I had trouble getting started on the blog this morning.
I couldn’t decide on a topic, so it is going to be a couple of different things.
First, Vacation!
It has been three years since I left my home state to go visit my wonderful friends and family in Florida. Money worries kept me from traveling most of this time, so it was nice to feel like I had the means to travel finally.
I really loved being back down there for a few days. It is a lovely place to visit, and I think I would have liked to extend my stay a little bit longer but five days away was just really nice. Got to spend some time in nature, did a lot of walks, and visited a new place. I really did enjoy it, and it makes me think that I might want to plan a trip somewhere every year now. Hopefully, the next one will be to Hawaii.
When I travel, I am also reminded of how much of a homebody I am. This weekend is a three-day weekend for me, and I am thoroughly enjoying my time at home. I love my routines and my house, and I am just so comfortable here. It makes it very hard to leave and go somewhere else. Especially if I want to really rest. Because when I travel, I like to do things. I want to see the place I am in and experience it fully. But for me, that often means I don’t actually rest on my vacation. And so I come home almost as tired out as when I left. So, I need a few days of stay-cation afterward to really get the rest I need. Thus, I am staying home and resting this weekend.
Which brings me to my other random musing, learning new things.
I decided that this year, I am going to make a concerted effort to learn how to crochet. I already know how to knit but have not really taken my skills to the level I want them to be, so it seems like I should focus on that. But, I watch people crochet, and it seems like it would move so much faster and might be easier to make the round things that I really want to make. Not sure, but I decided that I want to try.
I have been following a bunch of knitting and crochet artists on Instagram for a while to get inspired. One I love is The Hook Nook. She is just so fun and vibrant, and she just came out with a new line of crochet supplies and hooks and yarn. I decided to go all-in on learning and bought her interchangeable set of crochet hooks, and they are so awesome! I had a hook that I had tried to learn with last year, but I found with knitting and now with crochet that working with a quality set of tools makes life so much easier. These new hooks are amazingly easy to use, and they made it so much easier for me to learn how to hold the yarn and move smoothly through the stitches. I am not consistent yet, but I am getting there.
But for me, I am not patient when I learn new stuff. I want to be good right away. So, I am having to caution myself that it will take time to learn this, and you will not know everything right away. It will take time to really develop the skill, and I need to keep practicing.
And isn’t that true for all of life in general? Every day, we keep practicing what we want to do better. We have to practice new skills to grow our knowledge. We practice new habits until they actually become habit. Every new thing we do, we have to practice to make it better.
So, this year, I am going to learn to love practicing. The art of getting better a little at a time.
Are you going to practice anything this year? If so, I would love to hear what it is. Let me know in the comments. And let’s all practice together!
🙂