Keeping to my Promise

My writing feels like its decreasing rather than increasing, I read other blogs and I urge myself to start again but things move to the wayside and I find it’s another month before I focus and recount what I want to share with others. I have so many notes for blog entries, I will get round to them but life has become busy and my promise to myself whilst travelling has been left at the back door. So today my writing comes from a place of change, a commitment to myself and my well-being. 

Sam and I took 2014 to travel, explore, adventure and reconnect and we definitely felt we did that, I quit my job to take on this mighty test of travel and found it a challenge not having a working routine but also refreshing to not be managed and told what I can and can’t do. It brought a new life to me and made me re-evaluate my old one but also my commitments to work and what I wanted for my career, what was important to me and my sanity. 

I came back with drive and passion to set up my own business/s and get a part time job allowing a guaranteed monthly income. One business succeeded, another didn’t work out the way I planned, the part time job came through, however this part time job turned into a full time and I realised that my working week was suddenly at between 35-40hrs over 4/5 days which wasn’t the plan I had once had in mind. I find money is the killer, it sneaks in and then i become reliant on it and it becomes hard to then go back, I know I start spending more and stuff starts to appear that I don’t really need. My mind slows down and my brain becomes mushy, the work I do requires time, energy and empathy and that’s a lot to give away, and not have time to replenish because before you know it the week starts again and the cycle continues.  
Last week I bit the bullet and went to my manager and took my time back, I have lessened my counselling hours which allows me to work 3 days a week then a Tuesday evening for my yoga. It allows me to spend time planning and developing as I have plans for more yoga next year but more importantly it gives me time to enjoy my new found greyhound, knit, rest, read and relax. 

I ask myself what makes us dedicate so much of our life to work, when did money become a thing that gave us status and when did we stop enjoying the life we want to live and take it for granted, giving it all up for work and stuff, stuff we don’t normally need. 

 

Project Van Life

So for those of you who didn't see our sneaky instagram posts a few months back, we got lucky and my cousin sold us his van, she's a beast, massive to say the least, a big tall lass. Its been a dream for some time to renovate and create our own camper and we are now in the process of being able to spend time working out where and how we begin, well we started....

Boards down, cleaning begins, design planning!

Windows are being fitted Monday then it's insulating and frame fitting...

Writing with Enjoyment.

I was completing my bullet journal for June when I suddenly had the thought of blogging, I have been urging myself to put something together and have ideas in my mind but I haven’t been pulled to start, until this morning. As I wrote in my last blog entry I had decided to get an entry up as a bit of an update, I hadn’t written anything for so long and writing is something that helps me express and make sense.
After my blog entry I went back to my journaling, writing a diary has always been something i attempt to keep up, over the years it has come in many different forms and at times none at all.

I remember as a teenager having a forever friends diary i was obsessed with those cute tubby teddies and owned a lot of goodies with their smiley faces on. My diaries at those times were of first kisses, boyfriends, arguments with Mum, who my most recent bestfriend was and who had decided to bully me that day. I didnt open my heart but i remember a number of years back finding them and cringing at my words and behaviours.

Travel journals are what i feel take people back to diary writing, its like a standard thing you do when you go away, part of that 'going away pack' is the beautiful journal where you store all your tickets/ideas and adventures. It's funny how we document the holiday in a far away land but not the amazing adventure in the UK or two week holiday in Europe, Sam's idea made me smile when we travelled, he isnt a big writer and even had his diary given to him from is first trip 10yrs ago, this time though he decided to keep a journal, he decided that what was important to him was to document the beers/lagers he drank, at first i laughed but as the time went on, i got it, his journal filled up and he wrote scores and comments but also where he was when he drank it. The taste of that drink described and the words of where he drank it took him back when he reads through his diary, for me it was such a creative way to document but suited his style of journaling.

