to see stress and fear and overlook the simple joys. Just before I lost my job, I ordered a bulk lot ten rolls of film with the intention of getting back into the habit of taking analogue shots as well as digital ones. I miss the simplicity of film and the value of each shot. Digital allows you to take thirty crappy shots of the same thing whereas film demands you take time to be mindful of the lighting and the framing of each picture. When the package arrived today, I knew exactly how I needed to proceed. What film photography represents to me is a way of seeing the beauty in the world.

This month I want to relearn how to see. To take notice of simple joys, I've decided I'll need to do a few simple things:

001. write daily
002. take more photos
003. be grateful

I'm going to write three longhand pages every night, take a roll of carefully curated shots throughout the month and list three different things every day for which I am grateful.

I'll keep you posted.

morning pages and other great habits

It is so easy to let habits go by the wayside, even when you know how greatly they benefit you and the way you approach life and the world and the challenges within. A habit I have allowed to become a rarity rather than a ritual is that of Morning Pages.

There is nothing I have found so freeing as relinquishing my struggles and fears and joys and gratitude to ink and paper, but I have found it hard to want to sit quietly with my thoughts for half an hour when I could instead sit with Tom and a cup of tea. There are only so many hours in the day, and instead of looking at how I spend my time and adjusting to allow for all those things I so greatly love and benefit from, I simply chose one instead of the other. I made Morning Pages a rare task usually assigned to a boring bus ride or a particularly difficult interaction I need to get off my chest. Morning Pages became a bandaid for times in need and overlooked when I didn't feel too greatly overwhelmed.

Tom, who has noticed his need for more mindfulness and greater self-care throughout this past year of changes and stresses, was instantly drawn to these ideas. I am consistently surprised by his desire to create better habits and be more mindful of his approach to stress and also to joy. We are more alike in some ways than I could have ever predicted.

He was drawn to the first of the five most particularly, I think, because it was so outside of his norm. I write constantly and always use it as a tool to process my thoughts when my mind seems to be teeming with many. We agreed to sit every night and write freely for three sides of paper. I was really pleased to be getting back into daily free writing and to have someone to hold me accountable, he was interested in the experiment, as is his nature, and wanted to see for himself if this process holds any weight to your wellbeing and general happiness. I think he was surprised.  

new habits for a new month

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