I've been thinking a lot about micro actions this week...those small tweaks you can make to your daily routine that supposedly help make big changes. A lot of what I've done for Project 50 so far are micro actions, like making sure I do at least 15 minutes of yoga each day, the daily stitching, adding a few minutes of meditation, trying to spend a bit of quality time outdoors...it does start to feel like you could fill your day with micro actions and not have time left for anything else, but actually, I like what it's doing to my days. I did wonder if I could start to lose track, so I've downloaded the Way of Life app to set reminders...so far so good. It lets you set up behaviours that you want to either encourage or discourage, and each day you can just tap to show you've done (or not done) each one. It then tracks your behaviours over time, the idea being that you will be more likely to keep up with something with a daily reminder/obligation. Once you've set up, it only takes a minute to tap in your info each day. 
I did notice that all of the micro actions and app surfing has somewhat distracted me from my purpose here, so to bring it back around I ask myself, what is all this in aid of? I suppose that a looming birthday has made me want to head into the next decade as healthy as I can be, and god knows I've let things slip over the years so now's probably a good time to rein it in. And if it takes an app and a blog to keep me on track, well okay then. I'm pretty sure I can fit a few more micro actions into my days. 

January 17, progress: 
Days doing yoga: 17
Days without snacking after dinner: 16
Days stitching: 17
Days meditating: 2

So that's pretty good! Feels like positive results and good stick-to-it-iveness. And mostly easy...I have two yoga classes per week with an instructor, and those are sweaty and challenging. The other days, I am doing at least 15 minutes on my own with the awesome Yoga Studio app. Since I'm usually in some kind of pain after my main class, I take it pretty easy on the days following. I try to do at least one more intense one on my own during the rest of the week. I am starting to notice better balance and less collapsing in a heap. 

The no snacking is still not that fun, but it does feel positive. Although I didn't lose even an ounce the second week of January after a very exciting half kilo lost the first week, I do feel better in the morning if I skip after-dinner snacking. And our grocery bill will probably benefit - raisins cost a fortune here. 

LOVING the 1 year of stitches project! It's great to have a daily commitment, and so far, even on the day I was out from 9:00am to 11:00pm, I still took a few minutes to do a stitch. 

I've been thinking about meditation for a while now, and thinking it would be an excellent thing to add into my routine. To that end, I'm tacking on a meditation session after yoga...it's from the same app and it seems like a good way for a distracted gal like me to learn to focus a bit, or let go, or whatever it is I'm supposed to be doing. Hasn't changed my life yet, but it's early days. 

Want to know why I was out until 11:00 on a school night? Bryan Adams! He played a ballroom here in Jakarta this week, and it was excellent! It's always a pleasure to see a true professional play, and he's certainly that. He played old hits and new ones, he got the sedate Indonesian audience on their feet, he played for 2+ hours, and the musicians and stage show were great. Plus I had a great night with some girlfriends! And something about seeing a 57 year old rock out for hours was very encouraging. 

I've been mulling over Project 50 this past week, thinking about, in no particular order: how we are not encouraged to be proud of our age, but are rather supposed to be embarrassed about it; about how hot flashes are a natural occurence in women of my age but again, we are supposed to cover them up or be embarassed or risk becoming a caricature of the fanning, sweating middle aged complainer; about how not eating after dinner sucks and how I don't love going to bed hungry, but I do love how I feel when I wake up - not starving, and with no food hangover; how doing 15 minutes of lazy yoga every day is probably not doing me much good, but doing a full hour of vinyasa flow is HARD AND MY ARMS HURT; how happy I am that I divorced sugar all those years ago, and now regular chocolate tastes weird; and how I really need to add cardio to my routine, but ugh. All good topics for future ramblings. 

Most pressing on my mind is the number, though. 50. Fifty. I'm trying to approach it with grace, wisdom, dignity and blah blah blah, when what I really want is to run screaming back to my thirties. I started this blog to put some of these ideas out there, but I'm feeling shy about promoting it. Because then I'll have to go on social media and proclaim the fact of it! I'm turning 50! Why is that so scary? Anyone who has met me is going to know about how old I am. Certainly my school friends would know, friends from my 20's and 30's   are going to be able to do the math, and newer friends are going to know I'm no spring chicken when they hear that my kids are in their twenties. Or look at my face. So why so shy about it? Is it that there is some unspoken rule that we are not supposed to talk about it? That we are, indeed, supposed to be ashamed of our age? If that's the case, my conditioning has worked...I'm still freaked about it. 

I'm sure if I'm feeling this, others are too, so why not share it? That's going to be my resolution for this week: put it out there. And keep going, keep pushing, keep questioning, keep feeling my way through. Keep aiming to turn 50 in good health and with a positive attitude. Because unless tragedy strikes, I'm currently under ten months away from the big day. 

Meanwhile, the 1 Year of Stitches is going really well. I'm enjoying pulling out the same project every day for just a few minutes, choosing a new colour, choosing a new stitch, and then documenting. It's not the neatest, but I already feel a little more confident with it. And the Facebook community is lovely! Here's where I'm at so far:

When you were born in 1967 in Canada, there is no escaping the fact that you were born in the year of Canada's 100th birthday. So when 2017 was approaching, with all the hype about Canada turning 150 years old, my own impending mega birthday was hard to ignore. 

Now generally, I have to say I feel about 35 - in my head. It's the perfect age. And I can carry on blissfully feeling 35 until the roots start to grow in, or I see the crazy wrinkly bits under my chin, or my feet just hurt on the cold floor. But it was totally impossible to deny my (wah) middle age status as I vacationed with my daughter over the holidays. All of a sudden, I realized that I was totally invisible walking next to the loveliness of her early 20's self. How to deal??

Fight or Flight...
I guess I've been fighting the aging...colouring my hair, being very concious of not dressing "old", and being secretly proud when people say they can't believe I have a child in her twenties. But how far to take it?

I don't think I can go down the road of cosmetic surgery. I'm not judging, it's just not for me. I'm not loving the changes happening in my mirror, but I'm too afraid of making permanent changes through surgery that I would be uncomfortable with or might regret. Okay then: embrace the aging face. 

I do think I could be taking better care of myself - excercising more and eating less, the elusive magic formula. Weekly yoga could be daily yoga, treats could be fruit (within reason), cardio could be a thing. That's not about age, that's just good sense.

All these things were rattling around in my brain this past week, and then I saw a post for 1 year of stitches. It's an online group committing to a year-long emboidery project where you do at least one stitch per day and document your progress. I've been wanting to do more embroidery, so I jumped on board.

And then as I was doing yoga this morning, I thouht - hey! I'm doing a year of stitches, why not a year of yoga? I already do 2 intense classes per week, and try to fit in another session or two with my iPad app. Can I commit to doing at least 15 minutes of yoga every day too? Why not?

How about diet? Four days ago, I committed to not snacking after dinner for one whole week. It's not easy to bypass the snacks in the evening, but I can do anything for a week. So far so good, if you don't count New Year's Eve, when dinner was some appetizers at 10pm. But I'm pretty sure NYE doesn't count. 

SO - to keep track, here is my new blog, Project 50. I'm starting with 1 Year of Stitches and daily yoga, and I've set a weekly calendar alert to remind me to update this blog. This feels like a good start: some creativity and some fitness and a schedule. I'll see how the food thing goes, maybe that goes on the list too but I don't want to go overboard. 

​Here are my first few stitches:

Tomorrow I'm meeting a friend for a yoga session, and now I'm turning off my computer so I can add some stitches. Go 2017!