Day 2: Here's the context...

2/365 

I figured I should start this post by giving a bit more context to yesterday’s word-vomit. It’s surprisingly easy to start a domino effect when one thing in your life isn’t going well. That’s what happened to me last week, I got sick. Then I had too much time in bed with my own thoughts, and suddenly every part of my life felt up for questioning. 

My career — is it actually challenging, or should I be doing something more exciting, like starting a business? 

My dating life — should I be on multiple apps, rinsing and repeating the same lukewarm prompts? 

My wholefoods journey — have I even come close to eating “30 different plants a week”?

In my experience the minute one aspect in life is flipped on it's head, the emotions trickle down into every other part of your life and suddenly you feel as though you are juggling and trapezing through 15 problems when there was only one to begin with. This is unsurprising for a chronic overthinker.

All this to say I needed an outlet. I needed a way to tackle my problems and evenly distribute my attention to each area of the circus, that is my life, and carry on as smoothly as possible. I know that a lot of people prefer to focus on one problem at a time but since everything in life is intertwined, a little bit of work here and there helps me keep the act going. So, I have vowed to post once a day for the next year about topics that tend to cause stress or curiosity for people, around the 20-35 age range, but of course we don’t discriminate – really everyone is welcome. A topic a day keeps the doctor away (or something like that). 

So yesterday I decided to start moving and committed to a 40-minute walk. While this didn’t fix all my problems magically, it did help me realise that getting out of a rut can sometimes be as easy as deciding you don’t want to be there anymore - and then doing one small thing differently. I know the whole “hit your steps” advice is overused, but it works. 

I tend to focus on The Three Pillars of Not Spiralling Completely™

1. Move your body 

2. Hydrate and eat as clean as you can 

3. Sleep 

Once those are taken care of, you can deal with the bigger, more layered problems. So right now, I’m keeping things basic. I’ll need a few more days of focusing solely on the pillars, but even after that one walk, I felt a bit lighter and grateful that I recognised it was time to reset. 

Now, back to this year-long posting commitment. Ultimately, I feel I am embarking on a big endeavour. Posting every day for a whole year will require commitment and persistence I have not had to harness for quite some time. I feel as though I have been cruising in fourth gear for the last two years, no acceleration, no brakes, just coasting. So, this feels like the right moment to gear up and learn to persevere through the self-doubt.  

And the doubts have definitely rolled in already:

Who’s going to care about this? 

What if I run out of things to say? 

What’s the point? 

But once the left side of my brain decided to show up to the circus (allegedly the calm side of the brain), here’s what I landed on:  

1. Even if just one person cares enough to read one post and relates to one thing, then I’ll be happy I was able to hold the space for it, because at the moment it feels like there is no one else, even though the logical part of me knows there is at least one other person questioning everything.

2. I could talk underwater or to a brick wall — running out of things to say is not going to be the challenge here. If all else fails, I can always talk about dating. There is plenty of material there. 

3. The end goal is the gratification of knowing I did what I said I would do, even if this doesn’t reach a group of people or one other person, I'll know I tried. I honestly don’t know where this could lead, and I like the idea of finding out. 

So until tomorrow.

Speak soon.