Category: Reflexions Page 1 of 2

Lowered expectations : a week later

On 09/03/2025

In Reflexions, Self-care & self-compassion

It was freeing at first. Bad weather, and I didn’t force myself to go out for errands to both tick a task and complete a high number of exercise minutes. Or to do it the next day. The errands weren’t urgent, and I didn’t feel like it. I could go to bed when I was tired, without guilt, regardless of what had been achieved that day.

The attempt to get up later than the usual 5am has not been very fruitful. I did not get up as early, however it has not yet managed to be restful. There was an annoyance with my phone’s sleep focus that I’ve only just now found a way around, and guilt about my cat having to wait a bit more for her breakfast. Also, that pesky internal clock is not enjoying derogating to its habits. It’ll take some time.

I also suddenly felt like I had so much free time in my day! Things are so much more fun when there are no expectations. Inspiration rushed in and I did sit down and draw.

So the first few days were a breeze. A nice little vacation that made me think, “I can do that all month, no problem!”

And then guilt and perfectionism saw the space wide open and invited themselves in.

(Not really, they both know they each have a guest room ready, they just also invaded the living room and the kitchen)

It felt fairly subtle, actually. The urges to create were replaced by wasting time on social media and obsessively playing spider solitaire on my phone. Having YouTube videos of people playing games I know by heart just to have unending, background noise droning on, instead of things that engaged me.

The sudden thought that I could be doing something better – with the underlying meaning of “productive” – with my time popped more and more often in my mind, and the awareness of all the things I knew needed doing made that worse.

Then I started to miss the “productive” day high. Clean kitchen, fridge stocked with prepped food, errands done, tasks checked off. And the guilt of not doing my “best” every day.

I’d shared my lowering of my expectations of myself with some of the people closest to me. Not to force any accountability, because it never crossed my mind that I could need any. But suddenly I was thinking, “I could just start up again like normal and not tell anyone”.

Which is very much a red flag. Why would I need to hide this from anyone? Why even feel the need to hide it?

Rationally, I know that it’s a detoxing of sorts and that a week is not enough to be effective. And very fortunately, though evidently not foolproof, I’ve become quite good at coaching myself out of behaviours that don’t serve me. So, as terribly uncomfortable as it has been, I’m continuing with what I’ve started.

There will be some changes though. While at first it felt like anything was possible, including activities previously part of my dailies, at some point “I don’t have to do it” got some of its wires crossed with “I just won’t do it”. This is a time to do away with guilt, not with doing things. I can get up at 5 if I want to, and take an hour-long walk.

This is going to require listening more intently to myself, but challenge accepted.

Correcting course and carrying on!

Normalcy, or lack thereof

by Laury

On 01/03/2025

In Reflexions

Trigger warning: death of a parent.

A month ago, I wrote, but didn’t post, some thoughts on normalcy. I think I was still hoping to return to it in some way, hopefully imminently at the time.

My dad died 5 months ago, three shorts days before my birthday. His health had been declining a bit too quickly in the year leading up to an unexpected hospitalization at the term of which, ten days later, he passed away peacefully.

2024 was not great for me. This time last year, my work life started getting upended, and it didn’t get better in the following months. Then, once my dad was gone, I put my own grief on the back burner (purposefully) to stay with my mom for nearly two months. I’ve been back in my own home for a little under 3 months now.

And for all of this time, I’ve been trying to go back to “normal”. Even being fully aware that I’m not the same person I was a year ago. Knowing that normal can never truly be what I remember it as.

The general goal was to… create some sort of foundation to hold me, before I allow myself to fall apart. For safety. Because I’m always the person I have to lean on during tough times.

But the normal I was aiming for was the normal of January 2024. When I was excitedly working with great people and exercising and cooking and doing all my dailies. Before I cared too much about work and found myself seriously losing sleep over it. Before I touched my dad’s cool cheek and realized he’d passed away while my sister and I were asleep next to him.

That “before” normal cannot exist anymore. I can return to doing all of those things and they can help me in the same ways that they did back then, eventually, but fundamentally, it can never be the same.

