Evening Commute

I was driving home from work yesterday, taking the scenic route along Riverside Road, and the sun coming through the bare tree branches and reflecting off the water of the river made my soul a little bit warmer than it already was. In an effort to avoid being cliché, I've tried very hard not to dedicate an entire post to the beautiful, sunny, perfect spring weather we've been blessed with this week, but the sun looked so perfect and 50 degrees feels like a heatwave after living in a winery tundra for the past few months so I caved and decided to dedicate a  post to this balmy and beautiful weather. 

Below is a picture that I snapped from my car window (Yes, it was rolled down the whole drive home!). I didn't think that the people in the cars waiting behind me would mind too much that I lagged a little longer after the traffic light turned green to capture such a gorgeous scene -- I have a theory that this sunshiny weather makes everyone a little bit nicer :) 

Power Flow

So, it's been a month since my first (and last!) post, and I have to admit that I've been sort of a slacker in the blogging department, though, it's not for lack of beautiful things in my life. I guess I just needed a big boost of inspiration to get my blogging juices flowing and my fingers typing..

Yoga.

It had been years since the last time I took a yoga class, and I'd been itching to get back into it. I finally found a studio that I was interested in checking out, PAI Yoga in Dublin, and I even managed to convince my sweet and adventurous boyfriend to accompany me to my first class (Spoiler alert - he liked it!!). We signed up for "Power Flow for All Levels" and it was a matter of minutes before all of the nerves, anxiety, worry and tenseness melted away. It was 60 minutes of sweet release, and during that hour I thought of nothing other than getting my body to do what I wanted it to do. It was rewarding, peaceful and beautiful, and at the end of the class I was feeling refreshed and hungry for more.

So I signed up for a two week PAI pass and jumped back into the Flow again tonight. My body is sore, but I was actually surprised at how well it responded to being stretched and twisted to its max. I guess some of my old gymnastics muscles weren't completely gone, they were just buried under 10 years of inactivity.

And for the first time in weeks I feel like I've been able to shed some of the stress that I've been carrying around on my shoulders. Some people get their release through running, or lifting weights, or kickboxing and I've always struggled with that. I can't stop thinking about work or bills or cleaning my apartment when I'm on a treadmill and I can't lose myself in free weights. But I think I've finally found my escape and I'm looking forward to taking more classes and seeing where the beauty of yoga can take me next.

The Beginning.

I'm not one to make New Year's resolutions...at least not one to make them and keep them. I've made too many unresolved resolutions that are always tossed aside before the snow begins to melt into spring. This year I decided to change it up a bit. I opted to make life-changing goals in the hope that I'd end up with a more permanent adoption.

So, this is the part where I list my life-changing goals for you (and the rest of the digital world):

1. Write more often
2. Seek out and appreciate the subtle, beautiful things in life
3. Be more positive and uplifting

I think the first step towards making changes in your life is to set small, reachable goals that are fairly simple to achieve. These goals will (hopefully) eventually become woven into every day life. I hate to call them habits because habits can come with a negative connotation. I guess I'll call them positive habits.

One of the very first positive habits that I want to try to tackle is this blog. Not only does a blog require me to address my first life-changing goal (to write more often), but it will also allow me to address my second LCG as well. Using this blog as an outlet to write about those subtle beauties that I encounter throughout the day will give me a concrete reason to seek them out. I know it will take some work at first. It will probably feel like more of an assignment than a pleasure. I can already see myself scrambling to find and then remember some lovely little gem to blog about and scrambling again to actually write a lovely blog post at the end of a busy day, but I hope that it will eventually become a more organic and joyful nugget in my daily activities. 

So cheers to hope. 

And to cheers you for bearing with me as I begin this journey toward a more beautiful life.