For the past two weeks I’ve been in a cleaning frenzy. It started by wanting to rearrange my closet and check through my summer clothes. When the closet was sprawled all over my room, I realized the closet was just the beginning and decided to move around all of my furniture. After that was done, I decided to organize all of my jewelry, then my shoes, then my books, then my pens. Then I put my plans for my Book 2 on my wall in straight rows while still maintaining an artsy writer aesthetic. And now I have a room that feels summery, fresh and inspiring.
I’ve found that because the physical is linked to the spiritual and emotional and mental in the body, if one aspect is not doing well, it impacts all aspects. I’ve had writing block for the past few weeks. I have let a mental block become an obstacle I get anxious about facing, much less overcoming. And with that, I’ve noticed I haven’t wanted to workout. For some reason, I feel incapable of accomplishing anything when I can’t accomplish what’s most important to me. (<- writing). I’ve been in a sluggish state where I accomplish enough to be able to list off what I’ve done, but I haven’t been doing anything I want to do.
Cleaning is therapeutic for me. I like that I can see the progress I’m making. I like that I get results I can see. The past few days I’ve been keeping up the momentum and using my spring cleaning mindset to clean out my life. Food is one of my favorite things, and it’s really easy for me to choose food that’s ready and convenient but not healthy. I worked on meal prepping and meal planning to give me confidence I’m eating what I want to be eating.
To do that takes time, so I organized my schedule. How am I spending my time? Or a better way of phrasing that, how am I wasting my time? (….Netflix). Time is a resource and is valuable, and how I spend it directly impacts what I’m thinking about and what I’m accomplishing. When dividing up my time, I also chose how I plan to workout. In a non-time-consuming, not-intimidating, gentle way, because that’s what I need right now. I also went thrifting and got myself quite a few new clothes for my summer wardrobe.
With this momentum, I’ve been honing in on cleaning out my mindset. My attitude towards the future. Which I think, with some intentional energy, is going to create positive changes in all areas of my life. Adding a few new clothes to my closet surprisingly helped with this way more than spending ten hours working on filling plot holes in my book. Seeing new life in my closet made me excited about getting to wear those pieces, which made me excited about what’s to come.
Hope is an important thing which sometimes gets buried under the every day pieces of life. Focus gets fuzzy as life happens. Dreams and goals feel impossible when nothing seems to ever change. A little spring cleaning goes a long way.
Jules Conrad 