Revisiting Mindfulness

When I set off to start this year with the idea of mindfulness, I thought it would be a challenge to remind myself to take care of myself – it’s turned out quite simple, really.

I had a bit of an injury, so I took the time to stop knitting and evaluate other pursuits: reading, cross stitching, writing.

I wanted to blog more, and I’ve done so: an average of 5 entries per week, which I consider to be fairly good going! You all seem to be liking the posts too – comments and visitor/views numbers are up, and social media has exploded with many RTs and shares of my writing. I’m so happy with that, you can’t even believe it. Thank you.

I have continued my tradition of napping on Saturdays. I don’t know whether it’s a day full of people (market day) or because we walk into town and back with shopping (averaging 7 miles) but on Saturdays I’m knackered: I tend to nap a bit, recharge the batteries.

The one area I have been VERY unmindful about is food. Since the beginning of the year we increased our meat intake and it’s not good: I have been feeling more bloated, more tired and with an emptier stomach, which only leads to snacking and I don’t snack on healthy stuff all the time. Big fat fail. Brian will be back from the US in a couple of days and we’ve discussed returning to our “only eat meat once a week” rule since it worked great for the last months of the year and both lost a lot of weight (well… I lost as much as I could without looking sick)

But in other aspects, life has been good in the past month and a half: I’ve worked with a lot of new clients, dipped my toes in new pools, have a couple of big-sky-thinking ideas for the future and I have found the time to craft for myself. I have learned to slow down a bit.

One thing that I have learned to do is APPRECIATE my work. Whenever I finished a new project, I would, like you, look at it, pet it, and think “oh so pretty”. And that’s it, into the sample box or the mail for the book/magazine. It took the release of Interweave Knits Spring 2013 for me to stop and analyze what I did. It looks beautiful, my brain ideated some way to add details and notions that I didn’t know at the time, make ALL the difference in this garment.

Have you kept up with your new year behaviour?

(I hate the word “resolution”)