Spring is my favorite time of year! I love everything about it, even the excessive rain it often brings. I still squeal like a kid when I see the first daffodils, the tulips, and the bright green of new leaves sprouting. Spring brings me renewed hope and a fresh start, showing me how beautiful. Growth after a dark period is. My focus in 2025 is to live with a low-buy lifestyle, live more minimistically and slowly, and continue incorporating healthy habits. All of this requires one thing: discipline. Discipline is necessary to achieve longevity, and I often don’t “feel” like doing a said task. But “little Mer” doesn’t run the show. The information on sites like Pinterest to “Stop Being a Lazy Girl” and “75 Micro Habilts That Will Change Your Life” can get overwhelming. The information is astounding, and I am grateful for it all. I look for habits or sayings that resonate with me right now.
It’s been almost 18 months since my divorce, and I am nowhere near wanting to date. I’m not sure I will be ready for years, decades even! I have put myself out there a few times on dating apps, and it quickly becomes exhausting and tedious. The “talking phase” is dumb but unavoidable. The bottom line is my heart isn’t in it, and I finally realize that I am not missing out on anything, and I don’t even want a relationship to begin with. I do miss intimacy, though. Regular intimacy with one partner. My focus this year is the relationships I have with my friends, seeing my family more, renovating and decorating my 1930s bungalow (aka “Dottie”), my health, exploring more local events and areas of Cincinnati, and overall, just doing only the things that bring me joy. To cultivate a new relationship, once you sift through all the “no’s” and actually find a “yes”, truly detract from my priorities. And that is non-negotiable for me. Also, I cannot imagine coming home to someone sitting on my couch or spending the night. And multiple nights in a row make me short of breath because it sounds so suffocating. My goals also require an underlying theme that has been hard to maintain: a consistent work/life balance. Having a proper work/life balance has been the catalyst for many of my life themes this year because I have finally realized “why” I work so many hours and “how” that imbalance has kept me stuck. I will focus on upcoming local events and my social calendar this week. I will articulate the changes in my work schedule that allow me to facilitate consistent change. Today, for instance, is Monday, and I get to have a “slow morning”. I go to work much later than usual, decreasing my hours. I start my day off by prioritizing my self-care and my goals. Fortunately, I have a fantastic boss who lets me flex my schedule to suit my life, so that needs to be mentioned. What life area do you want to focus on this week? What will it take for those changes to be accomplished consistently?
