The Sunday Seven – Mar. 29th Edition

If Real Life were a sitcom, I’d have solved some major puzzle or fixed some major roadblock in my life in the last seven days. Alas, it’s not and I think many of us are still trying to figure out what this new ‘normal’ really is. I’m on roughly Day 16 of Social Distancing. I now sit squarely in the middle of the Introvert/Extrovert spectrum so this has been a somewhat challenging time for me. Lots of newfound time for Moth Girl to get distracted by so many shiny things.

But the topic at hand….this week’s gratitudes! Yes, I have plenty to be grateful for.

• Employment. Although it has been challenging getting acclimated to a new corporate culture in the midst of this as we are all mostly working remote now, I am grateful that I found the job that I did when I did and with the company I’m with now. That’s really all I can say about that aspect of it. Feeling like there is at least one area of my life that is stable, despite all of the tumult in the world, is helping to keep me grounded.
  
  Sidenote + BONUS GRAT: This is a terrifying time to work in healthcare but this is the career I chose over a decade ago and I’m happy and grateful to be back in it after almost a year of un/underemployment. With all of that said, I’m also really grateful to not be on the front lines of this – in a clinic, for example, and am so incredibly thankful for those of you who are.
  
• Corporate Resources for Good. But also it’s really great to work for a company that isn’t turning its back on its employees right now but is instead doubling down on its commitment to patients and the employees providing their care. This week, they scheduled multiple webinars and provided many resources for coping with change, managing through these uncertain times, staying engaged and communication skills. They have some other initiatives in place that are making it really easy for us to support each other in this.
  
• Gardening. This week, we’ve had some wonderful weather and I’ve been fortunate to make some progress on the garden. In addition to having nice enough weather to make the continued expansion of the flower beds possible, I finally got around to starting some seedlings for this season.
  
  In a matter of days, my lettuce is starting to show some progress. Waiting on the dill, parsley, oregano and marigolds to make an appearance.

BONUS GRAT: Home Depot may charge an arm and a leg for delivery BUT THEY DELIVER! So, I maxed out my Spring Garden Budget and have an order coming next week! Here’s to coming hail protection (hail took out my garden TWICE last season!) and a metric fuckton of soil, mulch and seed.

• Tradition. One thing I’m really grateful for is that I come from a long line of strong women who taught me a lot about self-sufficiency. I feel very much in my element right now. The lack of a commute means I have more time to think of creative ways to use the food we have on hand in new meals and I’ve had time to put a list of things I’ll need to get back into canning and preserving on a regular basis.
  
  With that said, I can’t say that we’ve been bored by the meals we’ve had lately. I’ve been treating this as a Trip Around the World. In the last few weeks, some meals that hadn’t been put into rotation or were brand new to us have made an appearance include Middle Eastern shakshuka, Denver scrambles, pasta carbonara and I made Indian Butter Chicken recently that was excellent.
  
• A Long TBR Pile. You readers know what I’m referring to here….The “To Be Read” Pile that never really seems to have a dent made in it. My current list includes quite a few self-help books as I have a goal to read 12 of those a year, but I’ve also got a stack of fiction and non-fiction I’ve been “meaning to get to” for forever and this week I finally dove into a book I purchased while visiting with a friend in Virginia earlier this year, Joyce Carol Oates’ A Book of American Martyrs. And trust me, there’s been plenty of progress on Robbins’ Trust Your Next Step, Arabi’s Power: Surviving & Thriving After Narcissistic Abuse and Ventura’s Applied Empathy as well as keeping up with all of the Harvard Business Review and Martha Stewart Living magazines that still show up.
  
• Love. For a number of reasons, most of which involve maintaining my own safety, I don’t write much openly about this topic on a personal level but it definitely doesn’t mean it’s been devoid in my life. I think it’s important to admit that I’m a firm believer in the Law of Attraction from the perspective that I believe we attract into our lives what we’re putting out into the world so it stands to reason that I had to take accountability for the failed relationships I found myself recovering from before I could attract someone who could genuinely love me and before I COULD BE GENUINELY LOVED. Man, that opening yourself up to it is the hardest part though.
  
  But the last few weeks, and this week especially, I’m grateful for it. Real love is a safe haven. A place where we can check our insecurities and feelings of inadequacy at the door and just be loved. And it’s nice to know that it’s a partnership and not just shoved onto one person to bear all of the responsibility. You chop, I’ll carry. I’ll cook, You clean. I know that I could have made it through this alone. I know he could have too. But I’m really fucking grateful that neither of us had to; even better that neither of us wants to…Still.
  
• Matsyasana. I first saw this pose in the very first restorative yoga video I’d ever watched recently. I didn’t catch the name and I didn’t have blocks, at the time, but I knew enough to know that I needed them. So when the blocks arrived yesterday, I didn’t even bother to roll out the mat. I slid them under myself and immediately tried this pose properly. I have two words for you: LIFE. CHANGING. There are plenty of ways to modify it to help stretch your hips, calves or thighs if you need that too – which I desperately do. I am well behind on my 2020 Hiking Goal (4.67/100 miles) which maybe I’ll make it a point to rectify in the near future.

So tell me…what are you reading? How are you staying sane? What are you grateful for this week?