Life and Lessons of a Transitional Year

Life and Lessons

Hello, it’s been a while. And, I’m giving you a snapshot of my life and lessons I’ve learned in the past year.

So much has happened since I last wrote to you. Life has gone at the speed of sound and the year seems to have flown by.

It is not what I planned.

What I Planned

When I quit my job last year to work from home, I had all of these plans. I wanted to write and work on my creative life. I intended to declutter and feel as if my house were under control. And, I wanted to have a nice garden where we could eat out of all summer.

Each of these things happened to varying degrees of success.

I did manage to plant a garden and we did eat out of it. But not as much as I had wanted.

I’m still working on the decluttering of my house. My journey toward minimalism is a very slow journey.

And, my creative journey. That is another story. I did manage to win at NaNoWriMo this year but it was down to the 11th hour. Another thing that I was working on this year during this time away was another blog related to journaling. My writing life is a work in process.

Oh, and one of our daughters got married this year and another one had a baby so there is that.

In short, my life has felt out of control and insane.

Standout Lessons

But as I look over the last year, there are so many lessons that I learned and need to remember.

1. I need to take care of me first. One of my hopes was to develop a movement habit. Yeah, that didn’t happen either. But I’m realizing the need for self-care and movement in general.

2. The most important things need to come first. I know I am not alone in this discovery. Every self-help, productivity book or article talks about this. But I have discovered that I cannot be consistent if I don’t do the most important things first. Though there have been times where I’ve gotten my work done later. I failed more often than not when I didn’t do my creative work first thing in the morning.

3. There is only so much bandwidth in life. This is a metaphor that I began with clients and have realized has a place in my own life. In life, there are only so many things that can get done in a day and if you keep adding without discernment, you can slow everything down.

New Realizations

In realizing these lessons, I have come to a few realizations:

Creating a life that I want is the most important thing. I’ve been working all year, long hours simply to make a living. I want more than that.

Narrowing my focus. In my writing life, having two blogs was too many. I do not have the creative bandwidth to be spread more than that. And I really missed having the frank conversations about life that I’ve had in this space.

Celebrate the little wins. I have discovered that life is more about a series of small, tiny wins rather than big ones. And if you don’t celebrate the small ones, nothing seems important.

It’s not much. I’ve begun to make small shifts to help implement these lessons and realizations into my life. I expect that there will be many more ups and downs. There always is. But learning to celebrate the little things and trying not to get hung up on stuff that doesn’t matter is my focus at this moment.

It will be an interesting year.

Until next time,
Angela