MY 2022 SELF CARE LIST | 148

My 2022 word of the year is "replenish," in large part because I recognize that I need to replenish my personal life, my family life and my health, both physical and mental. Today I thought I'd talk through some of the self care things I am planning to incorporate this year to help me live into this whole replenishment situation.

 

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TRANSCRIPTION

It's so easy to let other shit in our lives takeover while our own fulfillment and happiness and, and care falls by the wayside. Today, I'm going to be reflecting on my 20, 22 self care list in ways that I am going to replenish myself while I do all of the other things in my life that I am required to do that.

 

I need to do that. I, that I want to do. Hi, everybody. Welcome to the uncurated life podcast. I'm Cindy Gunter, Baldo. And today we are reflecting on some self care and a big reason. I want to talk about this. Well, there's two big reasons for one. Um, part of it is because I think that sometimes this, the idea of self care gets all sort of out of whack on the Instagrams where it's, you know, things like get a facial and go on vacation, all that, which is all well and good.

 

But. I think sometimes self care is doing what we need to make sure that we are leading the life or like a life that is as UN fettered is not the boredom. Maybe an burdened with excessive things like taking care of yourself in a way to prevent certain types of burnout or certain types of pain or certain types of injury from happening to you so that you can go through your life.

 

Uneventful, maybe. I don't know. Anyway, I feel like some of the ways self-care has talked about just feels like both privileged and. Super hokey. And I want to talk about some of the things I want to focus on this year that I know will be more nourishing to my body and my mind. And secondly, the other big reason is that while I am a firm believer in serving others, like I am an over volunteer.

 

I mean, shit. Like I, I fully believe that we can find so much peace in serving others. The cliche of not being able to pour from an empty pitcher, it does. It's a cliche for a reason. It holds true. Right? And this is really smacked me in the face this year. This past year, my life has been very up ended in 2021.

 

Aside from just aside from the global pandemic, which in and of itself has appended so many of our, all of our lives in different ways. But this past year we had to move from California to Denver, uh, because of my husband's job. W our custody situation changed dramatically when the kids decided to come with us.

 

Full-time one of my kids who was already struggling with mental health and physical health problems. Both of those things really spiraled this year. And so, so much of the second half of my year was devoted to them and the needs that they. On top of that, you know, I'm in kidney failure and the doctors appointments and everything else, it's just, it's become so easy.

 

And I've said this here on the podcast and on my YouTube channel, it's been so easy for my life to just be work and doctor's appointments and that's it. And it's, it's just gotten really hard. Things have been, I'm like running on fumes. It feels like now believe me, when I say I know I was needed in all of those circumstances and others that I'm not even going to bring up here.

 

Cause I don't, that's not what this book. I don't want it to go on for that long, but. Those situations needed me and I would not have made other choices given the chance. I knew that I needed to be here for my family. I knew that I needed to be here for my husband here for my kids here in our move and taking care of myself the best I can.

 

I recognize I was doing the best I could in those circumstances, but that MTS pitcher situation, the cliche I was talking about it's me right now. I'm dry, dry a fucking. My picture is, is fucking dusty. So this year a big piece of my goals has had to do with replenishing my life, which is why replenish is actually my word of the year.

 

And I'll link the video where I talk about my 20, 22 goals in the show notes. Uh, it's, it's really important to me this year that I, that I try to, to. I keep coming in the words, replenish and nourish are the words I keep using, but they're really kind of what I want to use because I, if another crisis happens right now, I don't, I mean, I'm sure I'll rise to the occasion, but I am so close to burning out in so many different areas of my life.

 

And I know when I hit burnout really hard, it takes a major toll on my health mentally and physically, and currently, especially with my physical health. There, isn't a lot of. For that, like my physical health is already on a thread to begin with. So burning out really hard. It would just be a major problem and it would impact more than just me.

 

So this self self-care list we're going to talk about today is really. Just it's a list of ideas for me to like, for me specifically, to talk through them with you, but also to give you some thoughts as to things you might want to try and incorporate into your life, this. So that we can all like take better care of ourselves.

