It’s been a while.

I’ve just been momming, training, and covid-ing. Surfing the ups and downs of life’s new strangeness. Amid this surfing, I’ve hit some stagnant waters where things feel a bit blah. Whenever I hit tricky spots, mentally, I get something great out of it: a collection of ideas that help in either tiny or larger ways to boost my mood.

I decided to compile a list of the things that either perk me up or contribute to motivating me. Toward anything at all.

Now just a warning, some of these things are shallow, but even those ones help. Changing your nail colour helps you feel polished and changes your mood a wee bit! Hell, we need to do whatever we can these days to feel a bit “normal” - I’ve hesitated to use that word in any capacity in the last seven months.

✌🏼Manicures and pedicures at home. A colour change is a quick refresh!

✌🏼Walks outside with baby, dogs or both - rain or shine! It really helps.

✌🏼Planning my workouts, incorporating variety. Sometimes I do my own strength workouts, sometimes I do pilates mixed with cardio from videos, sometimes yoga, sometimes I jump on the Peloton. The variety is key for keeping fitness feeling fresh and exciting.

✌🏼Cleaning. Am I nuts? Cleaning and arranging things at home gives me the satisfaction of progress, and checking things off a list at the end of the day. When the big picture stuff isn’t changing much, progress even in small ways helps. Tidying and organizing is very psychologically uplifting.

✌🏼Fitness magazines! They bring me back to high school when I used to DEVOUR new issues and try out every single exercise. Flipping through them is now filed away as an indulgent evening activity for me.

✌🏼Music. With the baby, I sometimes forget about my biggest and deepest love pre-Hugo. Again, the variety is really key here. Some days we blast the blues, some days jazz, some days electronic and a lot of days, classic hip hop. It really revitalizes me, and anything revitalizing makes me a much better mother. For real.

✌🏼Online shopping - although this is a bit of a problem I’m working on. Ha! Ran out of handsoap? Yay, I have to place an order, add a few other things in and look forward to the surprise package when I forgot what I purchased. At least I’m honest?

✌🏼Now more constructive: art. Making a list of hobbies I want to resurrect really energizes me. On this list, charcoal drawings (my favourite, but tricky for a lefty due to the smudging!) and picking the guitar back up. I ordered a chord book and a tuning fork back in the spring, but then along came baby… Now it’s time to strum well for him AND for me.

✌🏼Cooking. This had felt like more of a burden since having a baby, but now that he’s more alert and happy to entertain himself more often, I’ve been enjoying picking it back up. I choose quick and easy, opting instead to memorize methods and experiment, rather than to slave over a recipe list slowly. Sometimes I make errors, but I take away from them and learn. When we learn this way, we don’t ever unlearn! I expect to be a much better cook in the coming months 😏

✌🏼In my spare time I look at homeshares and fantasize about living in another part of the world. Costa Rica and Spain are my two fave destinations (so far), so I peruse listings and imagine how me could pull this off. The dogs are a deterrent at the moment, but hopefully one day Hugo will be able to run around in another country speaking Spanish fluently. Perusing future possibilities helps to keep me feeling brightened up.

✌🏼Working is of course helping a great deal. Seeing my clients’ faces, even via zoom, and having conversations about health and life give me a lot of purpose. Anytime I can be of help, toward anything at all, boosts me up. This is my livelihood. Although I’m not working even 50% of what I was pre-baby and pre-covid, my work thoroughly makes me happy.

✌🏼Hugo. This one probably goes without saying. Watching him explore the world, oblivious to current political difficulties and with unbridled joy is really a godsend - unsure of whether I use that word figuratively or literally, it doesn't matter. I’m grateful every second of every day for Hugo’s baby magic. I’ll never stop working on my own optimism, not for my own sake but especially for his.

The world will have more positive surges and upturns. It will.

For now, this list of perks both shallow and deep will do me just fine, chugging along in this sweet life.

What’s on your list of pick-me-ups?

*This post was written the morning of Nov. 4th, when I was feeling quite pessimistic about the outcome of the American election which of course affects how we treat each other, how we treat the planet… Yes, it stretches far beyond the American border. I have a glimmer of hope, now. But we will see. At least I have this list, this reminder.

We never stop working toward a better life and a better world, in whatever capacity we can.