Paving the road

Note to self: Every thing's a little bit better when there's intent behind it.

When I was out on my retreat a few weeks ago, I realized that I had somehow stopped living my life with intention. There were certainly big picture things driving me like: getting rich, retiring early, playing more golf, having kids so I can teach them to say funny things before they know any better, but on a day-to-day basis I was really just going through the motions. It was not uncommon for me to wake up in the morning, laying in bed for as long as I could with the only thought rolling around my head, "what are you going to wear today?" Then when fashion inspiration struck or when it was the absolute last minute I could get out of bed and get ready for work just in time to sprint out the door and make the bus (let's face it, 99% of the time it was the latter... as my uninspired wardrobe choices could attest to), I'd do just that: spring out of bed in a frantic rush to shower, get ready, and run out the door. Twenty minutes. I can do it in 20 minutes. And while this is kind of a point of pride because low-maintenance girl can get ready in 20 minutes, the fact that I looked like I got ready in 20 minutes was really not something of which to be proud. And I think starting my day with a pressure-filled 20-minute dash really doesn't do wonders for me mentally or emotionally.

Ultimately, my average day would look like this: race to get ready, go to work do typical work-type things, come home, not feel like making any dinner which luckily for me I couldn't make anything because it had been weeks since I had gone to a store and bought food for myself, fix cereal instead, watch food network and get jealous of the better-than-my-cereal-dinner food that they were making, start to doze off in front of the TV, drag myself to bed, fall asleep immediately. Wake up and repeat.

I thought this was just how I was when I didn't have project, but when I'm in the midst of a project, say like a play or a house remodel, my behavior is the same, it's just that I eventually have more to show for myself than sitting like a vegetable in front of the TV. I've realized it's not about the project or how I'm spending my time, it's about the intentions I set for what I'm doing, how I'm living each day, not just continually going through the motions.

So my new project if you will is clearly setting my intentions each morning and then giving gratitude for my day each evening. I've found that keeping it simple--I want a certain meeting to go well, or I want to go for a run, or I want to remember to breathe--makes it easier and at the end of the day, there's something to reflect upon. It makes me feel a little more connected to myself.

One of my intentions over the weekend was to get myself back into healthy eating habits; to actually go to the store and buy real food for myself that I will use to make real meals for myself, as opposed to going to the story and buying food for myself that I end up throwing away because I'm too lazy to make real meals for myself. I was reading an article in an old magazine I had lying around that had a month's worth of easy dinner recipes with exactly what I'd need to buy for the week. Perfect. Just in case you're keeping count, that's going to the store, one intention, having a specific list for the week's meals, two intentions. And if we want to go really crazy, five recipes for the week for my intentional dinners, that's seven, seven intentions. Muwahahaha, I love to count.

And can I just say, I've never enjoyed going to the grocery store or even cooking for one so much. I know that planning a menu and making a shopping list are not ground-breaking things. Trust me, I'm a list girl, so it's not like I've never shopped according to a list; it's the making of the list or the week's menu that makes me want to poke my eyeballs out so rather than do that I'll just opt for cereal or PBJs and skip the store altogether. Turns out that when it comes to this my intention is to do what I need to do so long as someone else tells me what to do--even if that someone else is an inanimate object like say a magazine. So when the magazine says this is what you'll buy and this is what you'll make with what you buy, I say, yes, sir, magazine sir. And I go to the store and I buy what I need to and then I make the dinners, all with a smile on my face.

And with that, I have a magazine breathing down my neck reminding me that I have stir-fry beef and baby bok choy waiting for me. And I do not intend to disappoint.