Here I am, writing this entry on New Year’s Eve in a tiny block of child-free time today that is oh-so-delicious!
When I picked the words Relax & Reflect for this month’s focus, I had a feeling “Relax” would somehow be harder than it sounds and I was right. By the middle of the month, our whole house was passing around one of the five colds our 4-year-old brought home from school this year and my plan to keep a lot of white space on the calendar turned out for the best.
I wrote about this in the mid-month entry, but one way I found to relax was when I picked up my childhood hobby of making friendship bracelets again. I’ve found it to be incredibly relaxing and a nice way to stim while watching TV or talking with Mark. I get into such a rhythm and it’s so funny how the muscle memory came right back.
As far as reflecting, I had taken a workshop with Janice from Introvert Media Lab last year that included a workbook of journal prompts to help assess the year, which I used again this year. I won’t give away her content, but I will say creating time to reflect on my favorite moments and accomplishments that made my heart light up was a really fantastic way to remember 2021 a little more fondly. It wasn’t my favorite year personally, but seeing what I was able to do and experience in a year of a lot of stress was a great experience. I encourage you to try it if the mood feels right 😉
Another way I reflected on my year was when I put together photo books for the grandparents as Christmas presents. As I was picking pictures of us and the kids from this year for them, I got to relive a lot of memories and reflect that way. (I love using the CVS website to make these and having my photos easily searchable in Google Photos makes this extremely easy, by the way.)
I wasn’t officially planning a way to reflect on my roller skating this year, but when I saw a few roller skaters I follow on Instagram start posting yearly progress videos, I began searching through Google Photos for videos of my own. I came across a video from January 2021 of me on the ice skating rink my husband made in our yard last year saying, “skates aren’t happening!” and my beautiful idea-churning brain went into action. Before I knew it, I was remixing the soundbyte over clips of my skating progress from the rest of the year. Even though I was referring to ice skates in the original video, that was at a time I had no idea I would ever be brave enough to try to roller skate because I was afraid of any form of skates, period!
Here’s a link to the finished Reel and it’s also embedded in this post for you to check out.
Even though I didn’t push myself to write as much as November for the blog, I’ve finally started talking about it more on my Instagram, including posting tonight that I was working on this exact post 😂 I don’t know why talking about my writing is so difficult, but that’s definitely something I’m hoping to work on in the coming year.
I’ve decided my word of the year will be Courage. I want to keep it simple, but also it’s something that has never come easy for me. Impulsive “courage,” yes (thanks, ADHD). But thoughtful-courage, not so much. I’ll definitely write more about that in the coming weeks, but I know it will make for an interesting year, for sure!
As for next month’s focus (and a bit of a challenge), I'm going to work on cooking at home more! More on that in future posts, but since I love getting a head start, if you have any cooking teachers or sources you recommend, leave them in the comments below! 🙂
This Month’s Blog Posts
Connect with me on social media — Instagram | Facebook | Twitter
Enjoying Emily: Outloud and want more? You can help by buying me a cup of coffee over at BuyMeACoffee.com/emilyprokop 🙂