I am a bit of a personality test nerd, and StrengthsFinder is one of my favorites. It lists your top five strengths and tells you what that means for you. My number one strength is LEARNER, meaning I love to read more about it, learn new things, look things up, etc. I’m hoping to follow in the footsteps of my favorite blogger, Modern Mrs. Darcy and post a monthly What I’ve learned post. I always enjoy hers, and thinking about the post and writing things down throughout the month help me to realize all of the things I am learning all the time, which of course makes my Learner-self very happy.
–Date night is a good thing. My anniversary was in September (28 years!), and as a gift, I gave my husband a year of dates, one per month. The first date was a movie marathon of the Star Wars movies, 1, 2, and 3. That has been more than one night, as we are not capable of staying up to watch more than one movie in an evening. So I have made popcorn (in my Whirlypop) or caramel corn and we have settled in together. This month’s date is a college football game at ARMY. I’ll show the whole gift set up one day. We’ve been spending more time together, now that we have specific reasons to. We used to just assume we would think of something, and then we would just end up doing whatever alone instead of being with each other.
–Tracking my reading keeps me reading. I have been writing down every book I’m reading for my betterment challenge, and it makes me want to read more. I’ve definitely seen an uptick in my reading versus just playing on my iPad at night.
-Apparently, “aggressive relaxation” is a thing. Just last week, I had a rare day where I completed all of the items from my bullet journal early in the day, and I had some time to myself. Frankly, it made me uncomfortable, and I kept having to reassure myself that extra reading was ok. I did a lot of pacing around and picking things up and putting them down, and my daughter, who was trying to apply for jobs told me I was driving her crazy. She coined the term “aggressive relaxation” and told me to sit down and read.
-Netflix has a down side. I love Netflix. I spent a lot more time than normal binge watching series this summer, partly because Alex was around to encourage it, partly because it was summer and I was relaxing more. I caught up on Scandal, How to Get Away with Murder, Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD, and Arrow. Now new episodes are on the TV, and I do not have the willpower to wait for the end of the season for them to hit Netflix again. Thus, I am watching way more TV than normal for me. And waiting the week between shows is crazy after watching entire seasons in a week.
-No capsule wardrobe for me. I see it everywhere- the capsule wardrobe. The idea is somewhat reasonable; saying you only wear 20% of what is in your closet anyway, so just get rid of the 80% you aren’t wearing, and select your 20% very carefully, with an eye toward coordinating all of the pieces. I often see numbers like 37 or 39 pieces, not sure why that is the magic number. Well, I cannot wear the same thing all the time. I know the really smart people are saving their brains for greater thoughts, but my brain likes to think about clothes. (and a lot of other things) It’s a creative choice I get to make early in the day (or late the night before, depending on my schedule.) Also, no matter how many different cardigans, jackets, or shirts (!) you put over that one poor dress, it is still just one dress. I can’t work with that. And the color palette so many choose- all grays and blacks and whites.-very little color. It depresses me. Certainly not something I need heading into cooler months with less sunlight. I am, however, planning to clean out my clothes next week, a la Marie Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. Hopefully, progress will be posted here.
-Sisters are the best. My sister treated me and a friend to a cooking class at a gorgeous winery near her home. We had a beautiful evening, and it was quality time with my sister and quality time with a friend, something I don’t get enough of regularly. I didn’t really learn that this month; I’ve known that one for a long time.
What have you learned this month?