Planner Prompt 2025 Week 1 - Dec 30-Jan 5: Reflect on your Definition of Fun. What fun experiences or activities would you like to try this year?

 In other words, what's going on your bucket list this year?

I am starting my third Curation planner by Saint Belford. They're sold out of all their 2025 planners already, but you can still get an undated version here.

Each week of the planner contains a prompt for self care, etc., and in each planner the first week of 2025 and the last week of 2024 are the same week (Dec 30-Jan 05), but the prompts are very different. I've done week 53 of 2024 already. 

What do I find fun?

Reading. Hiking. Laughing at funny stories.

I like to be fulfilled, to accomplish things that are out of my comfort zone, but not traumatizingly so. 

I would like to see Haida Gwaii this year. 

I would like to bring others joy by writing a funny book.

I would like to hike in to a camping night. 

I would like to cross-country ski more times this year than last year (so, at least once, basically). 

I would like to learn to Belly Dance again. 

I would like to learn to play the piano so that it has more joy itself, and isn't just a piece of furniture.

I want to feel like I tried something new, make time for the things I love, and still have time to nap. 

Planner Prompt Week 53 - Dec 30-Jan 5: Reflect on the Last 12 Months

I am in love with Curation planners for reasons including the focus on the Self Care, the layouts, and the fact I have used it for two entire years (been a while since I've used one for an entire year through). At the end of each planner they have space for reflecting on your last 12 months.

What's super helpful is the Memory Bank. It's pretty helpful to look back at the year and know that you went to a movie with K2 in November. I know when I took my tree down last year (February); this year it's coming down today. I know when I went to the theatre or symphony, when I had UTI's, when I had coffee with friends.

The next section is the 2024 Reflection, and the prompts are: What are you most proud of? What brought you the most joy and fulfillment this year? If you could rewind the year, what advice would you give yourself? List your biggest insights and lessons. Reflect on how you spent your time and energy this year, what do you want to spend more and less time doing, and where do you want to focus your time and energy for 2025?

I am most proud of doing a CrossFit competition, and hiking a long & hard trail.

Camping, and spending time with family and friends brought me the most joy this year. Progress I made physically, and actually trying to write, gave me great fulfillment.

I don't have much for advice, except to take care of myself. 

I like myself more when I'm not unnecessarily lazy. I do need downtime, but I could watch less TV. Reading always feels like a guilty pleasure, but I'd feel less guilty reading all day than I would watching TV all day. Figure that one out. 

I spent less time on School PAC things, and I'm happier for it. I spent more time on me.

I want to spend my time and energy getting healthier, and working on the house that drives me crazy. I have wanted to repaint the interior for years. I've done some, but not all, and I hate the light-sucking mushroom colour that exists right now. We need to organize the laundry room, under the deck, and the shed so that everything in the house has a safe place to be. I don't need a show-home, but I'm getting tired of not being able to find things.

I want to spend more time with family and friends, most of all.

What about you?

BMBR: Under the Whispering Door by T.J. Klune

 A lovely romance story where even death can't get in the way of personal growth and the love that arises from it. 

As usual, TJ Klune masterfully weaves his tale in such a way that you feel like you are right there in the teashop, and that you know the characters personally.

Wallace, a man no one loves, and whose death brings this story to mind (and a quick verification search lead to this one), dies alone, at work, and finds love after death. 

Not as depressing a story as it sounds, and is in fact quite beautiful.

The moral remains, though: there is more to life than your work, and if not, at least don't be an asshole about it.

Planner Prompt Week 42: Reflect on a time you were relaxed.

 This week's planner prompt is to reflect on a time that you truly felt relaxed and at peace. What contributed to that feeling? How can you bring that feeling into your everyday life?

