007 | My Life Changes with the Seasons
Remembering my thoughts, my life, and moments in time.
I’ve been in a season of change a bit lately. Nothing too crazy, but it feels like my soul needs a spring cleaning. I’m in the mood to switch up my apartment, purge all of my things, live in a new city, and change my life. I feel like this every time it gets warmer. I feel myself thawing out of the winter, a season where I’m frozen in perpetual rush and work and productivity.
Instead of blowing up my life entirely (which I always do it just a little bit during these times), I end up picking up new hobbies and activities. I start asking people to join me in the park, I go to craft stores, I get more into reading just so I have more excuses to go sit on benches in public. This results in a lot of junk, half-done crafts, and folding chairs, hence the need to purge before I start the season all over again.
This season I also want to document my life more. I unfortunately have the memory of a father trying to address his teen daughter’s friends at a party. Last week, I went on a trip to Normandy, France, and today, my first Monday back, I can’t even remember what days we did what activities!
I am usually a very dedicated and determined person. I work for myself, have good time management skills, and if I say I’m going to do something, I will. Somewhere along the way, though, the act of creating for myself gets lost and slips through the cracks. I am not sure why. It’s important to me. I used to scrapbook and share photos after every trip, and now I just let memories and thoughts sit in my camera roll until one day I scroll by a picture and look at it like a painting in a museum that I vaguely remember, until I realize it was the cover of my history textbook in middle school. I create for other people every day, on time, without fail, sticking to schedules, but when it comes to me, I let it slide!
Not anymore. I want my journal entries to be something I look back on, not just my to-do list. I want to write about who I like, what I enjoy doing, what’s interesting, and anything under the sun.
Yesterday on the plane ride home, I read Erika Veurink’s latest post titled Here’s How To Finally Start Posting on Social. In it, she talks about a challenge where you readers can follow along for one month, posting every day, Monday through Friday, in the hopes that, at the end, they can find out why they should be posting. I like the idea of sticking with something and seeing a goal to accomplish. The difference for me during this processes is that I know why I want to post. I want to remember what I thought in this state of my life. I want to look back and say “wow, I can’t believe I ever thought that!” or “the person I mentioned… I miss them, I should reach out” or “I would relive any mundane day in that moment of my life a million times.” I want to preserve my days, and hopefully it will be good to look back on.
I also think I want to do something where I highlight the people I find interesting on this app, like Amanda Lee Burkett and Allegra Samsen, or mickey, who has excellent video essays. I wish I remembered all the people whose blogs I followed growing up, they helped shape me. I want to share the places I enjoyed visiting that I don’t hear many other people talking about, like the Alps in Tirol or the coastal towns of Galicia. I want to write down my favorite places to get coffee and my favorite shirts to wear and what my life is like living in New York City, something I dreamed about for so long.
There is a lot of flack on here about every newsletter being a diary entry, but who cares? I would love to read someones diary.
Let’s see how writing for this month goes. I have some trips and a project for work launching, but I don’t want life to get in the way of me remembering it.
Unrelated, but this is a nice painting. I hope she is calling her mom.
