How has your week been?
Hi! How has your week been? My husband and I have been sick.
I’m finally feeling on the mend but not quite there.
Here’s a few things we’ve been doing to wait this cold out
Shows:
- 90210
I never watched the show when it was on TV. But I started watching the series from the beginning on Paramont. I love all the 90s vibes, very nostalgic for me.
- In Vogue: The 90s
Speaking of, this documentary about the fashion industries in the 90s just came out as a Hulu Original. Loving all the looks and faces I remember, with extra history I didn’t know.
- Bob & Bill
This documentary was recommended by my husband. It’s about the real story of Batman, and the creative mind behind the comic that never got recognized during his life-time. It’s incredible and emotional: the story of how they got Bill Finger his proper credit as co-creator.
- My Old Ass
This is in theatres. and I actually saw it when I didn’t feel sick. But it was a must-watch. You might not relate to the main character but the universal message about change and appreciating what we have now, is so profound.
Other activities
- Cooking soup
My husband is addicted to my chicken noodle soup. We already made 2 batches, and will probably make a third.
- Sewing and mending
Making clothes is a skill we both want to learn together. Also, I’m into mending my stuff. Lately, I’ve been on a personal mission to mend my jeans so I can wear them longer this fall.
Mindset
Now getting to a more serious topic…
I have to watch my mindset when I am sick.
To be able to rest is something that I’ve had to work on over the years.
I have a t-shirt that says, “Resting is productive.”
That’s something that has taken me a long time to learn. And I have to remind myself.
This week, there have been times when I’ve felt frustrated to be sick.
This month I’ve had so many unexpected roadblocks to the things I need to do, that I want to accomplish.
It feels like it has wasted a lot of valuable time. It makes me angry at times.
But you know life isn’t all in our control.
It is what it is.
And the fact of the matter is that I need rest right now.
Learning by Tracking Themes
Recently, I was talking to someone about tracking important, ongoing relationships with things like rest. We all have these ongoing themes. Maybe you never thought about tracking them?
The woman I was talking to was going through years of old journals.
Why? To get the written contents into their computer so some notebooks can be discarded. Paper journals really add up over the years. And it’s heavy.
I get it because it’s one reason I got into digital organization, as well.
I recommended that they track one of the themes they’d found in an old journal. (You can do this in the free app we both use, Obsidian, that I teach in my Digital Organization Club.)
Every time you notice yourself talking about the topic in a journal entry, you link that to your main theme.
Tracking these themes and relationships is something I’ve been doing now for years in what I call my Encyclopedia of me.
You may have heard of my “Encyclopedia of Me” if you saw
A. This video: 10x my healing with this tech tool.
OR
B. This written post on the same topic: 10x your healing, writing this way.
If so, then you might remember that
I’ve got a whole section in my digital archive dedicated to RELATIONSHIPS to things that I have been tracking across my journals.
Examples:
- relationship to your body
- relationship to money
- relationship to work
One of the relationships most fascinating to me lately is my relationship to time.
Over time, I started to notice that the theme of time played a lot in my psychology:
- feeling rushed,
- feeling like I didn’t get enough done in the time
- the clock is ticking…
Time has been a recurring source of stress for me.
And that’s a problem.
One of the things I’ve been working on this year is to take my time more, take things slower.
And leave that hustling, speed demon, stress energy behind me. It’s for my mental health.
I’ve been carrying around that need for speed for a long time and it’s hard to quit.
But because I have been tracking this theme across all my journal entries and notes,
whenever it comes up in my journal,
I’m able to revisit my history with it and my insights,
explore it in more depth, and try to learn the lessons I need to.
What I discover by going down the rabbit hole to explore all the information I’ve connected around this theme can surprise me.
I’ve been so wise in the past.
Sometimes it can take us a while to learn our lessons.
We learn them over and over again, forget them, and then learn them again, yes?
Well, I do my best to shorten this learning curve, but I am human all the same.
In 2017, I wrote
feeling a sense of rush or not getting there fast enough is related to not wanting to feel my emotions, like grief, or not wanting to rest, and instead, just push on to some “destination”.
In reality = faster progress equals faster letting go
Letting go means letting go of control.
Just being with whatever feelings I am trying to avoid.
Just being at rest and taking care of myself.
That doesn’t seem like a “solution” or
like “doing anything”
but it can be really powerful and effective.
Sometimes just being with the present moment is the hardest thing for me to do
especially when my feelings are intense, I’m scared or things are really uncertain.
In 2017, I had an emotionally hard year because we anticipated my dad was going to lose his house.
And although that situation is long gone now, (the house, too),
there are new challenges I face today that bring up the same theme.
And my goal is always to learn from the past.
To try to shorten that learning curve.
So even though, I would like to make progress quickly on things that really will move the needle in my life.
And it drives me crazy to have constraints on my time and then on top of that to get sick…
Sometimes you just have to be sick, drink your fluids and wait to feel better.
I know that if I don’t, then I’ll probably just be sicker, longer.
And that’s that.
Hope this message means something to you.
Not only is it safe to rest or pause
but, ironically, sometimes that is how you make the fastest progress in the end.
Have a good week
Thanks for reading
-Sofia Wren
P.S. Are you interested in organizing old journal entries?
Want to whittle down your collection of paper notebooks, but get all of the good stuff out of them?
Get help organizing your ideas and get them off of paper, and into your computer so you can make better use of them. Soon you’ll be able to let those notebooks go.
Join the Fall Digital Organization Club. It’s not too late.
