Yesterday felt like a summer day. This morning a soft rain falls on a gray dawn, and the cool rain-fresh air fills the apartment. There will be no pastel sun rise this morning, only this soft rain falling, the sound of birdsong, and flat gray sky over the varied greens of lawn, meadow, and marsh beyond. I’m okay with that, it’s a lovely morning, and we need the rain. Storms pass. There are other days to fill with sunshine. 🙂

I try not to let the weather slow me down. 🙂

I sip my coffee. It will be another hour before I lace up my boots and walk the rainy path through the park. I consider going the opposite direction than the path I typically take. Being comfortable with change seems  healthy. This week has felt both productive and leisurely – relaxed without being effortless, focused and purposeful without being obligation and drudgery. I have enjoyed my time, and my self.

Today my ‘to do list’ is focused on tying up loose ends of a variety of sorts, mostly basic housekeeping. I have a date with my traveling partner tonight, and I like to be able to set aside the housekeeping entirely while he is here and simply enjoy him, without a lot of fuss and bother.  One task (hanging drapes in the studio) has been carried forward from other lists on other days for some time now… I’ve been irked to see myself procrastinate on this detail of the moving in. This morning I notice again why I have put it off; it will require me to move my desk. I’ve no objection, it just makes hanging the drapes a project of a couple hours work, instead of a couple minutes, and overcoming the inertia caused by being content with my desk as it is, and the view out the window beyond as well, it’s hard to bother. (Once summer comes, I’ll be quite annoyed if I have still not hung the drapes; my studio is the warmest room in the house, and challenging to cool because the sun hits the window for a large portion of the day.) Hanging the drapes has value, although it isn’t my highest priority day-to-day. I could treat myself poorly over the continued procrastination on this task… I don’t. It’s simply not that big a deal. I let it go.

My sleep cycle has been thrown off a bit due to late nights in the charming company of my partner recently. I’m not complaining – totally worth it – I’m hoping, however, to rebuild good sleep habits before I go back to work. I woke this morning at 3:00 am, feeling that I’d slept through the night (but only about 5 hours), and when I tried to rise, was so groggy with fatigue there was no wiser choice than to return immediately to bed, but I slept quite restlessly and wakefully after that. Once or twice, now and then, this isn’t any sort of problem, but over time my emotional resilience and general well-being degrade if I don’t get enough sleep. (For me, ‘enough sleep’ tends to be a very routine 7.5-9 hours of more or less continuous sleep ‘through the night’, on whatever shift or hours I am living.) Good sleep requires practice. Yes, I’m serious – and practicing good sleep practices is another bunch of verbs. There are any number of informative articles about good sleep hygiene.

I stretch. Sip my coffee. Consider the day. Wonder why I wrote this blog post, which suddenly seems fairly mundane and somewhat uninteresting. I think about nice days, pleasant conversations, and easy moments; most of those are fairly mundane, and uninteresting to write about too, but they are experiences I enjoy greatly, and cherish. I think ahead to a romantic evening, and smile; my fingers and toes match (mani-pedi), and after I finish the laundry I’ll have favorite comfortable cute clothes laid out, ready to put on after my shower. It’s not so much ‘vanity’ as that I am a mammal, a human primate, and ‘sexy’ feels good. (Like a lot of things, practice, verbs, results vary; some of my challenges occasionally put me at risk of being slack on self-care details, and practicing good self-care is worth reinforcing.) I am eagerly putting effort into being ready to spend time with my partner; he’s absolutely worth the best I have to offer. There’s no stress to it, and the effort isn’t about being ‘good enough’ or being someone I am not; I make different choices in life, now. Self-acceptance, being comfortable in my own skin, and personal growth (and the effort to use the verbs) don’t seem to be mutually exclusive… I find it entirely okay to work at being me with greater skill. 😀 Today is a good day for that, gray skies and all.

Today is a good day to celebrate Love. (Most days are.)