It’s December y’all! I bet you didn’t think I’d actually post something – I certainly had my doubts. And I did wake up this morning in a slight state of panic – I’ve promised all my millions of imaginary blog followers a daily post about self-care and have no idea what to actually do or write about. I then realized that that’s quite worrying in itself, and need to most definitely work on it…now. But. What to do. What. to. do.
Here’s what I did do: I got up, opened the curtains and sat down on the couch with a cup of coffee and started to weigh the two most obvious options in my mind; eating healthy or going for a walk. Eating salad for a day is an easy no for me, and the walk idea was thrown out because I noticed it was snowing, and why on earth would I go out in snow? It’s cold, and wet, and I’ll probably slip and fall and break my legs and hit my head, be rushed to a hospital in an ambulance and miss out on December and Xmas entirely because I’m in a coma, and have broken legs, and why would I want that? Why? I don’t. So I drank my coffee and watched the snow fall onto my balcony.
I do this every morning, especially now since it’s home office all day everyday thanks to COVID; I get up at 6-7 and take a good couple of hours just to drink a few cups of coffee, read the news, and mentally prepare for my workday which nowadays consists of a marathon of calls and an ever-growing to-do list. This morning, instead of getting my daily doze of my favourite new reality show; the never-ending US elections saga, which I find entertaining and worrying at the same time, I pondered on what counts as self-care. Taking care of the body is a given, but how about mental health? While I definitely do need to work on my body and only have overly dramatic reasons for not doing so, my mind could definitely use a break too. So I watched the snow fall, started checking on my meeting schedule for the day, the reports I need to pull, the data to analyse, the workshops to design, and the powerpoints to create. So many powerpoints. And I watched the snow fall. I started thinking about all the kids that must be super stoked about the first snow of the year and how they’ll go out and play without having to worry about topics like project plans and stakeholder management. The lucky idiots have probably even never seen an excel sheet. Oh the days.
So I watched the snow fall, and the time getting closer and closer to my first meeting of the day – a meeting I could easily skip as it was one of those let’s invite half of the organization to talk through a deck of slides we could have, and will, just sent via email -type of meetings. And what did I do? I skipped the meeting, put on my jacket, and went onto my balcony in my slippers and pyjamas to build a snowman. A snowman! I had the best 30 minutes I’ve had in a looooooooong time. I was giggling and smiling, freezing with my hands as I wasn’t smart enough to find gloves, and absolutely enjoyed doing something that took me away from what could have been death by powerpoint to a moment of carefree joy and laughter, and a nice reminder of the simpler times when I also had never heard of excel.
I named my self-care of today Claus; he might not be the most handsome of all the snowmen but he sure did make me happy.
I don’t know how you define self-care but for me that 30 minutes of childlike joy was exactly the type of a break from reality I needed. If you disagree, do let me know. If not, join me in celebrating a great start to my-me-month, and also, and maybe more importantly, the first time I’ve used “y’all” in a sentence. Hope you do something that makes you smile too today!
