I told you about Project Love in my last post 🙂 well along with considering food and exercise, we are also given other tasks to do. These are mind tasks, ones which make you think, particularly about yourself and your perceptions of yourself. This week’s task was to take 10 minutes and consider some questions about yourself.  Hence 10 minutes to explore you…

You know me, I am the queen of wordiness and over thinking so you can probably imagine I spent more than 10 minutes, but that’s ok. I thought I’d put it down here because it makes it real 🙂 and after all I put (almost) everything about myself on here so why not this 🙂

The first question/task:

Take 10 minutes to explore a new exciting idea …
3 important details about the idea…
1-2 reasons why your idea appeals to you…
Your first thoughts about whether or not to pursue your new idea…

My new idea is not *that* new I have been toying with it now for a little while….
I am considering writing a book, well two actually, this is really a two for the price of one ideas deal…
1) To turn The Otter Chronicles blog into a book.
2) To take the Haiku from my Creative Endeavours blog and some more as yet unwritten and collaborate with artist friends of mine to draw pictures inspired by the haiku and somehow turn these into a book too.

Three important details about the idea:

(I am not sure if these are the right details)

• Everyone needs to know about time travelling otters
• I would be writing something more interesting than instruction manuals
• I love Haiku and I want to share them with everyone

1-2 reasons why the idea appeals to me:

• When I was little I wanted to live in a motor home and travel around writing (or be a gymnast but shhh)
• I love writing

The first thoughts about whether or not to pursue it:

• I have no idea how to write a story that has a proper structure and isn’t just rambling
• I don’t have time to dedicate to this
• No one would want to read it
• I don’t even know if my Haiku are any good
• Isn’t having 3 blogs enough writing?
• It is probably a stupid idea

Well…that is more negative than I expected, and weirdly contradictory…

Second task/question

10 Minutes to explore the good stuff …
Things, people and places you adore…
One thing you’ve worked hard to achieve…
One thing that’s going well right now…
Two things you’re passionate about right now…
Two people you can count on for warm words & hugs…
3 things to look forward to…

One thing I have worked hard to achieve:

• my photography exhibition 😊 it was last August and it took me nearly a year to organise and longer than that to take the the photos :

Beauty in the mundane

Two things I am passionate about right now:

• Dancing,
• photography

Two people I can count on for warm words and hugs:
(Thankfully I have lots of these)

• Mark
• Lucy

Three things to look forward to:

• My next photography exhibition (April 2020)
• Dancing season
• My next trip around Scotland in my camper (April 2019)

10 Minutes of self love…
List 3 things you like about you…
List 5 things you’re proud of…
How do you take care of yourself, and does your self-care need improvement?
List 7 things you’re good at…
If you could feel a certain way everyday what would it be?
What is stopping you from feeling this way?
Are these things real or excuses?

Listing three things I like about myself is harder than you might think. That in itself is an interesting fact tbh. After some consideration:

• I like my ability to/insistence on standing up for my beliefs in any situation. I will defend my views and defend others against anyone. I am not afraid to express myself.
• I like my ability to be creative, I can write, take photos, make pottery, lino print, sew, and make nearly anything
• I like my hair… it’s huge and multicoloured and its ok to like your hair 😀

5 things I am proud of:

• My photography
• My PT qualification
• Being part of Mythago
• My blogs
• That I survived teaching and had enough sense to leave

How do you take care of yourself, and does your self-care need improvement?

I take care of myself through exercise, and attempting  to eat sensibly. I take care of myself by filling my time up as much as possible so I don’t feel like I waste time. I take care of myself by dancing and dancing and dancing! The fact that I so often fail to eat sensibly and I am so tired so often probably tells me that I don’t take care of myself as well as I could… I suspect that the best way I could improve my self-care is to let myself rest once in a while… I need to realise that 7 hours sleep is not a waste of time. I shouldn’t feel guilty when I get more than 5 hours sleep.

You’d think that by writing that down, it would cement itself in my brain…but even as I write it I don’t believe it. Logically I know that sleep is important, logically I know that rest is important. Deep down I don’t really believe it…

List 7 things you are good at:

• Photography (yes there is a theme in these answers)
• Lifting heavy things
• Writing
• Dancing (as long as it is a mythago dance…)
• Baking
• Learning new skills
• Making things

There is more to the challenge than that, but that is all I am going to write about on here. It was a weirdly hard thing to do. I am not sure why it is difficult to outright say “I am good at xxx” or “I am proud of yyy” but it is. Even as I wrote the list of things I was good at I still questioned whether I really am good at those things.

Even as I tried to think of things I was proud of, I had to stop and justify even to myself, why I was proud if them.

I have no idea if it is to do with self-esteem, anxiety, or societal conditioning but I think it should be more acceptable to be proud of yourself and to admit you are good at things. Even if others are better (someone nearly always will be) you can still be good at something, and actually it is Ok to say so!