I had so much trouble trying to post this earlier in the week that I’m almost afraid to try again. There’s obviously something in that original post that the Universe doesn’t think I should be sharing. So I’ve rewritten it to take out all the personal explanations and just left the list for now.

As I was thanking my commenters yesterday, I was also checking out their blogs and found that Mary at Randomness of Me was playing this really cool game. I love memes and brain teasers, and this one looked like fun, so I said I’d play along.

It’s an easy game to play. You get a random letter and then post 10 things you love that start with that letter. If anyone wants to play along, then simply leave a comment and let me know, and I’ll make sure you get a letter.

It’s a great game just for fun but I like it because it really makes you search inside yourself to think of things that you love. It’s a great tool when you’re working on finding your voice because one of the most important questions you can ask yourself is “What do I love?”

At first I thought I’d be really hard-pressed to come up with 10 things that start with the letter “D”. But once I got going, more things kept popping into my head and they’re still showing up. I ended up with 17 altogether, and the list that I’m posting is not the first list I came up with last night. In fact, I just thought of another one that I’ll tack on to the end as a bonus one.

So here then are ten (plus one) of the D’s I love:

1. Dogs
2. Daydreaming
3. Dancing
4. Daisies
5. Dolphins
6. Donuts
7. Dark Chocolate
8. Delilah Devlin novels
9. Driving my truck
10. Dresses

and now for the bonus one…

11. Ducks (to photograph, not eat)

and one more I couldn’t believe I forgot…

12. Dad – he’s been gone 13 years this week, but not a day goes by I don’t think about him and miss him still.

It’s been a very strange week, but a wonderful one nonetheless.

On Friday afternoon I ended up with some time to kill whilst waiting for my son and so used it to reflect a bit on my week and to jot down some thoughts. Any other time I would have been late for picking him up, but that day I planned for the traffic, and the roads were pretty much empty. Coming home was a different story though… got here and the police had our street blocked off. Don’t ask me why though because I still haven’t found out what happened.

Anyways, it was just another one of those things that made this week so strange. It started out great. Sunday and Monday were really productive, and Tuesday I spent a lot of the day watching the inauguration and indulging my inner historian. But after that it was like experiencing a serious let down. I felt like I was in a fog for most of Wednesday and Thursday, and was hardly able to do anything but sleep.

But even though it was an unproductive week, it was still good I didn’t get stressed out over anything, and that’s a major accomplishment for me. I paid attention to my body and gave it what it needed, allowing myself to sleep as and when I needed. I did all my Wonder Woman Challenges this week with the exception of an Artist’s date yesterday. I’m going to have to pick another day besides Saturday to do that one because Saturday just isn’t working out for me as a day when I can get away on my own.

If there was a downside to the week, it was the problems I had with wordpress not accepting my posts. That threw my whole writing/posting schedule off, and although I didn’t stress over it, it did affect my mindset for the entire week. I didn’t want to take the risk of writing something and losing it when I tried to save, so I just didn’t write at all. And that got me a bit frustrated that my business building isn’t going according to plan this month, and is not as successful as I’d like it to be at the moment. My first big goal of the year is to move at the end of March, and I will admit, I’m already getting anxious about it.

One thing I’ve noticed this week is the definite relationship between mindset and physical health. I always knew it was there, but I’ve had proof in spades this week. I’ve been unfocused and in a daze mentally, and at my morning weigh-in today my weight was up, and my glucose readings have been on the high side all week.

Another thing I’ve noticed this week is that I seem to be developing a pattern of withdrawing in the middle of the week. This was the second week in a row that I didn’t talk to anyone, didn’t play on twitter, check emails, or do anything that required communication for a couple of days. And it’s not a pattern that I want to develop. This week was even harder to turn everything back on and jump back into the fray.

A big part of my challenge is to be more open and allow myself to connect with others. I can honestly say that I didn’t realize how hard it would be. I think deep down somewhere I figured that it would be just like flicking a switch and I’d turn on the extroverted part of me. Only it really doesn’t work that way. It seems to me that even though humans are social creatures, being social does not come natural to everyone. It’s like any other muscle development. You have to use it to build it, and when you don’t use it, it weakens and atrophies pretty quickly. And I can honestly admit that my social muscles need a lot of strengthening. :)

This week I’m making a conscious effort to not withdraw at all; to develop my social muscles a little more, and to not allow the little setbacks to ruin my plans for the whole week. The month isn’t over yet, and although I realistically have to say I won’t meet the goals I had set for myself this month, there’s still a week to get something done so that it’s not a total loss.

Here’s to a wonderful week!

What are you doing to make sure your week is wonderful?