Weekly journal questions!

1. What is the very first thing you remember, your absolute earliest memory? What do you know must be the context of that memory, and how much of that context do you actually remember vs what you've been told?

2. What does summer mean to you? Does it mean the same thing it meant to you as a child? Do you look forward to summer, or dread it? Why? What is your strongest summer memory?

3. What is something people around you love, but that you just find oppressively dull? What makes it dull--and why do others like it so much? Have you tried to like it, too? How successful were you?

4. What is one place you have always wanted to visit and never have? What is it that makes you want to go there? Why have you never been? What would you do if you were there?

5. Find a book and open it to a random page. What line is right in the middle of your right hand page? What does that line make you think of? Is there a message from the universe in it?

6. Do you believe in signs and portents? What is something you're looking for a sign to help you with? What do you hope the universe says and what do you fear the answer might be? 

7. Who is your celebrity crush? What makes you love them so much? Where did you discover them? Have you ever met them in real life--or would you, if you haven't? How do they make you feel?

Lists - stuff that's pissing me off today

I'm having a Bad Life Day, so to get it out of my brain, here's a list of all the things that are pissing me off today:

• Packing up to move AGAIN against my will, only six months after we moved the last time.*
• The AC is broken, and this is the most recent in a LONG LIST of things wrong with this place that makes the price even more unjustified.
• Stress has made my pain-thing flare up, so I hurt all the time now.
• Stress has also made my period late again**, when I'd only just gotten it to show up on time.
• Those commercials asking for money for things that should be taken care of--the VA? Should be taken care of my the gov that sends people out to need it. Water for communities? Should be taken care of by people with money. Don't ask me, when I'm so poor. It's insulting to ask the poor to pay for the poor.
• My birthday is next week and this situation sucks.
• I had to reset my phone to factory presets to make it work, which is stupid.
• I JUST got stuff to start coming up in my garden, and now I'm gonna have to move the whole thing.***
• Finding boxes is the worst.
• No, filling boxes is the worst.
• I was only JUST starting to feel like I was making headway getting my stuff OUT of storage, and now it's all got to go back IN.
• I'm going to have to delay opening Cashew Creations by at least a month.****
• Ninja hates moving more than I do, and she's going to FLIP OUT, and I'm just really worried about how she'll handle living in a hotel where all the furniture is not ours.

Silver linings--because you've got to find them, right?

• All of this is hardening my resolve to get my own place, and maybe to find a way out of this state.
• It's also convincing me that a Tiny House is a better and better idea, because moving without packing sounds divine.
• Living in a hotel means that we don't have to pay for power bills or water bills or cable bills. So that's less to worry about.
• Maybe the hotel will have breakfast--and a pool, so I can get some exercise that won't kill me now that I can't seem to move without getting all weak and faint because pain is taking up all my energy.

But guys. I'm so unhappy today.

NOTES:

* We're losing our house because it just costs too much. We're moving into a hotel, which I'm going to treat like a dorm, because I know how to do that.

** My uterus is apparently very shy. It doesn't like anything that damages my calm. Sorry about the overshare.

*** The only good part is that I CAN move it, because it's all potted. And my sister's volunteered her porch to house it.

**** In which I will hopefully be able to better fill the shop and better organize my offerings and the behind-the-scenes stuff.

Birthday customer-and-reader appreciation weeks!

My Etsy is here!

My Gumroad page is here!

It's almost my birthday and I want to thank everyone who has helped me start to live the life I want to live instead of the one I've been relegated to, and so I'm offering a steep discount on all my nail polish and Pay What You Will pricing on my books! All I ask is that you help me spread the word--tweet, instagram, comment, share, review, tell your friends, whatever! The books each have a dedicated hashtag to use, and you can tag me as @pirategirljack on IG or Twitter so I can join the convo and retweet you!

Thank you all so much!

Journal prompts for this week

1. What would your ideal version of today look like? Now, what would it feel like?

2. What is bothering you right now? Why? What can you do about it?

3. Pick a guiding word and a length of time. How can that word help you guide your life over that length of time? What can you do to stick to that word's guidance though various contingencies?

4. Are you extroverted or introverted? How can you protect your core self while still functioning in a healthy way? The way you do it now, does it keep you balanced or drain you? What can you do better?

5. What are you absolutely sure you believe in? Not just in your faith, but in your ideals and your opinions and your modes of behavior? Where do these beliefs come from? Are any of them holding you back?

6. Are you superstitious about money? How? Where does this superstition come from?

7. Do you consider yourself more "normal" or more "weird"? Why? Do you feel positive or negative about this? What can you do to better embrace your individual self?

I didn't planner-Ize this week and I'm already regretting it

Usually, Sunday is Planner Day. I review the week I just finished, I do some hopefully useful journaling on how I felt and what I accomplished and what I didn't, and then I set up the week's planner pages. That involves what I'm going to watch on tv each day, since I Livetweet a lot, what blog posts I'm glin to make, various business tasks, my schedule and daily tasks, and what I nee to do for my various novels and writing projects. 

