Let's do a Healthy Habit Bender - Day 1
I should probably start off this blog by lowering your expectations, because this is a series I have tried to do twice before on the My Yippie Life page on facebook (some of the videos are awesome and some are hilarious. I start a new job on May 1, which I know will be crazy time consuming, and I have a big spOIL in May with everything about hormones.
But I'm not going to. Because I think now is exactly the time to remind myself of my best healthy habits and hacks, some obvious and some unconventional. Besides My Yippie Life is about life, so if I have to type it out on my phone over a quick lunch, that is my life. Maybe it's yours too.
So instead of giving this a name with days, like "30 days of Healthy Habits."I'm calling it a bender. As is fashionable among yogis, from time to time a "yoga bender" is where you practice yoga everyday without stopping and yeah, 30 days is the ideal goal, but maybe it's really going to be 25 or 48. So we will roll with it until it gets boring and unhelpful.
Without further ado, let us begin DAY ONE!!!
Is it water? Is it sleep? Is it weight training?
No.
It's planting seeds.
This is a habit I am bringing back this year, because the planting itself is soothing and meditative. Something about having dirt of my hands, even in my kitchen, feels irreverent and playful and most of all grounding to me. In an ideal world, I would work in my garden from 6-7 every late spring and summer morning. Getting dirt under my toes and smelling the dew on the weeds and I ruthlessly pull and tame them.
If it wasn't 42 outside right now, I would be doing it.
I don't usually have that time in the morning, because of other choices I have made for this quarter. But I do have the maybe five minutes it takes to water the seeds I am growing in pots, to then transplant into bigger pots, and then move outside.
And maybe I will have lettuce and tomatoes and broccoli and flowers.
And maybe I won't, because I'm a good outside gardener, but not so much with these delicate lifeforms.
Which is fine, because it's about the meditative state I experience for 30 minutes a week as I plant new seeds, the time watering them and monitoring their growth, and the sense of those mornings in the garden that I get looking over at my seedlings.
Do not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. If you love to garden like I do, but maybe only have time a couple days a week, you can find other ways to find the joy in the experience.
So here's what you need to do and I'm going to make it extra easy.
Drive to Whole Foods (or Fresh Thyme, or some other farmer's market style grocery store).
Park
Walk to the flower section
Grab a few compostable seed trays or pots, some potting soil, and a packet of seeds.
Drive home.
Read the directions on the packet. No, seriously, go get your glasses and read the instructions. (Like I should have in March). Plant and water according to the instructions.
And who knows? Maybe in a few weeks you will have seedlings.
If not, just repeat.