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?

Ritualizing your life

As I work through my Leonie Dawson Shining Life workbook, one of the things I keep coming back to thinking about is the idea of ritualizing-- of making things into rituals.

On the one hand, it means building a habit, which really also means dedicating time to something you think is worthwhile. 

On the other hand, it means making something sacred or it means finding the sacred in something. It's a sort of low-grade spiritual way of looking at the world, as I read it, and that makes everything feel softer, sweeter, calmer, more soulful (if I can use such a hippie-woo-woo word for it). I've never beed super concerned with my soul in the traditional sense, except for that spiritual crisis I flailed through when I decided I couldn't go to church anymore if I wanted to stay sane, but looking at the world through a more spiritual lens is much nicer than looking at it in that harsh grey light that calls itself "realism" and is actually just too sharp and hard to live in.

Combining the two meanings, I come up with this feeling of...I don't know if I have words for it. A cheerful connectiveness. A feeling that I'm working for my own good and showing the world how to be better--more gentle, less violent, less strict. I'm stating out loud (or at least on paper and blog) what I think is worthy of attention and what isn't, and I'm devoting time to those worthy things--time and energy and thought and personal agency. It's the way I choose to live, codified so I can remember it when things get stressful or anxious or hard.

Here's some stuff I'm trying to find ritual in:

- Daily writing and art practice, because how can I get better if I don't practice?

- Organization, because I'm not naturally organized and I tend to like clutter.

- Growing my own food in as much vast abundance as I possibly can.

- Sharing--being generous with you guys, with the world, with myself.

- Health--because I let it slide way, way, WAY too long and that was dumb, and I've learned from that to do better.

- Morning routines, because a good morning sets up for a day without the dithering and indescision I tend to live in.

- Self-care of the warm-bath / pretty clothes / new book / yummy tea / sleep in sort. Not every day, because I'd never get anything done, but more often than I have been, because I tend to push off and deny myself the stuff I know will make me feel better, and I don't know why.

What do you value? What things would you make into a ritual?

NOTES:

My affiliate link for the workbooks:

https://jlk86341.isrefer.com/go/2015wk/samiholloway/

See last post for more on how I use the workbooks.