I have made several goals for myself this year, and have actually stuck to a few of them! *gasp* It is very difficult to keep myself on task for long term goals. When a depressive episode hits, it saps all energy to even do basic functional tasks, let alone meditation and ritual prayer. I usually end up borrowing from Peter to pay Paul in the energy department, as I have children and husband and other home responsibilities, but I am very fortunate to have excellent roommates who step up. It helps a lot now that my kids are older, and can handle a lot of their own stuff without me.
So, here is what I have been able to do with some amount of consistancy:
1. Go to the library once a week.
- this is a big one; I am currently jobless, and as the only adult in the house not contributing financially anymore, I take care of household chores (with help from boys, who quite frankly need the practice anyway!). Getting out of the house more than once a week is needed, and when I am home it is difficult to concentrate on studying when housework looms. Luckily my local library is only a 10-15 min walk (depending on traffic, etc) away.
2. Share tea with Brighid in the morning
- I crave ritual, but am unused to actually getting up and doing it. I always fear it isn't "good enough", or what have you. I am usually a coffee drinker, but I now brew a cup of Irish Breakfast Tea, sweeten with local honey, and add some half n half, and share a cup at my shrine with Her in the morning. I did originally start with coffee, and She appreciated that, but gently requested tea for the next share.
3. Work on memorizing daily prayers
- I have prayers from the Carmina Gaedalica, Clann Bhride, and elsewhere, written in a journal that has been many things, but now is my Prayer Book. I was illuminating some of them, but the soft handmade paper isn't very conducive to it. I almost have a Caim to Her memorized, along with my own hand gestures. I am also looking into making a set of prayer beads, and utilizing the prayers as recorded by Clann Bhride with it. They are a lovely organization, and have very good spiritual practices.
4. Practicing meditative breathing
- This isn't really easy for me, but I am at least learning how to be mindful of my breath. I found a 3 hour long meditative music thing on YouTube, and I am working on emptying my mind... someday soon, haha!
5. Bullet journaling
- specifically, recording temps and moon phases. It's more of a record for me, as I don't really do much with Brother Moon myself, but I like to know when it was full, etc. I haven't been as good at doing this part, but I do try.
Speaking of bullet journaling: I have some photos of how I set my DP journal up.
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| notebooks |
So, this is the Index page, and it contains the symbols I use for denoting items to do, finished, etc. It also has a set up for the logs, etc, and what pages they are on. As this is a normal notebook, the pages aren't numbered and so I have been writing the numbers on the bottom outside corners as I use them. After bullet journaling for a couple of years, I have found that if I set the Index up ahead (the monthly pages already listed, without the page numbers), I will actually USE the Index, haha!This is the Future Log. It is mainly useful for major events, like High Holy Days, etc. I set mine up monthly, with December kinda getting the short end of the stick. If you were to do a full year, you might need 4 pages vs 2 like I used. As I started this one in June, 6 months is good enough. It's kind of a year at a glance thing.
So this is the Monthly set up. I write the day abbreviations and their dates along the side, and then use a single line to write anything specific to the month there during the actual month. It's not like the Future log; this is date specific, and you can add details if needed. The second page of this spread I use as a place to write down goals for the month. It's handy to have those goals written out, so you can't weasel out of doing them, haha!
This is how I do my daily log. Each day has a space, and I put in the tasks I need to complete for that day. It's recommended that you don't actually "plan ahead" with the daily log; you never know how many spaces you may need for a particular day. I do anyway. I leave a bit of space so I can add if necessary, but I often have several things during the week I don't want to forget, so I plan ahead. You get pretty good at figuring out what kind of space you need.
Technically this isn't in my bujo (shorthand for bullet journal), but it is in my notes journal. I marked off the relevant pages with washi tape (when you go to conventions you can get free stuff like that sometimes!), so I can find them easily in the journal. A lot of bujo enthusiasts will really go whole hog and use so many colors/shapes/designs, but really, anything to mark the pages as easy to find is fine. I wrote out the rest of the year, days and dates, and marked out where the moon phase info would go. Then, I started writing out the weather for the day, and the moon phase in the far column. This isn't particularly relevant to my Hearth practice, but I felt it was necessary to try.
This is a spread in the bujo that is about prayers for the prayer beads I want to create. I will mark this on the Index page so I can find it easily when I am ready to start utilizing it in my daily practices.
So, that is where I am as far as working on my daily practices. I am not able to do it all every day, but I have been rather consistent otherwise. Getting into the habits is always the hardest part.
I hope you found the bullet journaling aspect of this interesting. Thanks for reading!
Alyssa
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