 

I also have a free, like little printable infographic thing. If you sign up for my email newsletter this month with some of these ideas on it, some ideas for you. If you're already on the newsletter, it's going to come. I believe today, today is the first Monday of the month. So it should be in your inboxes today.

 

But if you are new, then go sign up for the newsletter and you'll get it as a little bonus. Whatever. Anyway, let's talk about this. Let's talk about my self care list and I invite you to think about your own ideas while I'm talking about this and share them on social media. You can email me Cindy at Cindy country, baldor.com.

 

You can respond to the email newsletter that goes. I see all of those responses, or you can post it on Instagram, in your stories and tag me at @llamaletters with some self-care ideas. So we can kind of co like collate them and have a big list because that would be. So let's talk about it, right? First of all, and I'm kind of thinking about these in terms of buckets.

 

So the first bucket is to care for my physical health and this, this is probably the easiest one for me to figure out because I am in kidney failure and I have very specific things I need to be doing in order to be compliant for transplant. In order for me to be feeling as good as I can when like, my, my average is not very good, but I don't feel very good on the average.

 

But even that average, sometimes it can be hard to reach when I'm not doing the things I'm supposed to be doing. So. It's it's amazing when you're this deep into a chronic illness, when tiny fuck-ups can make you feel so bad for so long, it really makes you think about that. And you forget when you were back in the day, when you might've felt better on a normal basis, how you took for granted the little fuck-ups and you could do that.

 

And it wouldn't like kill you. Like, even if you're not, even if you're just you're you're fully, you're fully health. And you don't have a chronic illness. If you are older than the age of say 30, you probably can recognize that you, if you try to have like a night out drinking with your friends, the way you did, when you were 21, the recovery period is so much longer like two drinks, and you're hung over for like a day, as opposed to before where you could pound drinks and feel like sprightly the next morning, because you're getting older and your body just can't handle it as much as.

 

Well, for me, it's like that, but it's with all sorts of small things. If I eat three McDonald's singular, McDonald's French fries. I swell up and I feel like I'm going to die for the rest of the evening. Like, that's the kind of thing that I need to keep an eye out for. So for my caring, for my physical health bucket on my list is making sure, taking my meds consistently taking my blood pressure every day, which is a big one that I'm still struggling.

 

Even into this year, getting enough water, giving up soda, going outside every day, going for walks every day, getting on my Peloton on a regular basis, all of these things while they sound just like health maintenance things for me are truly self care because a by doing them, I am ensuring that I'm going to feel as good as I can on any given day and B uh, it helps me so that.

 

Um, when it comes time for transplant, not only am I in as good enough of constitution as I can be for transplant, but also the transplant center will have no reason to thumbs down me. There's all these, you know, articles in the paper about people being denied, kidney transplants or heart transplants, because they refuse to get the COVID vaccine.

 

And all I have to say to that is motherfucker. Do you know anything about organ transplant? It's not just the COVID vaccine, a it's all vaccines B uh, It's a. That's all vaccines. And if you're not compliant, not just with vaccines, but with everything they tell you to do, then they won't do it because getting a transplant not only requires the, the gift of life that is the organ, but so many people and so much time and resources go into a transplant that they do like, and there's a limited supply of both organs and.

 

The teams to actually perform the transplants that they want to make sure the organs are going to the people who are going to make sure they take care of it. Anyway, as a tangent point, being caring for my physical health, it's all the basic habits I know I should be doing, and I just need to be consistent.

 

Next is caring for my mental health and this year, a big piece of that is going to be in reclaiming time for myself. So time off time off that I take with my kids or my husband or both, but also time to take off just for me, like to go have a cup of coffee on my own, or to go to a movie, or I'm probably not going to a movie it's still pandemic time, but like doing things for me just on my own that are not working like.