I have been so focused on setting up something really solid that I didn’t realize that, once I fall apart, I won’t be able to maintain it anyway. It wasn’t solidifying in the first place, either.

And I need to fall apart. I’ve been patching the cracks for a year, not with the proper glue and lacquer that turn into golden scars, but with cheap duct tape from the dollar store.

Upholding this empty shell of normalcy has been preventing me from processing my grief. Not just about my dad.

And so after years of dailies, mostly completed but sometimes not, I’m giving myself at least this month off. Doesn’t mean none of them will get done – a month without cleaning at all would be bad – just no checks to be completed. I’ll be going with the flow on a day-to-day basis. So when I do fall apart, I don’t also carry the perceived burden of failing self-set expectations. Bad days can just be bad days, not a bad grade.

In March, self-compassion is going to be letting go.

Towards a new normal.

Creativity in dark times

by Laury

On 26/02/2025

In Art & Practice, Reflexions

Walking back to public transit after a trip to the grocery store, I noticed an inscription in a shop window : “Visual arts centre this way”. And my first thought was, “Oh, I should look if they have exhibitions!”

Which is totally in line with this year’s general objective to experience more. But I hadn’t quite realized what this was in answer to until now.

I reflected on how it was still new for me to have that kind of impulse, and then how, of course, it was difficult to be open and creative when you’re dealing with uncertainty, depression, fear, on a personal level. Which is something I’ve known for a good while, but hadn’t yet understood how it applied to me.

As far as the pandemic goes, I was of the very, very lucky ones. As far as I know, there was no loss of employment in the company I work for, and most of us were quickly moved to working from home in March 2020.

Being introverted, and having just then recently discovered how high sensitivity has shaped me, lockdown came almost as a relief. No transit, much fewer people when I went out.

Obviously, again, this was an incredibly privileged position, and I’m also very grateful that it happened to suit me.

But in 2019, there had been a few months of medical leave to sort myself out. And despite my luck work-wise, and how blissfully quiet the world was for my temperament, I wasn’t blind to the distress around me the next year, and in the world at large.

Two family members passed in 2020, though unrelated to the pandemic. 2021 is a blur. 2022 left deep wounds, and the following year was me trying to heal them and deal with the scars. 2024 was difficult is so many, many ways.

Even this year is off to a rocky start.

A couple of years ago, it became apparent that a bad case of perfectionism had robbed me of my passion for drawing. Why start at all if I’m never going to be satisfied with the result? All this time since, I’ve been gently blaming myself for letting it go that far. To be fair, that has been part of the problem.

But somehow I forgot to take into account how difficult the past 5 years have been for me mentally. Not that I dismissed it, nor would I have done so for anyone else in my position. I just… didn’t realize.

Tant qu’il y a de la vie, il y a de l’espoir.

As long as there’s life, there’s hope.

So tonight I will gently apologize to myself for the misplaced blame, and once again practice self-compassion.

The Art of Learning, by Josh Waitzkin

by Laury

On 20/02/2025

In Readings, Reflexions

I finally finished a first book for this year, on February 20th…!

The challenges were manyfold.

First, outside of my control, a death in the family, stomach flu, and more recently a stomach bug, all of which consumed a lot of energy and focus.

Then partly within my control, the format I was reading it in. The issue with digital is that while it’s practical when in transit (of which there has been a lot since the start of the year), it’s best to avoid screens right before bed. Which is sadly the time I’ve left this daily task to far too often. Instead, I would read a section of Dr Brené Brown’s Atlas Of The Heart, in a physical format. Which while still being both actually reading, and worthwhile reading, wasn’t furthering my goal of finishing The Art of Learning.

And finally, completely within my control : just plain not taking the time. Choosing to do other things on my phone while in transit. While on my exercise bike.

