Good evening, dear friends! I hope this Monday hasn’t been too tough on you. I’m here tonight to share last week’s hobonichi spread and a few other highlights from my week. I’ve been trying to take more pictures over the last week to share with you all. One of my favorite blogs is Posie Gets Cozy, which I love because of all of her pictures and hygge way of life! And like I said in my last Abundance post, I’m all about creating cozy as much as I can, so I’m going to try to bring more of that into my blogging.
I ended the week thrilled because I felt like I had accomplished so much! And I did – but surprisingly, I didn’t finish a single book for the first time this year! I couldn’t help but laugh when I realized that – I guess this is what balance feels like?
But seriously, I felt like I read a lot but I also abandoned multiple books. I am caught up on my War & Peace challenge, but of course I’m nowhere near finishing that. I’m working on The Woman in the Window, which I thought I’d fly through but haven’t. I’ve abandoned my recent Wallander mystery because it was so boring. I abandoned a book on creating habits which was a BIG bust. I abandoned another Swedish mystery even though I was over halfway through it but dreaded going back to it. Ehh – these things happen, I know. So despite my nearly constant reading – nothing has stuck! But now I’m listening to The Brutal Telling, which I’m loving, so I’d expect a finish soon enough. This is the fifth Inspector Gamache book and the series just gets better as it goes on!
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You might have noticed that I always have a goal in my hobonichi to get in some cardio time on my exercise bike in the basement, which never actually happens. For a while I aimed to get on the bike three days a week for thirty minutes. After talking to my nutritionist about how I fail miserably at this every single week, she shook my world by suggesting something new. Instead of trying to spend such a huge chunk of time each day (30 minutes, 3x a week), break it up into something much easier and manageable: 10 minutes a day for five days a week. It doesn’t add up to 90 minutes, but at least it’s something.
Friends – this actually changed my life. I’m usually the person who says that I’m either going to go all the way in or nothing at all. But because I’m 30 weeks pregnant, this is actually the perfect time to try something different. I’m finding that trying just a bit at a time takes off some of the pressure and is allowing me to rebuild some of the cardio fitness that I’ve lost over the last several years. No one expects a person who’s 30 weeks pregnant to run a marathon, right? And most days I actually stay on longer than 10 minutes – usually 15-20 minutes, which is such a bonus! Plus, I don’t need to shower afterwards because it’s so low-key. I don’t usually even put on shoes, for pete’s sake.
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I’m also trying something new with my morning routine. My morning journal and 
mindfulness time was taking me about an hour and a half each morning and it’s still hard for me to get up as early as I was pre-pregnancy. It just wasn’t working. So instead of writing three pages in my journal and then filling a whole hobonichi page with intentions, I’m now journaling a single page in my hobonichi, writing a short sentence on daily gratitude in my monthly hobo spread, and then pulling a single tarot card (instead of 9) to set me up for a positive day. This takes half an hour – an hour less than before. I can wake up at 6am and still be able to do this, get on my exercise bike, and read a chapter of War and Peace before I have to start getting the boys ready for the day. It’s been such a relief to winnow down what I try to do in the mornings but still feel like I’m able to do things that fill up my gas tank. Maybe one day I can go back to doing more, but right now I’m content to doing just enough.
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I’m also diligently working on my Flamingo Flavor shawl. I’m on the third border section (which you can’t really see in this picture) and still have quite a bit to go. Typically I would get frustrated if I was working on something that never seemed to end like this one does. All of the border sections are fairly intricate and take quite a bit of time which I haven’t always had the patience for. But because I’m trying to be careful about finances, I don’t want to rush this project because that means that I’ll have to spend money on the next one! So I’m focusing on the process and not the product, which is different for me. And it’s actually been quite rewarding to spend so much time on this single shawl. If I could just get past the nagging feeling that I should already have a checkmark on this project and be on to the next, then I wouldn’t have anything to worry about. But that’s so hard for me — so I keep trying.
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And that was my week! How was yours??! Did you meet any goals? Or were you able to relax and enjoy life?
The Cozy Burrow 
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