I also got back into journaling in a therapeutic stance a few years back and have shared this with a few friends who may have been having a rough patch, morning pages, i was studying with the Women and Girls Network www.wgn.org.uk/ and carried out a days training with Jackee Holder www.jackeeholder.com/ learning about how to use writing as a therapeutic tool, the day was incredible and i instantly left, buying a journal to carry out morning pages. Morning pages is a journal form carried out in the morning, it requires you to write three pages of writing, you just write what is in your mind, no thinking just letting your hand write and explore, when you come to the end you stop, close your journal, your not required to read your morning pages again, its a lovely form of processing what is in our minds by removing it and placing it elsewhere www.juliacameronlive.com/basic-tools/morning-pages/ - this link gives you further information and explains it further. I dont write my morning pages every morning now but i do go back to it at times if i need to process a dream, woke up in a strange mood or if my mood has become low and i need a place to put it without burdening others.

My newest form of journaling however comes in the form of bullet journaling, for those who don’t know what that is, it’s a diary which allows you to be as creative as you want, you set the rules/pages and ideas. I had started one last year but couldn’t work out how I wanted it to work for me, after a bit of pinterest searching, seeking of my moleskin notebook and colouring pencils I started to plan and my bullet journal became alive again.

One of the things that has been great for me in my journal is processing what makes me feel good, what keeps my soul alive, I decided to keep an enjoyment tracker, not adding too much, but things I feel are manageable within the month, on each day I then colour in the square if I have managed to carry the activity out. Last month I managed a number of things however can see that some days I did nothing that I love, at one point three days in a row, that says so much for me at how we just keep on moving and sometimes don’t give ourselves the space to just be. Each week I teach my yogis to allow some time for themselves, however how can I preach what I don’t practise. The enjoyment tracker is helping me really take focus, for June I even added an extra enjoyment… let’s see how I get on.

So the question is how often do you manage to do things you enjoy?

I have added some images below of pinterest ideas that I can’t wait to add into my journal.

Nesting and Working.

Wow where has the year gone, were in Spring now and I really feel this year has just flown by, we have been back from travelling a while now and life has just got in the way of writing, I was writing my blog monthly when away and feel I have really neglected it since home, so here goes, I thought my first update this year i could share what’s been happening and what’s been making these last few months.

Work.
My working week is 3.5 days at Acorns working as a Children’s Counsellor with children impacted by domestic and sexual violence, the therapeutic work is carried out using play therapy techniques and is just wonderful to watch the process children/young people go through whilst working in the room.

My initial plan was to work more self-employed but my role at Acorns is amazing and diverse and I feel so many of my skills lie within this role, I have really put a lot of energy into it and its beautiful to say but I really do love it, hence why the private counselling I had thought of being more involved in has gone quiet.

Acorns are supporting me through a play therapy course at the institute of art psychotherapy www.artspsychotherapy.org which is an incredible institute and I hope to study further with them in the future. The course covers a number of different techniques, theory and experiential work to understand play as a therapeutic form, its hard going and means a lot of time back in London town but the learning I am getting from it is brilliant and is enhancing me as a practitioner each week I learn.

I am managing ½ day a week with Yogabud teaching one public yoga class and seasonal workshop’s which run on a Saturday and have a different theme each season. I have offered a few different options with the yoga but it feels right now the teaching I am offering is working best. The public class and workshop are going fantastic with full numbers and a mix of gender and age which is fantastic to see.

I have also been asked to par take in a workshop run by the lovely Shanti Bee www.shantibee.co.uk in June which I am really looking forward too.

Home.
Sam and I bought a house, bit crazy and unexpected but it all came about as I wanted my hens back and felt it was just annoying paying rent and not being able to have my feathered friends to say hello too. So we found a nest in an area we wanted and was lucky enough to have the offered accepted and now were in with our 6 hens and half decorated house. We weren’t sure whether we wanted to live country or city but felt that the stage we are in now the city suited us more with plenty of country adventures.

We had a few things we knew we wanted, like a wood burning stove and a good sized bath, which were two of the things we got sorted asap. We also knew we wanted to use reclaimed wood as a focus for shelves, my house plants seem to be growing so I wanted a place for good light for them. We also have so many books so wanted to use one of our alcoves to storage them so went searching in my dad/s workshops and found a number of old batons that we upcycled and made shiny and new. Really pleased with how far we have got and its really starting to feel like ours.

Bathroom Tiles.

Bedroom Wall

Hallway,

Stove tiles.