Though somewhat disappointed that I didn’t properly show up for myself, still, it’s read! Some thoughts on it :

Narratively, as we follow the author’s journey through competing in chess then in martial arts, it was pretty interesting and compelling, even though the technical subtleties were often lost on me in my lack of knowledge of both those activities.
The reflexes of the author to reflect on their process, thought patterns, and how they handled emotion were both very relatable and inspiring. This is something I’ve come to do naturally and am always striving to improve on, especially working WITH emotions, and not against them.
At one point, I felt that I wasn’t actually the intended audience for this book. As the author’s journey is focused on competition and on their pursuit of the best possible performance, it contrasts pretty heavily with my current approach to learning, which is relaxed and utterly non-competitive. However, after a short while of this sentiment, I realized that there were still valuable lessons to be gained from that perspective and from the journey itself, even if my aim was not to that level.
I’ve known it for a while, but once again it hammered in the fact that failure is part of the process of learning. As unpleasant as it’s become to me. The author frames it as “investing in loss”, which while, again, is an expression rooted in competition, is nonetheless a positive way to see it.
The concept of practicing until something becomes so deeply ingrained in one’s brain that it comes without thinking reminded me how it can also be lost without practice. That is a concern I have with drawing – while it used to be a daily and intensive part of my life, I’ve lost a lot of the skills I had internalized to that sort of level. And there aren’t that many ways to regain them.
It has renewed my interest in trying out Tai Chi (one of the focus of the author’s journey), not as a competition, but as a physical and spiritual practice. I have yet to act on it, as time constraints and concerns about energy expenditures have made it tricky to coordinate. But it’ll be possible eventually 🙂

All in all a worthwhile read for me. I will now invest in the “loss” of not having met my goal of finishing it within the month of January and, more conscious of the challenges I faced, I will course-correct and make hopefully better choices 🙂

Wishing you a blissfully quiet February!

Normalcy

by Laury

On 29/01/2025

In Reflexions

Already at the end of January. Can’t believe we have a 1/12th of the year gone…!

We’re approaching a time of the year that saw my life turned a bit upside down in 2024. Change is, sometimes sadly, inevitable. In some situations it is sought, but perhaps too often, it’s pushed onto us before we’re ready.

Human beings are nothing if not adaptable. We built our entire species on it and yet, so very often, we go through it only reluctantly. It’s destabilizing, it can be terrifying, and sometimes – only sometimes – it doesn’t end well.

I personally don’t do well with uncertainty. Change I can do, provided a plan can be made to project adaptation in a nearby future. After all, I went from never having left my province, to taking several flights to Northern Europe, where I knew no one other than from the internet, and had only English as a second language to communicate. But a plan was established, and it was the start of a life-changing era.

Some changes are smaller, but no less impactful.

After a terrible year in 2022, I spent most of 2023 recovering mentally, trying to return to what had last felt like normal. When 2024 rolled up, I had what I thought to be a very solid foundation, and the year started up really well, too.

And then significant changes started happening. A switch in supervisors. In work tasks. In sleep patterns. In anxiety. Through all of it, I hung onto what I thought was normalcy – my routine, as much as the lack of sleep allowed. My daily habits. Exercising, seeing people. Eventually I had to take a break, with the intent to find my footing again and build, once again, a new normal.

But as stated previously : life is what happens when you’re busy making plans. Illness and an unexpected departure in the family at the start of autumn shattered my last hopes of returning to normal for the year.

Four months later today, I have come to understand that normal is never something you return to. It’s something you build over and over again. Sometimes the variation is almost imperceptible. But we learn from everything we go through, and those lessons, positive or not, model us into new versions of ourselves.

The normal that held us comfortably suddenly is all angles and bumps, and we have to reshape it, or remain in otherwise inexorable discomfort.

That is something I keep having to remind myself of lately, even now as I still slowly but steadily recover from last week’s norovirus infection. It felt like a wrench thrown in the carefully and precariously constructed pillars of the routines I’ve tried to build again, and as the recovery is taking longer than in previous such instances, it’s frankly annoying.

But, I am nothing if not adaptable.

I’m just also going to complain (to myself) the whole time.

Have a good start to February.

Life is what happens when you’re busy making plans

by Laury

On 24/01/2025

In Reflexions

Amazingly, I wrote the post below on Tuesday night, intending to finish up and post it on Wednesday morning.

