Getting my Groove Back

Who remembers the movie How Stella Got Her Groove Back? I’m not sure I ever actually saw that movie, yet I’ve always loved the title and the implied ideas that we may occasionally lose our groove and that we can do something to get it back.

I lost my groove somewhere in the last few months of 2022. Maybe it was burnout from some hard situations with clients. Maybe it was being generally busy and overwhelmed. Maybe it was my struggle to transition back to real life this fall after some great vacations last summer. Maybe a lot of things, but I definitely wasn’t groovin’. I could tell because I was eating too much and drinking a lot of wine, sleeping a lot but still feeling tired, not moving enough because I was tired. Can anyone relate to all that? I’m guessing many of you can.

This is why I love New Years. I absolutely buy into the completely arbitrary assignment of fresh starts and resets as of January first, so I am making plans to get my groove back. I started back to therapy a few months ago, which has helped fertilize the soil for my intended 2023 blossoming. I also bought a new Passion Planner, so I’m all set. Really, I’ve always believed that with the right planner, anything is possible!

Instead of goals this year, I am focusing on words. This is not a new idea in the world, but it is new for me. I have five words for the year, which is a lot, but that’s where I landed. I’m going to share one each in the next few blogs.

Today’s word is creativity. I’m starting with this one because getting back into the groove of blogging is a way to hopefully get my writing juices flowing. I am excited about my current novel-in-process. I love the story and the characters. Yet it has been hard for me to actually get the words on paper. I’m dedicated to writing more this year and hopefully finishing the first draft of this book.

That’s not my only creative focus, though. I have always loved scrapbooking and kept pretty much up to date until the pandemic hit. You’d think that being stuck at home would have been the perfect time to work on photo albums, but I just didn’t. I think it was hard to look at all those pictures of being out and about and doing fun things when we were not doing any of that. In any case, I got out of that groove and have missed it. I’ve missed the process of doing it, I’ve missed the feeling of knowing my memories were preserved, and I’ve missed looking at the completed albums.

Getting back into scrapbooking has happened in drips and dribbles. Much of what holds me back is guilt around what I “should” be doing instead. Aside from the guilt about family time or housework or all the other dumb tasks of real life, I additionally feel guilt that if I’m going to take the time to be creative, I should be writing. And then when I try and write, I think about how I want to scrapbook. It’s all just my thoughts. It’s all up to me. Nobody cares, except I apparently care a lot!

So the word is creativity. The plan is to give myself grace and permission to either write or scrapbook as I desire, but to set intentions and spend time doing one or the other each week. This past weekend I scrapbooked. I got a lot done, and I have a lot to do. But last night, my son was looking at the albums, and my heart swelled. He was enjoying the experience of reliving those moments. It felt like I had given him a gift, and he had given one back to me. That’s inspiring. I’d really like to get to a point where I am internally motivated in my endeavors, but at this point external validation still matters.

Today, I am blogging, and if you want to give me some external validation to help motivate me, that would be great!