I’ve switched out the weekly sustainability tips I send to the company (in a Monday round-up email I do each week) for weekly self-care tips. I don’t think we can go overboard on reminders, strategies, and validations right now.
Here was my tip for today: find something to look forward to this month.
I realized last week that some of the melancholy was realizing I didn’t have plans to get excited about and didn’t know when I’d be able to make plans again as events into the summer get canceled. And as much as staying present is an important part of happiness, I think looking forward is an important part too. I don’t mean living for the future, but that in the act of making plans and getting excited about them we are actively building the future in our present.
My friends gifted me with a partway solution for this month without my prompting: movie marathons for the next three weekends. I know I have good friends when they ask me if I we can watch all the Spider-Man movies in order over two weekends (from Tobey Maguire to Andrew Garfield to Tom Holland). I am pretty lucky. We’re planning to do our annual Lord of the Rings watch-day the last weekend this month. Which takes us to the end of April.
It made a difference having those purposeful plans where we collectively pulled out our calendars and decided on which movies on which day. It felt different than what would have probably happened anyway — movie watches we plan week by week, wine nights, check-ins, etc. This is just enough out of the routine for me to feel excited and purposeful even though I will still be quarantined.
It’s probably not going to be movie marathons for everybody, but I think we can all make plans this month even if the plans look a little different. Just because we might not be able to look forward to the same things, doesn’t mean we can’t still look forward to something in the coming weeks.
With Love,
Natalie