And then I developed norovirus during that very night, and am just starting to feel human again, 3 days later. Didn’t expect being proven right in such a… way.

****

Only three weeks of January and that has been proven to me a few times already!

First, it feels like the challenging day I had two weeks ago, mental health-wise, has had its after-effects felt since, so focusing and doing the things I want to do, that I know are good for me, is still a challenge these days. At this point it might be too much laisser-aller on my part, and there is definitely a will to do better for myself. Just gotta… do it.

On Monday last week, it was discovered that my mom’s last remaining sister, whose cancer remission had left her in great pain, only had a few months left ahead of her. We lost my dad less than four months ago, so this is quite a hard hit for my mom. My siblings and I are doing whatever we can to be there for her, but grief is grief. We cannot, and should not, shield her from it.

This has of course occupied a great deal of my mind and consumed a lot of energy, not just in worrying for my mom and for my aunt’s comfort, but also empathy for my uncle and my cousins, having gone through something similar quite recently myself.

The psychotherapist I had started seeing also turned out not to be a good fit for me after only two sessions, which left me a bit stressed. While I’m not giving up on therapy at all, I will be waiting to see how things are shaping up around my aunt’s care before I make new plans for regular therapy sessions.

Writing this, I realize that those things are probably more of an explanation to my difficulty to resume my best habits than laisser-aller might be. Always exercising self-compassion, but currently it’s gotten to the point where actually and actively starting on recovery is probably going to be the right choice. Going to gently nudge myself towards doing the right things for myself to start that positive cycle..!

(After I fully recover from norovirus now..!)

(Don’t forget to wash your hands thoroughly!)

What I’ve learned this week

by Laury

On 15/01/2025

In Art & Practice, Reflexions

Already almost halfway through a first month! How are you doing?

One of my general objectives this year is to get more curious. I know, I know, having too many goals at the start of the year is an almost surefire way to ditch all of them. However, being curious is more of a practice and state of mind that can only benefit every sphere of my life.

Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back!

So here are a few things I learned this week :

Entity VS incremental theories of intelligence. I’m currently reading The Art Of Learning by Josh Waitzkin and it crystallized what I had generally understood here and there – the way we approach learning early on has a tremendous effect on how we approach a lot of things in life. Very simply put, entity theory refers to attributing success to an innate and fairly unchanging level of ability, whereas incremental, or learning theory refers to associating it to effort and improvement. The former focuses on accomplishments, which can in turn lead to prioritizing the things that come naturally and shy away from what would require growth. The latter encourages practice and is more likely to have failure as a normal part of the learning process. For example, incredibly lucky to understand things quickly, I went through primary and secondary school pretty easily, without having to study all that much. When schooling became more complex and I didn’t understand new material as easily, my performance dropped drastically. Same with drawing – I was told I was talented from a young age, but I never had the drive to practice and get better – I just drew so much it happened on its own. For a while. Once perfectionism also soured the fun of it, art became a source of anxiety when it had once been a core part of my life. I’m only now realizing how crippling it has become, hence my desire to go back to basics, and to try new things, especially if they feel uncomfortable.
It can easily take several days to recover from one bad mental health day. The last part of 2024 was a significant challenge, and being now fairly well-acquainted with grief, I’m aware that it can creep up on you any time it wants, for no particular reason. It did so over a week ago, and while things were already much better the next day, it took almost five more to start feeling like myself again. My therapist said it’s normal! It’s important to let yourself feel the hard stuff too, and to exercise self-compassion through it. That is why I haven’t taken the time to follow another Skillshare class this week.
Speaking of classes, I learned that a one-line drawing, of florals at least, should be started from the bottom, and that my left-handedness is definitely going to be a challenge in taking art classes! Some of the exercises, which I’ve been repeating almost daily, have been challenging because of it – I start them in the right direction but my brain gets confused as I progress. Clearly something I need to practice further!

What have you learned lately that tickled your mind?

A Week In

by Laury

On 08/01/2025

In Reflexions

2025 has been going on for a full seven days now! How are we faring?

