New Season
Photo by Yang🙋♂️🙏❤️ Song on Unsplash
Transitioning into the Third Trimester.
Hey, Cozy Friends!
What a week this one has been! Just when I thought I was getting into a working rhythm and making progress on building my brand, this week completely shifted when an important client project took priority. We just came back from our last getaway flight to visit friends in Calgary over the past weekend and Monday was hit with a full reset: work, unpacking, cleaning, laundry, and food prep. And to top it off a night of insomnia (too many thoughts in my head lately that I couldn’t sleep until about 10am the next morning). We were not easing into this – we were being hit with reality.
I’m sure we’ve all had a time when no matter how much we planned our day or week, everything can suddenly change and we are having to adjust and make do with what we can. With the few times of regular reflection I allow myself (one being this weekly blog), when I get to sit with my thoughts and feelings, I think this week was more that a return from our last summer trip, the end of the second trimester and start of the third, the first phase of building new skills, I realized that this time is maybe more than just a new chapter, but the start of a new character arc.
I think in life we can get so caught up with our work, relationships, hobbies, travel, and life, that we don’t always sense how much we are changing and growing. It isn’t until we are faced with a sleepless night, a break from work, or some quiet time alone, that we can truly recognize and sense these little adjustments that are compounding into something new in us.
Recognizing the Regular
It’s normal when things don’t go to plan. I think it took a long time for me to accept that in my early teens and 20’s (probably still does nowadays, too). I love planning and organizing everything. Maybe it is the designer's mind that keeps looking to systemize, optimize and visualize things for the better, but sometimes what we build just doesn’t work and we have to adjust. Something I learned when studying design, especially in user experience (UX) design, is that we refine our designs based on the experience of the user.
In a funny way, I am looking at my life as my own project and basing my decisions and priorities on my experiences and preferences, like a UX designer reiterates, tests and refines their design for a product. My systems are always updating and expectations are adjusting so changes aren’t so reactive and stressful. At least, that’s how I try to approach upcoming change. So perhaps that’s why I have been experiencing sleepless nights lately (not just because of the pregnancy), but because in a deeper sense, my body, mind, and spirit recognize that there is going to be a major shift and I can either prepare and welcome it or be completely paralyzed and stressed by it.
Maybe I am wrong, but I think this is normal, or at least it is to me. I think this is a way my mind tries to cope or at least bring awareness to my consciousness that change is coming: I cannot sleep or feel at rest until I sense and recognize that something needs to be done and I need to prepare for it. I don’t know if you’ve ever felt that or see that as normal, too, but I find it interesting recognizing it in myself.
Insider Intuition
In our current world where there is so much news, perspectives and influences. Sometimes (maybe it should be more often) it is best to reflect on our own personal needs, wants, desires, motivations, strategies, and internal intuitive systems. How we approach things, interact with others, adjust when changes come, how we decompress and how we reset and keep going when we feel tired, stressed or unmotivated, isn’t only necessary, but I see as the difference between coping and thriving.
My approach that took years of being my own worst critic and mentally punishing and putting myself down was to give myself what I needed most with no strings attached: kindness, rest, and grace. Even when I felt like I didn’t deserve it or felt too proud to admit that I desperately needed those things, I chose to give myself understanding, honesty, encouragement, and love. As I get older, it’s easy to think we need to be all grown up and take things as they are and pretend they don’t have an impact on us. But all these experiences throughout the day and our life, positive, negative, different, familiar, easy and challenging, have their effects. And we wouldn’t be truly in touch with ourselves if we can’t admit when they hurt, stress, frustrate, or worry us as well as bring us joy, happiness, calm and relief.
Maybe it’s because there is a little baby kicking inside me that I get reminded (multiple times a day now) to get in touch with my feelings, intuition, and center. What is really important at this moment? Is it making progress? Sticking to the plan? Checking off the boxes? Or is it learning more and more each day how I, myself, think, feel, and experience this life with all its seasons?
The Human Experience
Life is messy. There is no straight path on our journey and that’s normal. The pressure to have all the answers, to be the top expert, to get there the fastest with all the success at the start is not normal. For those who achieve self-made success, it takes time, effort, mistakes, losses, lessons, new skills, practice, consistency and discipline. For me, I am in charge of taking life’s natural, unruly, and wild experience and orientating and organizing myself on how to make it work for me. Like tilling a garden or cleaning my desk or closet, setting order to the chaos based on my terms, is not only a pleasure but a daily exercise to refine my body, mind, and spirit.
So a curveball kind of week isn’t always new to us, but how we adjust to the changes and deal with our reactions and emotions about it is another new opportunity to grow into our wiser, calmer, and centered selves. Maybe that is why life likes to give us all sorts of curveballs in life, so we can test and see how we would react, adjust and slowly change for the better.
This week has been an interesting one. I am grateful that I had some time to reflect and sit in it. Thank you for reading and catching up with me. I am really excited for the things to come in this new season and trimester. As we snuggle more into fall, I sense my expectations on developing my brand and pushing forward with my business on my ideal timeline will likely have to be adjusted. I know I will need to be patient and I am hopeful you will be patient with me and yourselves, too.
Changes are always coming. Let’s welcome it with a warm hug, a cozy attitude, yummy food, and a calm center. Have a great weekend, everyone!
– Sincerely, Patricia