But this week, I felt loopy and weird on Saturday and didn't really think about how Mother's Day meant I'd miss my usual planning hour (or so). And now it's Monday, I don't have a plan, and I'm away from my desk, my planner, and all my stuff!

See, I didn't really think of myself as a Planner Person. I like the washi tape (I'm kind of obsessed with washi, actually), and the stamps and stickers and stuff, but I didn't think I'd be this useless without a plan. But now I see that that hour or two that I take on Sunday afternoons most weeks does more than set me up with the list of things I need to do over th next week. It also gives me a chance to remember what I'm trying to accomplish with my life, and to realign what has to happen with what I want to happen.

I check in with my Desire Map Most Desired Feelings. I review my Passion Planner. I think about where I am and where I'm going. I decide what the week's goals will be. I decide what the next few plot point in my stories will be, and what crafting projects in going to work on, and which new colors I'm going to add to the shop.

This week, I'm already down a day. But I'm re-dedicated to keeping to my plan! And it'll help me live how I want to live, because how I'm living now is not sustainable.

Do you have a planning day? What do you do when you sit down on that day?

My blog needs this - Danielle LaPorte's #Truthbomb 794

Danielle has this talent for sending out something close to exactly what I need to hear. At least once a week, these Truthbombs are just right to help me figure out what I'm even doing with my life!

She has a whole deck of these that you can use as a draw-a-card-a-day oracle, and you can find a link under the Affiliations tab above!

Having trouble viewing this email? Click here Ideas, action, creation, prosperity.         DANIELLELAPORTE.COM  @daniellelaporte / Danielle on Facebook          Update your email preferences for receiving Daily Truthbombs. Danielle Laporte Inc. #234 - 2055 Commercial Drive Vancouver, British Columbia V5N 0C7 Canada

Tattoo inspiration - watercolor tattoos I found on tumblr

I got my first tattoo about eleven years ago, and since then I've gotten three more. And wanted about nineteen more than I've gotten. I sort of vaguely keep an eye on the sorts of trends in tattoos that float around the Internet, and I have to say, Watercolor Tattoos are about my favorite new idea. The ones I like the most are the ones with clean sharp lines, maybe the science-y ones, and then the watercolor slashed and splattered and dripping artfully. 

These are gorgeous.

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Early May garden update!

Today, I did some replanting to combat the horrors the squirrels have inflicted on my garden! I have no idea how to keep them away, so I'm basically just planting a whole lot more seeds than I usually do.

Because of them, the previous planting a got all disordered, and they're only just starting to come up: the top here is onions and beans (p sure all the corn and pumpkin got eaten), and beans (amethyst beans and butterscotch beans!). The bottom shows...I'm unsure. I really need to get garden tags. I think it's lettuce and bok choi, and maybe spinach. Definitely greens, at least!

These are the ones I did today: lemongrass, two kinds of basil, dill, peas, sweet datil peppers as aji dulce peppers, summer squash, Poona kheera, space master cukes, cardoons, oka hijiki, and my very last two sea buckthorn seeds, since the ones I planted over winter got moldy.

Here's the garden as a whole--so far, a lot of planting and not much growing because of the squirrels and the really weird weather--like, this past week, England was warmer and drier than we were!

I've got flowers and beans on that back beam, greens in the white tubs, mostly trees in the bottles, more greens along the side beam, all the baby plantings in cups and small seed starters (I took the plastic off tr tomatoes today to see who is strong enough), my crab apple and hawthorn trees behind the day lilies that are starting to bud, ginger, and gladiolus!

And our newest addition is a potted begonia my sister brought for my mom!

What's going on in your garden?

Peanut butter bowl cake!

Mug cakes! Made in a bowl!

One Egg + 4 tablespoons PB + a handful of butterscotch chips + 3 tablespoons flour (this is a mix of cornstarch and oat flour because I'm GF) + 1-2 tablespoons sweetener.

Mix up that egg real well.

Add in those scoops.

Mix that up real well!

Mix in the sugar and the flour (which I forgot to take a picture of, but is there).

Throw in the mixins.

Microwave for 1 minute to 1 minute 15 seconds.

Comes out looking about the way it went in, but you can touch the top and see that it's solid now.

Leave it to sit for a few minutes; by the time it's an eat-able temperature, it should also be evenly cooked throughout.

Yum!

For a moister cake, use less flour, or add a little butter or oil. For a fluffier cake, you can add some baking powder, about 1/8th a teaspoon. If you use a flour that has stretch to it, it'll be fluffier, too.

So there you have it! Mostly protein, but it tastes like cake! Not low-fat or low-cal, but fast and yummy and filling.