7.31
Living with Purpose
I just corrected a Chinese entry with this title and really loved it, so I decided to use it as today’s title.
The writing prompt is this: Describe your life goals but do not mention wealth, places you want to visit or live in, your ideal job, or relationships with other people.
For me, the first goal is to keep exercising and stay healthy. To be specific: I want to get healthy through daily exercise routines, such as hiking, yoga, and jogging. Because I’m still struggling with the lasting effects of COVID, the immediate goal is to get a good night’s sleep every day and get back to my prior COVID-19 weight. My daily target is to practice yoga for one hour or jog over 10,000 steps. My weekly target is to add a hike to the daily target.
The second goal is to keep learning. Improving my English level is one of them. I’ve been trying to practice my spoken English on Duolingo for half an hour daily and write 4 or 5 entries here every week.
The third one is to record and review my feelings and thoughts and communicate them with the involved people. As a Chinese woman, I’ve been told to think for others and ignore my own feelings for as long as I can remember. I don’t want to become vague and grouchy like my mother. I believe I’m the owner of my life and must express myself clearly in front of the people involved. — I haven’t done well in this part, but I’m trying to improve.
This entry seems a little long, so I’ll stop here.
7.29
A video of my pet fish
I made a video of my pet fish, A Cai, the weekend before last when it’s been in my home for a month.
Then I got a little busy, so I didn’t have time to upload the video and add captions.
Now you can see it here.
Hope you like it, and if you have any suggestions about the captions, feel free to let me know.
7.23
Electronic Information or Trash
My smartphone often fills with pictures and videos, with many of them deleted during my weekly organization. In other words, some of them just ended up as electronic trash even though I had thought they were useful information or images.
Therefore I tried to help myself develop some new habits.
For example:
1. Take meeting minutes instead of screenshots during the meetings. If time is tight and I have to take a screenshot, I should try to add the information into the minute as soon as possible.
2. Don’t take too many pictures and videos of the things I like. I think I have taken too many pictures and videos of the flowers and my pet fish in the past time.
I don’t know if these will work or not, but I’ll give it a try.
7.21
The Child in Me
According to Stefanie Stahl’s book “The Child in You”, the first thing you need to do to bring out your authentic self is to discover your “shadow child”*.
In the book, the shadow child encompasses our negative beliefs and associated oppressive feelings of grief, fear, helplessness, or anger. On the contrary, the “sun child” embodies our positive influences and feelings.
After reading this chapter, I recalled many events from my childhood. Some of them belong to the shadow child, and some belong to the sun child.
Those shadow ones make me feel so sad for my younger self, and at the same time, I find that my childhood self is much stronger and more tenacious than my current self.
If I could time travel, I would like to hug that little person and tell her that she has been doing so well, because nobody else told her that at the time. And I also want to thank her for staying curious, positive, and motivated even in very bad situations.
* Since shadow child is not a common phrase, we put it in quotation marks the first time it is mentioned.