The Highlights #2

Hello, hello! This past week was completely unproductive! 😑 I spent most of the week in bed with my best friend/old roommate, Dalton, who got pretty sick around Monday. He just recently moved out, but he still spends a lot of time with me and my family and once he got sick, he figured it was easier to spend his days sick in my bed than in his own. I do love him, so. We spent our time sleeping and watching Criminal Minds episode after episode.

Today, so far has been awesome! I went to a Buddhist meeting at my friend's house and I am so grateful that I went! Over the past two weeks or so, I've been having a bit of trouble with my faith. Faith, of any kind, is fairly new to me as I hadn't practiced any religion since I was 15 many, many moons ago. I've only been practicing Buddhism since August of last year and a few weeks ago, when my mom was at worst with her sickness, I found myself questioning why am I doing this? So I've avoided sitting in front of my Gohonzon (a scroll/altar we chant to in order to bring out our best version of ourselves) and chanting all this time and today I was reminded why we have faith. We make certain causes in our lives that then reap effects, good or bad, but we make those causes every day. We can make a cause to be a more appreciative, compassionate human being, for example, and I was reminded today that I want to be that. Sure, I can do that without Buddhism, but I WANT to practice Buddhism again and reap the benefits of having faith in something outside of myself.

As far as goals from last week, I completely failed on all of them other than the cutting back on smoking. THAT! I did accomplish a bit! I cut back a lot, I'll come up with a number for you in next week's highlights, but I can tell I definitely smoked less. So thumbs up there! Other than that, my eating was mostly all over the place at the beginning of the week, but according to my weekly food diary, I started eating better over the past few days. Progress not perfection, eh?

I'm going grocery shopping tonight to grab some HEALTHY options for the week and I'm happy to say my list is the healthiest it's looked in a long time. I'm going to be cooking two meals for my mom and I, but besides those I'll be keeping it fairly simple with breakfast smoothies and tuna salad. Before I go to bed, I'm also going to map out what support groups I'll be attending this week, which is what I've done every Sunday for about a month now, but tonight I'm going to put a little more in depth thinking and research into them so I'm more likely to go. Thumbs up all around!

Since my goals weren't fully met (to say the least), I'm going to transfer them to this week's goals along with a few others. ☺️

GOALS:

• Eat breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner every day.
• Continue cutting back on smoking cigarettes.
• Ice and wrap my ankle every day.
• Practice driving and read the driver's manual for my test on Thursday! (EXCITED!)
• Chant and meditate daily.
• Read more books!
• Attend 4 - 5 support groups.

Lastly, here are the few photos I snapped last week!

Mmm, apples and peanut butter = current favorite snack!

Yoghurt and granola = best quick and easy breakfast!

Since 1D's newest album was released, it was easy for me to forget their old ones. How did I ever let that happen?? Midnight Memories is still so good! :)

You've got to love that SoCal weather!

Hope you're all well! xx