Monday, February 21, 2011

Alphabet Soup - M is for Me Day Mondays


51.365
51.365

My sweetie left for Cuba yesterday, with a gaggle of our friends. I miss him already. I made it through the night though. No nightmares. Now I sit back and relax and enjoy the rest of this week of bachelorette living :)

Okay, so maybe not that wild. I am proud to say that I went to bed at a decent time last night. It meant that I was up early to enjoy this day, which started out with a good chunk of time in bed, catching up on blog reading.

After the Breakdown (aka 6.8.10), my bed was my favourite place to be. Second favourite was the couch. Usually with the lights low and the curtains drawn. As I started to get stronger, I did the classic me and tried to do everything, and take on too much. I remember having low key weeks, time at home, an art class, an appointment or two, and then the weekend would hit and I would want to make up for it, and keep up with my sweetie. Needless to say, by Monday morning I was exhausted and needing recuperation time.

Except I would feel stressed and guilty about everything I wasn't getting done. J came home one Monday eve to me in tears because of all the things I felt I hadn't accomplished. We sat down together and wrote out a list of everything I had done that day. It was quite extensive. Though I hadn't left the house, I tackled what some people would take on in a week. Two things happened that day. First, I started making those lists at the end of every day, so I could bear witness to how much I was doing and connecting it to how I was feeling. It only took a week or two to get the point across.

The second thing we instituted was a "Bed Day". Just because I was getting better didn't mean that I had to be all the time. It was okay to have a day to put it all down. Just rest and relax and recharge, and do what I wanted to do, not what I felt I needed to do. I loved my bed days. I had a reason to say no to things, not schedule things that day.

As I continued to heal, my bed stopped being my favourite place to be, except when I'm curled up with my sweetie nodding off to sleep. If I want to be there at other times, it's a good sign that I need to recharge, or I'm getting sick. I was fighting off a bug last week, and it drove me up the wall that I needed to be in bed. I think that's a good sign

Now, I have Me Days on Mondays. For a while that meant At Home Days, which was needed to preserve and refuel my energy. As I shift away from that it gets a little blurrier... about what falls on which side of the Me/Relax line.

Not having my sweetie here this morning made me realize that the best first step to Mondays is not getting up right away. The rest I'm sorting out. I've really enjoyed having an art filled morning so far. Updating my 365 pictures on Flickr, spending time with Picnik, making a really cool folded origami envelope out of wrapping paper to send something to my snail mail buddy B at Sweet Limes... all made me happy and calm.

I can't show you what I sent B, yet.. though I can finally show you the ATCs I made in January :)





Now we shall move on to the photography portion of this program :) There have been a lot of floral photos in my collection lately. No apologies. It means I've been getting a lot a flowers lately!


Alli's theme this week at Happy Monday is Yellow. I love this picture. The petals of the pink flower in the background curling through, trying to embrace the daisy.

I had a little fun playing with it in post. Dropped the exposure a little and raised the temperature, which brought more of the yellow out in the centre of the daisy. I love the little dusting of yellow on its petals. And then, I couldn't resist and had a little rendez-vous with Picnik. A little vignette was all I needed...

48.365
48.365




This next shot is something I hope to working on this week. I love this shot in theory. All I've done to it so far is a little crop. I want to soften out the skin, make it less pink, except that would involve masking and PhotoShop (insert scream from Psycho). I downloaded the MCP mini-fusion action last week and I have been planning to learn how to use it. It's on my list for this week.


P1060140


Lucky me, Ashley Sisk, of Good to WOW, is going to be showing everyone how it works! Hopefully I will have something a little different to post up and show you on Thursday!

In the meantime, I will enjoy staring at that sunny day we had at the beach, and miss my sweetie something fierce.

9 comments:

allie k reid said...

Great pictures! Thanks for linking up! :)

Candace McClintick said...

I love the colors on you flower picture. Very nice!

Julia said...

Love the flower picture! The composition of it is beautiful and the colors are excellent!

Travelin' Mike said...

The photos are awesome!

Cia of Briarwood Studio said...

I'm enjoying your blog very much, and your photos are so lovely.

Cia

Emily said...

Aw, big big BIG hugs to you today and every day this week! Glad you made it through the night:) I'm loving everything you made- the ATC's are awesome and that's such a great quote. You did just the right amount of editing in post with the flower pic; I sometimes get too excited in picnik and use like 3 different filters! And the sunglasses pic? Ah-Mazing.

Cinderita said...

Really fabulous photos. I look forward to a hug this wknd!

Anonymous said...

Love the sunglasses picture. Me Mondays sounds like a great idea. :O)

Noel said...

"Except I would feel stressed and guilty about everything I wasn't getting done."

I have this problem EVERY time I have free time. I get anxious and stressed and end up completely wasting the time that I have to myself.

I'm learning from your wisdom: we all need time to rest and heal.