Time for a change.... WEEK ONE: Choose quality over quantity of friendships

What happened to my #motivation? On one hand, I'm motivated to break out of the rut, but on the other, I'm struggling with getting started!

Good bye 2020. For the New Year, some friends invited me to participate in the creation and sharing of my first #visionboard. I had a lot of new beginnings, endings and opportunities in 2020, but they came with a ton of strife and I decided that 2021 should be about fully using the things that presented.

Decades of setting New Years intentions, writing wishes on slips of paper and hanging them from trees and burning candles with hopes underneath on New Years Eve have all prepared me to create this thing.... a thing I can't ignore hanging on the wall. I pass it on my way to my morning shower. I pass it when doing laundry. I pass it when heading to my yoga and meditation space. I chase my puppy past it all evening. BUT, what does it really mean?

I struggle with the internal dialogue telling me that it is a bad time to start anything, that the world is so screwed up and I don't have opportunity, means, support or space to make it happen. How do you start attacking such a mountain of intentions when nothing is cooperating? I figure the best way to navigate through this collage of ideas and goals is to find the end, pull the thread and hope that it unravels in one piece.

Step one, naming it, right? So, here I go, section by section.....

"How do you start attacking such a mountain of #intentions when nothing is cooperating? "

Week one:

1. Choose quality over quantity of friendships

Friends.

I received a care pack the other day from a friend with chocolate, essential oils, and a note. I haven't seen this friend in quite some time, but it was exactly what I needed at that time. It was thoughtful, made me emotional and also reminded me of some of my other favorite people.... decades ago one sent me a notebook of poetry she wrote, one sent me a book of funny captioned and altered photos of experiences we had together, one sent me a collection of hysterical and wonderful photos following our #friendship on a thumb drive..... there have been more of such instances thankfully!

I have moved around a lot (and I mean A LOT), for work, relationships, and weather. Unfortunately, that means most of my closer friends are far away. Some I rarely speak to as I hate talking on the phone, but I have always enjoyed writing letters. Although these are people that I rarely see or speak to, when I see them after years, we continue right where we left off.

I struggle with finding those honest #connections easily. I hang out with a few groups of people, but fail to find the depth in some relationships and don't often get a chance to get past the group dynamic to create a real one on one friendship. What is a genuine and high value friendship to me nowadays? Am I a good friend to others?

Last year was the first year that I decided to write a strictly limited number of Holiday cards instead of to everyone that I have in my address book. My experiment in "will they notice" caused me to be selective and took SO much pressure off, knowing that the time I spent on cards was time I chose to spend!

So, what I learned from this experiment was that although every interaction presents an opportunity, there is a time to redirect the interactions to ones that are reciprocated and are enhancing, positive, encouraging, embracing, and make you feel good about yourself.