Well, it was probably when I was well rested and had a massage and chiropractor visit on the same day. Any day where I don't have to clean the house. Days where I feel like I've accomplished my to-do list. Oh, I went for a hike last weekend, just me and my dog. No whining kids. No other people around. The first 3.5km were great. Quiet, peaceful. The last 2km I may have been a bit whiny (seriously, how many uphills can there possibly be at the end of a hike?), but the feeling of accomplishment afterwards was worth it.

Every day, though? I could see myself trying to check off more daily tasks. Not all of them, but pick one that will be satisfying to complete each day, even if it's just walking the dog. Maybe I'll put myself in a time-out for five minutes each day.

Or maybe I'll just take a moment to sit in the car for a minute before driving (it is warm-up-the-car weather right now), and eat a chocolate that no one knows about.

WWW: You Are an Astronaut. Describe Your Perfect Day.

I have had the most perfect day. 

We have just left a suitable planet. Uninhabited, but habitable. Air so clean, no one passes out from lack of oxygen, or an abundance of smog. Water so pure, you can actually drink it. I wanted to stay, truly. But, circumstances made that impossible.

Those circumstances being orders, of course.

It wasn't the take-off into space that made this the perfect day. Nor was it the last meal of real food on the ground. 

It's that feeling you get when you look back at the planet you've just left behind, and you realize just how small you are. And how lucky you are, to see just how insignificant you are. How many people get to realize that? How many people get to look into the vast

Timed: Will publish as is when the timer goes off.

Timed Entries

I never have time to write, so therefore never have time to blog. 

Due to unforeseen circumstances and a rare avoidance of going back to bed for an hour, I have time this morning. I washed up, got 1/4 dressed, and climbed back in bed but with my laptop and a cup of tea, all because I thought, maybe I'll read. 

Which led to the thought, maybe I should write. It is Wednesday Writer's Workshop day after all. Writing takes me forever, so then I thought, well, we could set a timer. And if the timer goes off before the story is done? Then that's where it ends, my friends. And that's where it gets published.

So, with twenty-two minutes left on the clock, here I am, sipping my tea and coming up with a plan. I think all WWW (Wednesday Writer's Workshop) entries will be timed from now on. They could get five minutes, and they might get forty. Depends on the day.

I will do the same for other entries too, but some entries will have the luxury of not being published until they're done (multiple timed sessions). A huge block for me has been time, and the perceived absence of it. I need to let go of the idea that if I don't have an hour or two, then I don't have time to write. Micro sessions. Set the habit. At least I'll be writing. 

I'll label them appropriately. If I have the time...

I'm going to head into the land of Drafts. There's something about an Astronaut sitting in there. Maybe I'll finish the story, and maybe I won't. But it will get published at the zero mark. Thirteen minutes left.

Planner Prompt Week 25: Pause before Work

 Firstly, no, you didn't miss weeks 11-24. I did. 

But this week's prompt was incredibly apt.

"Before starting work each day, pause and take three conscious deep breaths in and out."

    -Saint Belford 2024 week 5.

It's one of the last weeks of school and the kids have had something going on every. single. day., or I have, and my husband went on his annual fishing trip.

I appreciate DH every day, and his annual trips away make me appreciate him even more. He does all the grocery shopping, mows the lawn, and keeps the children alive after school. I had a week full of getting up at 4:30 to hit the gym, making my lunches, getting the kids out the door (they can help with breakfast, and while they are capable of making their own lunches, at this point they grab a granola bar from the pantry and we all pretend like that's amazing), PAC meetings and year-end potlucks, grocery shopping between work and said meetings and mowing a horrendously overgrown lawn after said potluck, work, more gym, more stuff, and eventually washing the don't-put-me-in-the-dishwasher dishes stop getting washed, and then you have to stop in the school in the a.m. to do stuff before work, and I don't even know if this sentence is grammatically correct, nor do I care it's been that busy, so believe me when I say that I actually used the word "frazzled" when someone at work asked me how I was that day.

Then I went to note something in the pre-weekly spread of my planner, and there it was. The best advice for this week if I ever saw it.