 

Cultivating hobbies that have nothing to do with work like acrylic painting. I'm working on some for my living room right now and cooking with my walk. Although I haven't been doing that much since my, I had a couple of falls recently and I jacked my hands up and I just haven't had the, the nerve to, to cook with the walk, but that's on my list, you know?

 

Uh, the houseplants I'm trying to deal with that will actually show up in another bucket and prioritizing personal planning over work planning. That for me is probably the biggest piece of self-care that I've already been successful with. And it's already starting to show some subtle results is sitting down every morning with my coffee and pulling my personal planner out first.

 

And thinking about my day outside of work has been pretty epic so far, and I'm using. And I mean, epic, like it's been really great so far in forcing me to really focus on my life as a whole, not just work, which is something I was not doing this past six months. Or even fucking that six years, Jesus, but like it's, it's felt really good.

 

I noticing some changes just in my home life, in terms of the way I'm present in my home life. So that in and of itself of all of them is the biggest piece of this, but really prioritizing time for myself as well as time with my kids. And my husband has been is, is already like high on my list for this year and is going to stay high on my list for the.

 

The next category is my spiritual health. Now I am not someone who believes in, in, in like gods or a God or whatever. I am a humanist, but I'm also a, you, you and I have really been missing my, you you community. I. Had really taken a step away from it during the pandemic because of my kidney function dropping so drastically, I've been so involved with it before being on the board and everything else.

 

But between between feeling like shit and also like everything going virtual, I wound up taking a strong step. Even before we found out about the Denver move. My step back had been pretty, pretty hardcore. Now that we've moved, uh, we have a new, you, you congregation we'd like to start visiting, but with the Omicron variant, they'd gone back to virtual services.

 

And I was I'm, I'm really not a fan of the virtual services just in general. So I wasn't sure, but I'm going to start attending those at least once a month. And I really want to start introducing myself to people. My hope is by the end of, by the end of this year to be. In their choir, like to have joined the congregation and then joined the choir, assuming choir stuff is going to happen.

 

You know? So that is one way to really care for my spiritual health, but in other and other, another aspect of that is reading. I actually have a bunch of books on my Kindle waiting for me to read them. And some of them are fiction. You know, I'm going to read new fantasy series this year, blah, blah, blah.

 

But a big piece of that is reading books that fill me. Spiritual cup and the books in that category tend to be books sort of in a few different veins. Right? I have some books I want to read that are about, they're like deep dives into different aspects of religion, which for me, the seeking of knowledge about other faiths, other religions, I've always been a big piece of my spiritual life.

 

Not because I believe in the things that these books say, but because I like to draw my own bits of wisdom from different faith traditions, even if the dogma of them is not something that I'm super into, but also really learning about other religions is something that really gives me a lot of spiritual nourishment.

 

I don't know if that makes sense, but it makes sense to me, the. There's two other kinds of chunks of books, sort of in this category. Another chunk of books and books in this category are books that are kind of social justice, a bent of social justice. I've got a handful of those that I really want to read.

 

Um, and then finally, the final kind of chunk of those is some books specifically written. There's an author named Kate bowler. She's a minister and a teacher, I believe at duke university. And I've read one of her books. It was called. Looking at my Kindle app because it was called, uh everything's. Um, Whereas it, everything happens for a reason.

 

And I was like, oh fuck you. Right. But then the subtitle is, and other lies I've loved. And this is a great book that she wrote about her feelings when she was diagnosed with cancer. She has another book that just came out. Called, uh, no cure for being human and other truths. I need to hear so that one's on my list of books to read as well as this goes to the more history of other faith traditions.

 

But she's got a book called blessed, which is about the, um, the history of the prosperity gospel and that one I've started, but I haven't finished yet. And so books like that are on my list. To care for my spiritual health, you know, just expanding my horizons, reading about other people's perspectives, reading, things like that.

 

That's, that's kind of on my list. So anyway, that's that bucket then? There's the situational health, which is caring for my situational health, which. A lot of that has to do with the house, the, my space, my, the place around me and everything like that. So on this list is a lot of like project based self care stuff.

