One of my favorite podcasts, That’s So Retrograde, has a segment called roses and thorns where they share the best and worst parts of their life at the moment. I love this segment because it ranges from the general best life moment highlights too favorite product discoveries. Roses & Thorns is very broad-reaching in its ability to be an open category for favorites and unfavorites of the mental, physical, and spiritual variety.

I’ve decided to adopt the practice on this here blog to spotlight the roses, be transparent about the thorny parts of life, and most of all – roll out my music playlists ( 🤞 on a monthly basis)

JANUARY 2020 PLAYLIST

1 hr 27 mins | blanket_fort_adventures

ROSES:

La Jolla – At the beginning of January my bestie came down from Washington with her husband and our mutual unicorn of a friend in tow. We went on a beautiful hike in Torrey Pines and then enjoyed a lunch at Trilogy Sanctuary afterward. But my favorite part of the day was going back to their hotel and relaxing on the couch with Property Brothers playing on the tv. No one felt obligated to entertain each other or be highly entertained/ stimulated by our surroundings, we were just enjoying the company.

A Second Monitor – Most of January I was a mess, but I pulled up my big girl pants for one day and purchased a large ass second monitor at nearly 40% off to help improve my work from home situation. It allows me to execute analytic reporting in half the time and increased productivity ten-fold. I only work from home one day a week now, when for the last four years it was nearly daily. I wish I would have made this move sooner, but maybe there was a lesson I was meant to learn from my previous pain.

Archery – My work hosted a complimentary archery class and I totally signed up for it. I’m not the most athletic person in the world, but I was pretty good at archery when I was a child. Now as an adult I think my child’s mind might have elaborated on my archery talent because it did not come back to me like riding a bike. However, it was still a wicked fun afternoon and Dan got to join too!

THORNS

Negative Self-Talk – I was really abusive to myself in January. Actually, eating McDonald’s triggered a few moments of severe spiraling, so I’m cutting myself off from that for a while. But the negative-talk was really bad, and I did some journaling where I talked to that abusive part of myself like she was one of those characters from the movie Inside Out. The exercise helped a lot, and I’ve been able to soothe the angry inner child a little better lately. My previous post goes into this in more detail.

My Dog Going to the ER – Again my previous post explains this entire story.

Let me know your rose or thorn of January, I’d love to know!