This was a nutty week, for sure. I’m coming in to the weekend grateful to have 2 days to reset, to have a bit of respite before taking a deep breath and plunging in (again) next week. I know it will be brief, so I hope to take the time I need to get some rest (literally and figuratively). I hope to catch up on the last of the NaBloPoMo posts (still forging through!) and spend some time doing things just for me. In addition to, well, catching up on the to-do list. Because let’s get real – many of the things I put on there this week were simply moved from day to day to day.

So, today, I’ll leave you with this thought from Alice Griffin (who writes a lovely Substack, which you may want to check out):

“Steadiness, slowness, appreciation, a sense of time having no hold. And silence. Silence is the order of the day. It’s easy to fear it—always rushing to fill the gaps—but silence is where beauty is for me. Within silence is where my breathing slows and my soul comes alive. In silence I am able to both meet myself and see others.”

Even if you have a bonkers weekend of kid activities and holiday things-to-do and other life stuff, I hope you get a minute or two of silence for yourself.

I would swear I just had a post with this title but a quick review shows that it wasn’t in the last month. So I think I am safe. 🙂

I am having a discombobulated morning. Nothing major has gone off the rails, but everything I have tried to do has hit a minor stumbling block. Running in to work to grab a few things for the weekend, and finding that I didn’t have something I thought I did. Forgetting to put water in the coffee maker. Being unable to install my really ancient printer on my new work laptop (which means that I cannot print at home… not the end of the world, but still…). My Outlook app not showing my many subfolders (phone app, to be clear). And, etc.

I have meetings all day, and had hoped to get a few things checked off my list before the first one at 0730. Now I’m hoping for checking one thing off.

But! Yesterday, James Clear’s 3-2-1 Thursday newsletter was a treasure trove of quotable material. I’m going to share one that I need to keep in mind at all times (and it harkens back to Engie’s mantra “of things”…):

You are not the cause of everything that happens to you, but you are responsible for how you respond to everything that happens to you. ~James Clear

I know this, I really do. But sometimes I want to rail against the universe, and I need to remember this when that happens. Because, despite my best efforts, railing against the universe has not actually done anything.

Happy Friday, and happy end-of-NaBloPoMo to the intrepid bloggers who made it through! I hope you have a weekend that strikes the balance you need to feel your best.

I hope that the wonderful bloggers who have been doing NaBloPoMo are not dragging – because you have reached the end! And oh, it’s been wonderful reading your posts every day.

I started posting every day (a complete change for me!) on November 8. I now have it in mind to post daily until December 8, so that I can at least say that I did a whole month of daily posts. 😉 So I’m not quite done yet.

In my regular day-to-day life, though, I am dragging. The time between Thanksgiving and the end of the semester is always a bit of a slog, and it feels even more so this year. Meetings filling up the calendar, stressed students making appointments to talk about final assignments, planning for next semester and next year… it all seems to come to a head at once.

The phrase I’m keeping in mind right now is, “The only way through is through.” So much truth in that short statement. So I’m moving through, getting through the days, and remembering that eventually, the current slog will end.

Do you have a mantra or phrase that you bring to mind in tough times (or, really, any time)? You know me, I love quotes… so if you have any to share, I’d love to hear them.

Have a wonderful Thursday, my friends.

I know many of you juggle more than I can ever imagine. Kids. Spouses. Busy jobs. Busy lives. Friendships. Blogging. (:>)

And yet, for each of us, what we do every day becomes the norm. Our definitions of “the norm” change over time, of course, but generally speaking, I think we all acclimate to what our lives are in this moment, and we do what we need and want to do to have the life that we have right now.

I could go off on a tangent about how I am very, very lucky to have the life that I want, and not have my life dictated by someone else. But instead, I’m going to leave you with this poem, to remind myself (and, perhaps, you?) that sometimes it’s okay to just be.

A Poem for Someone Who is Juggling Her Life

This is a poem for someone
who is juggling her life.
Be still sometimes.
Be still sometimes.

It needs repeating
over and over
to catch her attention
over and over,
as someone who is juggling her life
finds it difficult to hear.

Be still sometimes.
Be still sometimes.
Let it all fall sometimes.

Rose Cook

I hope you have some time to be still today (however that looks for you), my friends. I’ll be over here trying to take my own advice.

I’ll apologize in advance for a short post that’s potentially a bit of a downer, but this is top of mind this morning and it seems I’m sharing things more frequently here, so…

Have you ever held someone to a standard, and been disappointed when they didn’t live up to your expectations? (Why do I suspect that is a rhetorical question? Perhaps I should ask if there are any unicorns out there who have never been disappointed by someone else…?)

It happened to me yesterday, and it was hard to swallow. I expected one outcome and got something completely different. Were my expectations too high? Maybe. But then again, maybe not.

Whatever it is, it’s hard.

I’ll be honest, quotes about disappointment are pretty much a bummer across the board, but this snippet (no attribution from the source I used, but if I find one I will add it) stuck out to me: Don’t lower your standards, but do remember that removing your expectations of others is the best way to avoid being disappointed by them.

And after all of that, I’m still going to wish you a happy Tuesday, that it is a good day in your world (peppermint mocha coffee creamer, anyone?), and that you end the day content with your place in this world. <3