 

Right. So working on my home environment with. Organizing and projects. I'm trying to get at least one organization project under my belt each month. This year, uh, last month I put all my Christmas decorations away in reorganize, the big closets down here, which felt so good when it was done this month, I'm going to be working on my closet.

 

I'm also going to be working on, oh, what did I say? I was going to work on this month. You know, it's amazing when you don't remember shit, even though you just said. Uh, the laundry room is on my list. Cause I have some cabinets that I want to reorganize and I wanna get one of those little racks that hangs off the wall that you can unfold to hang, you know, like sweaters and shit from anyway point being, is that working like doing organizational projects around my house is so much fun for me, but I need to actually make the time for it.

 

Otherwise I start to get stressed out and then I don't do it because I'm worried I don't have the time for it. Definitely that I would love to start a raised bed garden in the spring. I could put a garden in the ground if I wanted to, but a, our soul, uh, soil here is Sandy because we are near the dam and they, I guess when they dug out for the reservoir, they put all the sand in RNA.

 

So it takes a lot of work to get the sand really ready for green vegetables. And I'm just, I don't have that many fucks to give right now. Plus I've seen some raised, a friend of mine showed me some raised bed gardens that are like waist high. Like they're up on stand so that you don't have to bend over so much, which is huge for me because bending over is one of the hardest things for me because of my kidneys.

 

So I'd love to do that. Um, I want to find a new farmer's market this year that it's going to be our new favorite that we go to on a regular basis. I want to play with my Layla and my, my Layla puppy and my Lulu kitty. I want to care for and add to my indoor houseplant collection, which one of my goals for this year on my bucket list goals for this year is to get a large one.

 

And we will see how that goes. I actually, as I'm recording this, have a couple of plants that according to my plan to app are going to be, need to be repotted soon. And that's going to be an adventure cause I've never done that successfully. So we will see how that goes. All of those things around the house, decorating the walls and doing the projects, playing with the dogs, going outside, stuff that has to do with my environment.

 

That is my situational health. And that's what I really want to care for this year. And a lot of my goals are kind of based around this, this, uh, particular candidate. And then finally, and this is one that is hard for me to say, because it doesn't feel like self care when I say it. And that is caring for my financial health.

 

I I've talked about it before. I have a very stressed out relationship with money. So the thought of doing stuff with finances does not feel like self care. When I say it it's like seen, it sounds like self torture. But ultimately I know it will bring me peace to feel in control of things because when I feel out of control, I feel very unpeaceful so feeling like I've got at least some level of control over things will help me feel peace, some peace.

 

And also knowing that I have taken care of some of these kinds of adult things will also help me feel peace. So some of the things on this list would be to hire an accountant this year. Um, set up automatic savings and retirement, which I actually did already. And it feels pretty good. We'll see how it feels as it starts happening.

 

Um, and having meetings with Jesse about money, trying to help both my kids with their first bank accounts to have good money habits, and then model them for them as well. Like I flat out told RJ, I was like, yeah, I'm not the person you want to look to for good money habits. Look to Jesse, but we'll do this together.

 

Caring for my financial health is part of it because I know that that's a source of stress for me. And if I can just face some of those fears that might actually bring me a level of peace, which is important for self care. So these are some of my ideas for self care in 2022, I would love to hear from you either via email or on Instagram, what some of your ideas for self-care are this year.

 

So be sure to tag me at @llamaletters, let me know. Anyway, thank you so much to my patrons for sponsoring this episode, as they always do. If you are curious about becoming a patron, you can check out www.patreon.com/cindyguentertbaldo to find out. I hope this year is full of ways for you to take care of yourself because you are fabulous.

 

You deserve it. You are not unworthy. And that's important to understand I'm saying this for you. I'm saying this for myself as well. So just remember that. Look yourself in the eye in the mirror and know that you are working. Because that's, it just is. Ooh, somebody loves me anyway. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day rest of your week.

 

I'll catch you next time. And until next time then peace out.