Unconventional Self Care

I’m a huge proponent of practicing self care. And I don’t just mean things like taking baths or getting massages. While those restful moments are important, sometimes the best self care is doing the things that feel the most uncomfortable but our deepest self knows are in our best interest.

I had a hard time getting started with my to-do list this morning. If you were to look at the 2×2 of my main priorities this week, you’d see I haven’t begun on ANY of my side-hustle tasks (for this account, as a matter of fact!). This morning was the perfect opportunity for some clear headed writing and content creation, some of my favorite things to do. But I just couldn’t get into it. Instead, I casually sipped my coffee as I Zillow-ed dream cabins along the north shore of Lake Superior.  Later on, I puttered around doing some mindless tidying. Sure, I guess that made the list too (as it does every week), but it certainly wasn’t the most important thing for me to prioritize.

As I looked at the list, I realized two things.

One–there was too much stuff on it. Could I do something about those multiples? I crossed out the numbers I had listed in next to working out and writing. It was a good reminder that a commitment to progress and the journey, no matter how slow, is much more important than a quantified outcome that I’ll inevitably feel bad about not “achieving.”  

And two–the absolute most important thing for me to do, which I’d been dreading and putting off for a month, was at the very bottom of the “Amanda” list. It dawned on me that even with a well organized list of priorities for the week, I may still benefit from highlighting the MOST important. I put a star next to my too-long neglected “most important task”. I then put stars next to a couple others that I knew were at the top of my list. The surprise? Despite appearing as though I’d been making progress all week, I’d only crossed off ONE of my true priorities.

“File QC deed”. Shorthand for the action I most urgently needed to take to care for myself. After a long and drawn out break up and process of my ex moving out, we’d finally signed the paperwork to remove his name from the title of the house, leaving it to me.  We went to get it notarized a month ago, but for some reason I kept putting off on mailing it in. It’s one of those confusing government procedural things that I dreaded figuring out how to do the right way. That said, I realized it was actually a pretty emotionally charged task that I wasn’t fully acknowledging. It’s not that I long to be back together with my ex, but rather that it bookends a major chapter of my life. And where one chapter ends, a new, and uncertain one begins. Right now, a single one.

Photo by Toa Heftiba