I’ve been meaning to do a review of the year for several weeks now, but haven’t gotten around to it. Not entirely sure if it’s avoidance, or lack of time, but probably the former. Time has been wasted aplenty.

The shortest Skillshare class I’d listed ended up being my last resort to keep to the “1 Class A Week” objective because I also kept putting that off, though in my defence I spent a lot of time writing this week’s posts, because I wanted to put as much as possible on the table to try and keep myself accountable. And hey, I had to make sure I did do a class, so it sorta worked!

Speaking of which, I managed to publish 7 posts, which is 7 times more than I had done in the previous 5 years combined! I drew, I read, I cleaned, I even meditated!

Still. As much as there is hope for “New Year, New You” when January comes, I have found it difficult, if not impossible, to leave the previous 12 months in the past. Not all bad, which is crucial to remember. 2024 us are the ones who got us here, despite all the challenges that we faced. 2024 us are the basis on which 2025 us will be built upon.

So I am thankful for the me that went through all of last year and who set us up to grow even further in this one. Writing this blog, even without an audience, and pushing herself to try things and face fears and pains.

But I’m also giving her grace. Because she’s in me, fresh off a year full of challenges, changes, grieving, wading through it all so we could find a way forward. And when hardships come this year, whether events or just sadder days, I’ll honour her hard-won battles and remind myself that if she deserves rest and compassion, so do I.

I’ll celebrate 7 blog posts published, one event attended, an artist discovered, dailies achieved and plans for the future, and give myself compassion for the day I could hardly get out of bed, the bare-minimums achieved, and the tasks I didn’t check off my list.

Great objectives are amazing, but we can’t hate ourselves into better versions of who we are. That’s not how we grow.

I hope you are kind to yourself this year. Much love.

***

From this day on, I’ll work on posting at least once a week on Wednesdays, more should the occasion arise. See you then!

2-minute habits, 5 years later (part 2)

by Laury

On 02/01/2025

In Reflexions

Hello again! Hope you are doing well, a few days into the new year!

Already doing better than 2020 for having a second post up! Let’s go!

The remaining 4 habits that I’ve carried on these past 5 years :

As the term itself is somewhat nebulous, “Self-care” can take many forms, depending on the day. Sometimes it’s a long shower or a bath, socializing, generally making a particular effort to take care of my health, mental or physical, particularly when I’m not feeling like it. Just an extra effort to feel a bit better, every day

Easiest is “Clean” – it’s actually difficult not to complete that one! There is always something to clean, even if I spend most of my day away from my apartment. Tidying a very messy home is my favourite : fairly low effort for a visually satisfying result. Worst is dishes. Can’t stand dishes. Very satisfying to have completed but an utter drag to even get started.

The one that remains hardest, even five years later, is “Meditate”. It is unusual for me not to have something to distract me, mostly from thoughts and feelings. Taking a moment away from that and focusing on the very things that usually overwhelm me is… a pain. Writing this is a clear realization that it’s actually something I need to specifically work on, so I suppose this will be my first task this year.

“Exercise” is the only “daily” that was removed from the list, as its completion became mandatory in another way.

In January 2021, thanks to my workplace’s well-being incentives, I obtained a smart watch in an effort to boost my motivation. Like probably the vast majority of people in the previous year, had become even more sedentary than ever before, and both mental and physical effects were clear.

Still, it took until November that year for the desired effect to properly take hold, and apart from a brief but intense illness in January 2024, exercising has been an uninterrupted daily task for a bit over 3 years! It’s usually walking outdoors or using a stationary bike (allowing me to read while I exercise…!), but it does the very important job of keeping my body in motion.

Despite not being an innate morning person, as the time I dedicated to moving my body increased, I ended up deciding to get up at 5AM. This may seem masochistic to some, it certainly did to me, but once it was clear that exercising after work was far more unpleasant to me than getting up earlier in the morning, the choice was clear. As I’m also the dedicated caretaker of a stubborn feline, this has become a 7-day schedule, and sleeping in is no longer an effective option. This is my life now.

And so, as my smart watch keeps the score, and I record the completion of that task with the length of the physical activity, checking a box was no longer necessary, and said box was removed.

