This morning’s walk was a snowshoe with Luna on the lake. It was a blustery morning. The overnight winds had filled in a lot of the hard-earned snowshoe trails we had built yesterday. Luna got a bit of snow caught in one of her paws, as she does occasionally. So I cleaned off her paw and set off again. Except Luna wasn’t keen on walking further. Building habits with friends is so much better than going at it alone. But what do you do when your best friend wants to sit one out? As I continued to trudge along, Luna was sitting, resolutely refusing to continue on the walk with me. And so, I kept going. Because I am trying to keep at re-establishing my morning walk habit. Whether Luna wants to join me to help make it easier for me or not. The good news is that she eventually joined me, for which I rewarded her with a treat, of course.

And remember, if one best friend wants to sit one out, you always have your very best friend, your future self, right along beside you, cheering your present self on. That future self is the one who feels so great after you’ve executed on that thing you made a promise to that future self to do.

And we finished our morning trudge through the snow together; the three of us: me, Luna and my future self.

And a trudge it was. Even though you may think you have executed a habit so many times that you you can do it without thinking, that it usually takes you almost no effort. There will be forces of nature that will bury that well-paved habit path with a bunch of snow or some other form of resistance will appear out of no where, and you’ll feel like you’re back near the beginning of building up that habit. And you’ll do it anyway.

Last week’s re-introduced habit was early morning sunlight. This week’s habit is moving more. And so, after our snowshoe on the lake, I had to spend a bit of time remembering how to access the ‘one and done’ workout series that I bought for about $30 back in November when I was out visiting Shelli. During that week we did one of the 10-12 minute workouts together. And it felt great. Sadly, shortly after I got back home and was trying to keep up the habit of doing those workouts daily, I stopped. Totally stopped. So here I am again, re-establishing that habit. This morning, instead of Shelli, it was my future self beside me cheering me on. And it felt great.

Before I went outside today I marvelled at the beauty and fragility of some icicles that had built up at the front of the cottage where melting snow flows over the eavestroughs. The building up of those icicles is a bit like the building up of a habit. The icicles are formed one drop of water at a time. Some of the drops stick to build up the icicle. Others of them drop right off and don’t stick. And eventually you have a beautiful, seeminging strong icicle. But the icicle doesn’t stay around forever, it may melt, or it may break off. And the process will start all over again. Some drops sticking and accumulating to build a strong icicle and others dropping right off.

And I ate some veggies and protein for breakfast. Go me!

This evening I worked on making some PDF versions of the instructions for the boxes that I’ll be making tomorrow in the CHMA Arts for All program. Box 113 is sized to hold A2 cards. Box 407 is sized to hold bars of soap that I’ve already bought to include in my Shoeboxes next year. I’ll include some details about those in tomorrow’s post.