Monthly Goals

I have been having luck with having one monthly goal.  In September, my monthly goal was to walk 10,000 steps every day.  I did that.  In October, I participated in a spin class challenge--each spin class, our goal was mileage--I rode hard to get my mileage up and was successful in each class.  I had planned for November to be the month where I ate 5 servings of fruits and vegetables each day.

I have already failed.  Each and every day I have failed.  But I have been writing a poem every day.  I hadn't planned to do so.  But this morning, after finishing my Penelope and arthritis poem, I realized that I was at day 6 of daily poetry writing.

Let me see if I can keep this up.  April is the traditional time to write a poem a day, and I've done that once and failed to do that several times.  November is traditionally a time where people are trying to write a novel in one huge swoop of a month.  I will sit in my corner, quietly writing a poem.

I'm also participating in an online course.  I've taken a workshop with the teacher before--she's the one at a past Create in Me retreat that turned me on to sketching with Copic markers.  We're using Joyce Rupp's Open the Door, which has a meditation for each day.  Once a week, we'll meet by way of an online Zoom meeting.  We're all part of a private Facebook group where we can post thoughts and images.

This week's readings have explored the doors of the heart.  On Sunday, I made this sketch, which is blurry, no matter how I tried to photograph it differently:

After our weekly Zoom session, I wrote a haiku and made a new sketch:

This morning, I made this Facebook post to the group:

As I woke up periodically throughout the night, I had this recurring thought: my heart is a homeless shelter. I will spend the day puzzling over this image. If my heart is a homeless shelter, who/what are the residents? Ideas that aren't welcome in the larger world? Ideas that have yet to take root in me? I don't have an image yet . . . maybe it will come later.

I am already finding November to be a month of inspiration--my goal is for that feeling to continue!