The prompts for the December Reflections Challenge for today and Sunday are “I said hello to…” and “I said goodbye to…” but I’m just going to put both in one post. There were some small adjustments that I made this year that are working out better for my schedule and my sanity.
I said hello to…
- Rise and Shine Book Club (public library) – I always enjoy finding new people who like to talk about books, so joining the monthly discussion about different genres and recommendations within them was a sure win. I enjoyed both the online and the in-person versions, but I am definitely partial to meeting in person where there is coffee and free ARCs to take home.
- RIC – Our church is exploring whether we want to be a Reconciling in Christ church, and the process has been a lot of work but it’s important to me, so it’s worth it. I think it’s going much more slowly than our team anticipated, but not necessarily because people are opposed. The feedback we have gotten from the people who are participating has been really positive; we just aren’t getting a lot of engagement from even some active members. We have a small church, which means those who are active are typically stretched pretty thin. So what comes across as apathy may just be the fact that they’re already committed to doing a lot of things with the church and are hesitant to commit to one more thing. We don’t want to rush a vote, though, because it’s important that as many people as possible understand what being inclusive (and thus the designation) means before we claim it as something we do. And this understanding requires engagement. This is probably not a good time for me to reflect on it, as I am currently pretty discouraged. Maybe people will be more enthusiastic about having these conversations in the new year.
- Making an album – Probably the most exciting new thing of the year is the album I’m working on with Sarah. We are doing field recordings, playing instruments, singing hymns, and adding spoken word pieces (etc.) on the theme of growing up in West Texas. We are getting a lot of recordings together the days after Christmas. Someday, I’ll be able to share a link with you!
I said goodbye to…
- Pilates – I mean, not really completely goodbye. I’ve been doing mat work at home and I still make a few classes a month. But I haven’t been to the studio as much this year as when I first started going. I wanted to start going back since being vaccinated but…it’s been so nice not having to wrangle it into my schedule, and I’ve gotten used to that. The studio only offers classes on Monday-Friday mornings from 6:00-11:00, Monday-Thursday evenings at 5:30, 6:30, and 7:30, and Saturday/Sunday mornings. This doesn’t really fit my life. If there was just an 8:30 or 9:00 class on a couple of weeknights, or if they offered Friday/Saturday/Sunday night classes, I would be able to make 8 times a month no problem. I might even upgrade my account to unlimited. As it is, though, scheduling is a struggle. Before the pandemic, I used to take a class every free weeknight I had (leaving me no actual free weeknights, which was not ideal for my mental health) or set an alarm on Saturday (OMG THE WORST I HATE IT) to go to a class then. If that didn’t fill out my 8 classes I was paying for each month, I would shift my entire work schedule some days so that I could make either the 5:30 p.m. class or the 7:00 a.m. class (see note above re: THE WORST). Now? I’m not so motivated to kill myself making it work. Turns out, I’d rather exercise at times that actually work with my existing schedule. That’s been working out pretty nicely.
- Traditional grocery shopping/food service – I can count on one hand the number of times this year I walked into a grocery store or ate in a restaurant, and I LOVE IT. Curbside pickup is everything I never knew I always wanted, and I’m so happy it’s persisted in many of the places where I shop/dine. Occasionally, it’s a pain in the ass when they leave things out I need or when they don’t plan well enough to honor the times they list as available, but overall, it’s one of my favorite services, and I may never go back to the way things were before.
Are there any changes that have made life a little less stressful for you this year?
M. Suzanne Terry 
Interesting about the RIC stuff! My church is in the process of looking for a denomination (we were an unaffiliated church plant) and I’m on a leadership team that’s a part of that.
It’s taking a lot of discussion just to add an extra designation to our ELCA-ness. I can only imagine the ton of work that goes into finding a suitable denomination for a whole church. Whew. That’s quite the task!