April: The Month of Letters

You have never experienced true awkwardness until you attempt to write an unsolicited fan letter to an organization.

"Dear Aldi,  You are super cool and you have great prices."

That's right, folks.  For the month of April, I'm going to be writing hand-written letters to people and organizations that I admire or have made a difference in my life.  I've created a list of authors, politicians, celebrities, musicians, podcast hosts, and other notable people; plus some organizations and institutions.

Some rules:

• I could easily spend this entire month writing to my family members, my mentors, and the local leaders that I so greatly admire--but I decided to focus on those people or organizations that I don't have any close ties with.
• I plan on averaging a letter a day.  I may skip a day or two but will make it up later in the week. 
• I'm not writing with any expectations.  I'm not doing it to get an autograph, or free stuff, or even a note a back.  I'm doing it just to let someone know that they made a connection or an impact somewhere else in the world. 

 
I'm only a few days in and the process is a lot harder and awkwarder than I ever imagined.  It's really difficult to sound level-headed and sane when writing a complimentary hand-written note to a large corporation.

"P.S. Don't ever change, Aldi. Hugs and kisses to you and your organic produce."

March: The Month of Meditation, Part III. Namaste.

Besides taking three classes on meditation, I also used a few different aps on my phone.  

1. Headspace

One of the quotes on the Headspace website brags that “Headspace is helping cause a cultural shift in how we think and talk about meditation.”  It seems to be meditation rebranded for professionals—it concentrates on how mindfulness can be helpful for stress and focus. 

Headspace wasn’t for me.  It felt too antiseptic, too removed from anything even vaguely spiritual.  But it would be a great place to start for someone who is kind of uncomfortable with the idea of meditation.  

 

 2. Buddhify

This one had a cool feature—a color wheel of different situations and different types of meditation.  I used a few of them and really enjoyed the variety.  I even tried to do it at work once but I felt too self-conscious.  

3. Calm

This one was my favorite.  It’s the first one I tried so perhaps I'm just unfairly biased.   I did a lovely “Seven Days of Calm” program.  It has programmable background noise (I love the ocean one!) which is helpful in my loud, creaky house. 

And now.....monthly recap! 

On a grading scale from A through F, how would you rate this?  Did you accomplish your goal? 
I’m going to give it a B+.  
I loved the classes, mainly because they were so outside of my comfort zone.  They gave me an extra facet of understanding that I wouldn’t have gotten if I had tried to do it all by myself. 

Did you do this each and every day? 
Mostly.  Skipped maybe three or four times all month. 

Will you do anything different moving forward? 
Yes.  I'm filing under important tool for dealing with stress.  I could see myself getting in the regular habit of it if I was particular worried or stressed about something.
I’ve also caught myself concentrating on the way that I breathe—when I’m tense, falling asleep, or even just waiting.   I’m going to keep Calm app on my phone and try the “21 Days of Calm” next.