I love and hate the snooze button on my alarm clock at the same time.  I love the extra sleep I get in the morning but I know it’s not good sleep and it’s not actually providing me with valuable rest.  I can’t help it.  I set two alarms, and when those go off, I half wake up and I set another alarm on my phone.  If only I got enough sleep in the first place.  I’m sure this isn’t something that is unique to me.  I’m sure other people get caught up in the allure of the snooze button.  It’s probably just a sign for me to go back and read this post by Leo Babauta on The Most Successful Techniques for Rising Early.  It’s not about rising early for me…I just want to convince myself to get enough rest and have the willpower to overcome that snooze button!

How do handle resisting the snooze button?  Do you have a morning process that gets you excited to get out of bed in the morning?

Yesterday I had an absolutely lovely day.  I had a nice, slow start to the day, met up with some lovely friends – we had some great conversation and went exploring which was SOOOO much fun!  Later in the evening I got to thinking, oh no, I haven’t done my post for the day, but I spent the day enjoying time with friends and being deliberate in doing things that were important to me.  I think that’s what matters.  The creative process is important, but I want to make sure that I’m not forcing myself to do something at the expense of other things that I value deeply – connection with friends and exploring.

So for the weekends while I’m doing this project, I think I’m going to lump Saturday and Sunday into one post.  I think that’s the framework that will work best for me.  I think it is important for us to realize that not everyone has the same experiences or values and bending the things we learn to work for us better is part of integrating new ideas into our life.  Sometimes I forget this and I’m glad I had the ability to learn this again through this project.  Some days I might just share a story or a picture, and that’s good enough too.  🙂

Have you started a 100 day project?  If so, what boundaries or framework have you put into place that make the project for you?  

Happy Friday!  It was a long week for me and I am grateful for the weekend.  To kick it off, I made the choice to walk (versus drive) to a few of my afternoon appointments and explore a bit of my city.  I don’t know if I did this consciously or not, but I’m glad I did.  Exploring by foot is always more fun than zipping along in a car to get to my destination.  I took a half hour walk through a new neighborhood and on the way, I found a guitar store with the some beautiful instruments in the window, saw a historic cobblestone road lined with a canopy of trees, and I uncovered a few lovely new parks.  I even found some places that I had been to but hadn’t figured out how to get to by foot.  Taking the walk gave me time to breathe and slow down.  Moving slowly and deliberately through my afternoon allowed me to appreciate my surroundings; a significant contrast to the zip zip zip of the work week.  I hope to keep the pace slow and my sense of exploration with me through this weekend.

What choices can you make to slow down and enjoy your day versus zipping through it?  Is there a new place or even a familiar place you could explore?

Have you heard of this concept of a 100 days project?  It is a project that encourages you to do something creative for 100 days.  I was thinking, could I do this and encourage myself to write a blog post every day for 100 days?  Instantly, I was like whoa, that seems like quite the commitment, and I’m not sure I want to do that.

It’s definitely something I’m considering, and I like the idea of it, especially because i’m trying to nurture my blogging habit.

My friend Rachel just undertook a 365 day mandala project and it was SUPER inspiring.  Check out her stuff if you are interested on her website.

I love the section in the 100 days post by the Great Discontent where we are asked to choose our action…and they provide us with a paragraph of verbs to kick off our creative thinking!

What would you undertake as part of your 100 day project?  What verb jumped out at you from the list?