All in Healthy Family
It must have been during my junior year in college that I learned the importance of drinking water. I wish I could say it was because I was interested in physiology and studied how the body works but it was because someone told me that drinking a lot of water helped prevent hangovers. Also at that time, I was participating in beauty pageants so I received the vanity advice: water helps keep the weight off and the skin smooth and blemish-free.
Over the last week, I’ve been scrolling thru social media trying to find something other than anti-racism quotes by prominent black people posted by white people. Don’t get me wrong, I am so proud of my friends and family who are fighting for justice. Every quote they post is very meaningful. I am an over-thinker so posting as such is not me. My idea of helping out is to figure out a way to walk the walk so that I can talk the talk.
National Creativity Day has been celebrated on May 30th ever since 2018 and according to Nationaldaycalendar.com, Hal Croasmun and ScreenwritingU wanted this day to be recognized as a way to “celebrate the imaginative spirits everywhere and to encourage them to keep creating.” Maybe I’m not the only one, but I never knew this national day existed. Now that I know about it, I feel like more than ever, we should be embracing and celebrating creativity. Over the last few months our lives have been about creative work space and situations, creative parenting, creative remote learning, creative graduations. Where would we be during this COVID-19 era without creativity?
Remember the days when it was proper etiquette to write thank you notes by a certain date after an event? Or the days when there was an appropriate time frame to reach out to someone who lost a loved one? Thank goodness for Emily Post! She shaped our nation by having all the answers to these social norms. To this day, long after Mrs. Post’s guidelines were popularly practiced, we still continue to measure our social behaviors against them.
Mother’s Day 2020 was the most PERFECT day of my year so far. This statement is significant because the Virgo in me strives for perfection 24/7 but the Type-A in me won’t ever let that happen. My Mother’s Day was special because I felt completely BALANCED. Yowza! That’s another significant statement because I equate the concept of “balance” to a unicorn. Everyone wants to believe in unicorns even though we know they don’t really exist. And everyone wants to believe that there is such a thing called “balance”.
Raisins. You either you love them or hate them. What I find interesting is that there are people who love grapes and wine but can’t stand raisins. It’s similar to those who will pour a cup of ketchup onto their fries but will get sick to their stomach if they see a tomato on their burger. I get it. It’s all about the texture and the look of the food items. Let’s face it, the site of a raisin is not the most attractive and the texture is…well…squishy.
On Friday when I found out that our kids cannot physically go back to school for the remainder of the year, I thought, “It’s time to rebound.” I should clarify, that was not the first thought that came to mind. I did break down sobbing while driving home from picking up dinner that day. However, as I quietly ate dinner with my kids, I started to feel the “rebound” attitude rising up inside me. As one part of me grieved the loss of a school year, the other part of me wanted to take back some control over my life. I knew what I had to do. I decided to get the Earth Day thoughtful pinches ready for the teachers.
I started to write this post a month ago - pre Shelter-in-Place days. Originally, the post was going to be about my observations about myself during a time of quarantine. Like a time capsule so that I could remember my thoughts years from now. In other words, the post was going to be about me, me and me. Fortunately, my friends pass along super funny memes and great news articles because in receiving these, it led me to an awareness of the new normal and I was able to grasp the “collective trauma” concept. So I realized that if I shared my time capsule with you, I wouldn’t be giving any new information because we are all going through this together. There would be no point in telling you something that you already know.
Years ago I wrote a post entitled, “Happy Easy-ter” and it was about me doing the very minimum to prepare for that upcoming Easter holiday. In other words, I took the “easy” way out. I had to LOL because if I even had the energy to do 1/4 of what I thought was the easy celebration back then, I would be so lucky. This year, I took a MAJOR short cut on the Easter preparations!
Well, guess who’s back (again) pushing her agenda. I can’t help myself. I just know that somewhere out there a person is comparing themselves to someone who is amazing at showing thoughtfulness. This person is feeling inadequate about the way they show their thoughtfulness and wishes they were kicking butt too. I feel this way every single time I go on Pinterest. If only everyone knew that there are at least 10 styles (probably more) of thoughtfulness. Every person, no matter what, is thoughtful, we all just show it differently.
I’m just marching along; continuing to tell everyone about the 10 curated styles of thoughtfulness as if nothing else in the world is happening. You are invited to march along with me. Or if you just started to follow Thoughtful Pinch, no worries - I have covered 6 thoughtfulness styles so far. The ones that start with the letter “P” are professional and proper, “I” - influenced and insightful and “N” - numbers and names. I might as well go over the two styles that begin with the letter “C” because if you’re like me, I need a brain break from learning more about COVID-19 and reading all those helpful suggestions on how to use my massive amounts of “free” time.
With everything going on around us, it seems ridiculous for me to get back to work as a thoughtfulness curator today. I mean, it’s not fully recognized as a profession and I am not urgently needed. Especially because we’ve all witnessed whenever the nation is faced with adversity, true thoughtfulness emerges in the form of community and humanity. So there’s really nothing I need to do. People will collect their own thoughts during this time of uncertainty by consulting sources whether it’s news on TV, radio, podcasts, YouTube, social media, newspapers, church/priests, therapists and then the act of thoughtfulness will automatically surface. Ta Dah! Silver linings.
