This morning I woke with a start. Something had fallen off the nightstand on my husband’s side of the bed. I heard a muffled, “sorry”.1 My eyes noticed the clock, it read 4:58 am. “One more hour”, went through my mind. But then, my brain started to warm up, it reminded me that I’ve been wanting to wake up at 5 am to do yoga for quite awhile now. “Plus,” my brain said, “one hour isn’t a full cycle… you’ll be more tired then, than you are now.” “You have a point”, I thought. By now I was pretty much awake, which told me that I really should just get up.
I had a very nice, slow, and easy yoga session. My body thanked me for finally stretching. “How long has it been? One month, two?”, I thought.
I recently touted the virtues of yoga and eating healthier, but all my good intentions went right out the window after my dental surgery. At first, there was just pain. I had too many teeth worked on at one time, so there was no ‘safe’ place in my mouth for food that wasn’t soft. I also had cold/sugar/pressure sensitivity in all my new fillings (4). My two new crowns (my front teeth) felt foreign and sore. After awhile I think I just stayed in that tailspin of “I can’t eat this” that you get when you are denying yourself of the foods you love. Crunchy, sweet, cold – these things hurt, and I shouldn’t eat them, so I craved them constantly. I was lacking in creativity in the kitchen, so we had take-out quite a bit.
Only within the last week have I been getting back to a more healthy diet, I was actually missing salads and homemade foods. But it wasn’t until I started doing yoga this morning that I remembered just how good it felt to really take care of myself again.
In tree pose, although I was a little wobbly, I was able to bend my knee enough to put my foot on my thigh. It made me smile and marvel at how resilient the body is. Not that long ago my knee was so sore that I could not bend it. Prior to my dental surgery I was slowly, but successfully gaining mobility in my knee through patient yoga sessions. My knee has been hurting again lately, because I have been decluttering the house and find myself sitting on the floor going through ‘boxes of dread’ filled with a roller coaster of emotions. My knee and hips have been taking the brunt of my efforts lately, and yoga felt sooo good this morning.
And then at some point this morning, I looked out the window and saw the sight shown in the photo above. I had to go grab my camera. And I remembered how good it felt to use my trusty Canon Rebel. I’ve missed that camera, lately I’ve been using other cameras for one reason or another.
This morning was a wake up call. Get back to doing the things you love. Enjoy the pleasure of things. And in the words of the author of the book I’m currently reading (The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing – by Marie Kondo), surround yourself with things that spark joy.
Until next time…
~nic
1 I found out that my husband was resetting the alarm on his phone and accidentally dropped it when he was putting it back on the nightstand.
Photography by Nic 
Good for you- I keep putting off exercise these days!! Hope you are back to flexibility soon!!
Thanks, Cybele… I always feel so good after a yoga session, yet somehow I always seem to find reasons not to exercise. I need to keep this feeling in mind and make it a habit. 🙂
Oh, Nic, sorry to hear of your “troubles” but glad to read about your return to doing things you love! I’m definitely going to look into the book you linked – will be doing decluttering of my own in hopeful anticipation of downsizing now that my hubby and I are emptynesters 🙂 Lovely photo – keep doing what you love!
Thanks, Stacy. 🙂 The tidy/declutter book is rather interesting, you go through your stuff by category rather than by room. Take it from me, go in the order she suggests… I did my clothes first and it was satisfying to donate the stuff that didn’t “spark joy”. But the next day I decided to tackle a ‘box of dread’ that I put in the living room when we were building furniture (we put all our stuff that didn’t have a ‘home’ in the living room so that it would be in our face and we would deal with it)… I started reading the book after we had created a mess of stuff all over the house… so I thought I would tackle this box ‘real quick’ and get it over with… it was a box of mementos (the last category you should go through – not the second category) and it was exhausting, draining, gave me a migraine and I finally just put the stuff back in the box unfinished and decided I’d deal with it later in the process as the author had suggested. The next day I dealt with a less emotional category and things went much more pleasantly. 🙂
Thanks for your tip, Nic! I’ve now got the book on my kindle app, so I’m all set to begin 🙂
Awesome! Good luck and good decluttering 😀
😀
OMG, I sat down and read the entire book two days ago 🙂 It was THAT engaging. I explained to my hubby how we’re going to start into clothes next weekend. He said yes, but drew the link at asking himself if anything he wears gives him joy 😉 Really, thanks for the info!
Wow, Stacy! I’m so glad you liked it. As for the ‘joy’ when deciding things, it is a little odd at first… but really when I was going through my clothes some things were an immediate, “this never fit right”, “this color always seemed too bright on me”, etc. So those were definite donation clothes. But there was the occasional shirt that literally made me smile when I picked it up. And I think that is what she means by does this spark joy. I did keep things that I liked (or weren’t immediate no’s) that didn’t fit into the made me smile but I still liked the clothes. Funnily enough, a few days later I donated some additional clothes that I had been thinking about that were in my ‘maybe’ pile. When it came down to it, those clothes just didn’t spark joy, and having the extra space that those clothes took up felt really good. 🙂 I’m still going through my house category by category and it is really making a difference. I went through dog stuff a few days ago, and I had all this stuff that my dog doesn’t use (some of it is from my previous dogs), so I donated it to the local humane society. Her stuff looks so neat and tidy now! 🙂 The cool thing is that I’m not pushing my husband to make any changes, but he’s seeing the house slowly get less cluttered and he’s looking at his stuff and saying I’m going to have to go through this soon. 🙂 When I went through my clothes suddenly the closet was half empty. Then I washed all my clothes that had been stored that I was keeping to make them all nice and fresh again… this took a few days (I washed my coats too) and my husband commented that the closets look like I had moved out. I think that’s when he realized how much stuff in there was just his and a shift happened. Good luck, and happy decluttering. 🙂
Great story, Nic! I’m figuring my husband will only do the clothes thing (and truth be told, most of the house clutter is a result of my actions, so that’s only fair😉) It will be an adventure, that’s for sure, but I’m looking forward to the feeling of “lightness” that I’m anticipating is going to come as I go through this process!!
Yeah, me too. I figure my stuff and our stuff I’ll go through and leave ‘his stuff’ for him to figure out. Some of the ‘our stuff’ I ask him to make sure he’s ok with me donating or tossing it. It is an interesting activity to go through your stuff. When I come across something that I’m not sure about, I ask myself ‘why’ I am holding on to it, which might be a more approachable question than ‘does it spark joy’.
🙂
Good morning Nic 😃
What a wonderful start to your day! A beautiful sunrise and a great way to start by putting you first. Yes getting back to what you love.. love that!
Have a good one Nic xx
Thanks, Robyn! 🙂