Day One - Journaling - A Self-Care and Self-Love Journey For A Deeper Reason

Day One of sharing my self-care and self-love journey for a deeper reason - Journaling.

Do you ever get an idea that won’t go away? You brush the thought aside the first time, you ignore its call the second, and suddenly you can’t even enjoy a shower without it crawling up through the drainpipes, slipping past your slippery fingertips as you shampoo your hair, and seeping into your brain for the 761st time?

Welcome to the product of my brain worm, and the product of journaling.

For those who don’t know me, and if you do, you’re getting a refresher anyway, my name is Carissa, and I am an author, a freelance writer, and a jill of about 16 other trades. And over the last few years, I have been in a funk.

First, it was burnout; then it was a total loss of passion for my craft, my creativity, and the hobbies and fun things that captivated my time. Then, it was mindlessly reaching for different avenues that would fill the void (and pay the bills), and then it was - hitting my 40th year, vowing that this time, things would be different. Finally feeling this real urgency to break free from the fog, turn my life around, find that calling I was desperate for, and become a whole new person.

And then, instead of “breaking free”, I broke myself. I shattered my elbow, had reconstructive surgery, spent months doing physio learning to reuse my arm, lost some of my contract jobs, lost all my savings, and found myself in a broken, low place I had never been before.

How’s that for breaking free?

Yet, I also found myself in a position where I had to be the most focused and disciplined on my self-care and myself that I’d ever been in my life. The kind of focused and disciplined I always wanted to be. 

That forced shift in the narrative of my story brought with it a mental shift, a clarity, and a version of myself to the forefront that I didn’t know I could be. Within that, I started to journal again, which has been one of my most beneficial forms of self-care. And with it, this idea was born, and wouldn’t leave me alone until I saw it through.

You see, I love writing novels, but Amazon doesn’t pay us self-published baddies enough to pay the bills anymore. It sort of once did, back in 2017 when I was that homeless self-published single mom with a couple romance novels, but now that’s been stripped from us (that’s a story for another day), and the fallback of that plus covid (when I had just begun launching some workshops) sent me into a new route for a few years - social media creation and freelance writing. However, that was a fine line for me, because a lot of that ate up the time and creativity I needed for my own social media content creation and my own writing. And we all know, making big life changes isn’t easy, so it was that constant back and forth between know something has to change, but never having the time or the real motivation to do it. 

And so began my struggle for the last few years in the aftermath of making your passion, hobby and creativity the way you pay your bills and also the thing that still brings you joy and excitement to your life and finding ways to balance them both.

Please don’t take that the wrong way - I am very blessed and love to be able to do what I do. But finding the time to write my books, make my content, and write other people's content, format their books, write their books, facilitate workshops- often the paid work for others monopolized my time, and it started to feel like when I was a housecleaner for a living - I never cleaned my own home. No time, no desire, too exhausted from already doing that all day.

As I have been healing this year, and dedicating so many hours to physio and my personal journey, I have honestly never felt better. And past me would hate to say this, but shattering my arm really did bring me the change and the better me I needed. 

But my bank account would disagree. So would the car I own that is falling apart; so would the teeth I need to fix; the stress I feel in my body knowing that Christmas is coming, winter is coming, my kids need warm gear, I need to keep the lights on, we need to eat, AND…. I don’t want to lose this path I am on either.

I finally have the desire and time to do the things I enjoy again. I work out all the time, take such good care of ME, and don’t want to lose that in the rat race that is life. 

I want to truly find that middle ground and balance, rediscover myself, and it turns out, from my time online lately reading through other women’s posts, I am not alone here. There are so many of us who have hit a middle point in our lives where we are not the stay-at-home mom of little kids, no longer working the job that was our whole life for many years, not capable of doing the same hobbies, burnt out, unsure of who we are, what we are doing, where we are going, or what we even want to do when we get there. 

I’ve also noticed that my content creator skills are rusty, and so are the words flowing through my veins, and the knowledge I used to be so up to date on is embarrassing.

And so, there I was, living in this, thinking it over, shampooing my hair while the thoughts bounced around, and it came to me, or rather, kept coming to me - why not challenge myself to combine them all?

After my shower, I sat down and poured all those thoughts out onto paper. I love writing my brain onto paper. The slight gap in time between my thought and how fast my hand moves allows this space where thoughts continue to form, and I get into a flow, and it feels sooo good.

And from that feel-so-good, self-care moment, came this.

I want to start a little mini series where every day I post a quick video of what I am doing for self-care and self-discovery. Challenge myself to write a little something for it, it will be a fun creative writing challenge to come up with a small write-up or blurb about random fun activities, do a little editing for the video, and see what happens, without putting this pressure on myself to format, edit it all perfectly, or make something perfect. What if I just made it fun?

It would help me expand my writing skills and my editing, it would help me freshen up my social media knowledge, stay on top of what’s trending, push my paid social media channels, maybe help advertise what I can do, pick up some new clients, and it would keep me focused on my self-care and better life journey at the same time. And if I do it right, it won’t feel like pressure to make something perfect, more like a creative outlet. 

And maybe of the 3 people reading this, 1 of them will resonate with the things I share. Someone who also feels lost, burnt out, and unsure of how they hit the middle of their life with no real idea what’s next. Maybe you’ll try some of the things I do, and start bringing some joy back to your life, some ideas, some creativity, and feel better. Maybe you’ll read some of the things I write, and it will open up something inside of you. Maybe you will share some of your own ways you work on your own self-care and discover new hobbies and ventures with me, and it will change something in me. 

Maybe this is just an excuse for me to write, post it on the internet, and get paid, while also still making myself the highest priority, and staying on top of my self-care. 

But if it makes me feel better, that’s all that matters.

And if it makes one other person feel better, even better.

And that, my friends, is day one of sharing my self-care and self-love journey for a deeper reason - journaling.

#dayone #journaling #self-care #self-love #takingcareofyou