Two lessons from this:

One: Like with the streak of the Duolingo app, having the incentive to see the habit as an ever rising number has proved incredibly gratifying to me. I took good note of that and also applied it to the task I was most concerned about maintaining : creating art. I got up to 227 this year, before a difficult life event had me take a break. By the time I publish this post, it’ll be back up to 70.

Two: Removing “exercising” from the daily checks to be completed, even if it is compelled another way, is the first success of this project. I wanted these to become habits, normal and but important parts of my life, because they genuinely make it better. Not all of them are at that stage yet, and too often I put them off until I can’t, instead of prioritizing them when I have the time and energy. As the hope is for me to end up spending more than the required 2 minutes per activity, that pattern is entirely counterproductive.

That is something I seek to improve upon in these upcoming 12 months. The daily boxes to be checked might remain even once (further) satisfactory habits are achieved (I’ll be honest, it is a very satisfying sight in my records, which in itself is an incentive). But I also know that after five years, I am not yet approaching a level with which I am satisfied, so let’s make it conscious and intentional!

Wishing you a happy start to the new year!

2-minute habits, 5 years later (part 1)

by Laury

On 01/01/2025

In Reflexions

Happy New Year!! May these next months bring you only gentle challenges and the strength to see them through. I think we all deserve it at this point!

While I’ve hung onto this site since, the first (and only other, so far) post on this blog was on January 1st, 2020. We all know what followed (globally).

Despite the obvious (less gentle) challenges of the last couple of years, the “dailies” written about have fortunately not left me. They were not always completed, and they have changed a little bit since, but they remain a good representation of how my day went. A full row also always makes me feel more accomplished.

It started with eight tasks :

Draw, Read, Write, Study, Self-Care, Clean, Meditate, and Exercise.

Today, I’m tackling the first four.

***

“Draw” ended up encompassing any visually creative activity. In the past year, thanks to free art workshops at the Montreal Musée des Beaux Arts, I had the opportunity to try my hand at linocuts among other new activities, and it has definitely become something I’m interested in pursuing further.

“Read” stayed the same, and other than the 2-minute requirement, I decided I wanted it to be from a book – as opposed to articles or online fiction. Longer works help with improving attention span, and mostly focusing on printed works allowed for less screen time. As such, I ended up reading more book in the past five years than I had in the previous ten!

A lot of non-fiction, from the works of Dr Brené Brown, Ali Abdaal, and several memoirs; many graphic novels, such as Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe, Fine by Rhea Ewing, and Himawari House by Harmony Becker; and some good old written fiction, including catching up with the Temperance Brennan novels by Kathy Reichs, and a personal favourite, This Is How You Lose The Time War, by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone.

There were plans for “Write” to be for this blog, journaling, and some fiction. Obviously, the blog ended up forgone as life happened, as did writing fiction, and the task ended up being mostly journalling. It has helped tremendously with coping with both world and personal events, but I’m looking forward to diversifying its use!

For a long while, “Study” became a daily use of the Duolingo app to maintain some level of proficiency in Finnish when it was published in the summer of 2020. The course was completed in a few months, but once it was, the exercises became quite repetitive and ultimately, unhelpful. One can only translate “koala, koalas” to “koala, koalat” so many times before losing interest.

Instead, in the past year, I’ve taken up an incredibly gratifying activity. I had read Rupi Kaur’s The Sun And Her Flowers, despite not being much of a poetry fan, and enjoyed it very much. When I visited Finland in November 2023, I came across its Finnish translation, and decided to put myself to the task of reading it through. The grammar is now familiar enough to usually allow me to recognize the declension or conjugation of a word and infer its original form, and both a physical dictionary and Wiktionary have been invaluable to make out the words yet unknown to me. My understanding of sentences can be checked and corrected against the original English work, and I’m discovering a lot of equivalent expressions.

I am still incredibly excited when I get the etymology and more of the workings behind the language, and I already have another book lined up when I’m done – though that one is originally in Finnish, and the English version is the translation. A different sort of challenge!

Next up, Self-care, Meditate, Clean, and Exercise!

a well-used copy!