Week 1: Jan 1st-6th

I must admit, trying to do 5 things per week to benefit myself proved to be rather difficult.
Much harder than I originally anticipated. I'm sure it will become easier to do and pick out beneficial things as time progresses, but this week's items are not anything to write home about. I guess another lesson this will teach me is what types of things are actually beneficial for me and which feel more like a chore...or better yet: those that may feel like a chore, but are actually quite beneficial. Needless to say, I think this will be a great challenge for myself.
After I wrote about my New Year's Resolution and discussed it with my boyfriend, he decided he wanted to document progress for his resolutions as well so it's nice to know we're sort of doing this together, albeit in much different ways.

Week 1:

1. Actually took a "sick day"...by that I mean I didn't feel well, like a sickness had come over me and instead of ignoring my body's signals, I stayed home, slept a lot, laid on the couch and watched movies with lots of fluids. This resulted in waking up Sunday feeling better (Not totally cured,  but much better).

2. Finished a year long project off my Pinterest that I began Jan 1st, 2012.  The project was a diary/calender/log of daily doings.

This project is ongoing, but I will admit the first year was the most difficult because each card had to be made and written out with the date, and then the entry for 2012 needed to be entered. Also the acquisition of all the postcard dividers needed to happen. I actually ordered some vintage ones off ebay that actually have messages from the 50's and 60's from various parts of the U.S. which I thought added my own personal addition to the project. Although, the last postcard is actually a blank one of Oakland I purchased a few months back in my city.

So this week, I finally got around to finishing up the last few days in December that I'd fallen behind on because of all the holiday/family/buying a car/driving back happenings that caused me to be just too busy to finish in December. Now I'm up-to-date with these and it is already proving worthwhile and interesting to look at the current day and see what I was doing on that day, the previous year.

3. Went to First Fridays in Oakland. It's an art/community event, many cities parttake in their own versions of this but I realized we've been living in Oakland now for a little over 5 months and yet we've never gone to our own city's First Friday event, or any events in our city really. There are so many events and opportunities within minutes of our front door and yet we've experienced so very little of them.

4. During my hour commute home from work on Friday, I plugged in my old I-pod and rocked out to a variety of guilty pleasure tunes I have on there that I completely forgot existed. I love singing in my car, loudly and ALONE so as not to be judged on my lack of talent.

5. I wrote my cousin Kass a letter, snail-mail style. She does not partake in any social-networking, is not a fan of phone calls, and only so much can be said via text. I proposed the idea a few months back that she and I write good old fashion letters and she wrote me in November and I've yet to get around to writing her so I sat down yesterday and wrote out as much as my hand could bare (which proved to be fairly little since I haven't handwritten a letter in awhile). She and I were so close growing up, we did practically everything together. Throughout our late teen years and early 20's various things tore us apart, then brought us back together. We're in such different places in our lives now: I'm out here in a big city in CA going to graduate school with as much freedom as that allows and she is back in a small town in WA, married with a baby on the way, a toddler running around her house and a religion I can't agree with that has resulted in the biggest separation of the two of us. I love her with all my heart, and I love her children as though they are a part of me so the connection with her, however the universe allows is incredibly important to me.

All in all, this week has shown me that beneficial things for me come in all sorts of ways and I need to take the time throughout my week to not only actively engage in things that will benefit my mind/body/soul/heart... but also to take the time to notice those things I may already be doing and how these things benefit my mood and well being. I think part of it is that we so often are already taking part in beneficial activities, but aren't taking the time to acknowledge to positive impact these things can have on us if we let them.
 Week 1 complete, now on to Week 2. This should be interesting as this is the first week of a new quarter in school, my busiest and possibly most difficult yet!!