Feb 7, 2022
My 2022 word of the
year is "replenish," in large part because I recognize that I need
to replenish my personal life, my family life and my health, both
physical and mental. Today I thought I'd talk through some of the
self care things I am planning to incorporate this year to help me
live into this whole replenishment situation.
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TRANSCRIPTION
It's so easy to let
other shit in our lives takeover while our own fulfillment and
happiness and, and care falls by the wayside. Today, I'm going to
be reflecting on my 20, 22 self care list in ways that I am going
to replenish myself while I do all of the other things in my life
that I am required to do that.
I need to do that. I,
that I want to do. Hi, everybody. Welcome to the uncurated life
podcast. I'm Cindy Gunter, Baldo. And today we are reflecting on
some self care and a big reason. I want to talk about this. Well,
there's two big reasons for one. Um, part of it is because I think
that sometimes this, the idea of self care gets all sort of out of
whack on the Instagrams where it's, you know, things like get a
facial and go on vacation, all that, which is all well and
good.
But. I think sometimes
self care is doing what we need to make sure that we are leading
the life or like a life that is as UN fettered is not the boredom.
Maybe an burdened with excessive things like taking care of
yourself in a way to prevent certain types of burnout or certain
types of pain or certain types of injury from happening to you so
that you can go through your life.
Uneventful, maybe. I
don't know. Anyway, I feel like some of the ways self-care has
talked about just feels like both privileged and. Super hokey. And
I want to talk about some of the things I want to focus on this
year that I know will be more nourishing to my body and my mind.
And secondly, the other big reason is that while I am a firm
believer in serving others, like I am an over volunteer.
I mean, shit. Like I,
I fully believe that we can find so much peace in serving others.
The cliche of not being able to pour from an empty pitcher, it
does. It's a cliche for a reason. It holds true. Right? And this is
really smacked me in the face this year. This past year, my life
has been very up ended in 2021.
Aside from just aside
from the global pandemic, which in and of itself has appended so
many of our, all of our lives in different ways. But this past year
we had to move from California to Denver, uh, because of my
husband's job. W our custody situation changed dramatically when
the kids decided to come with us.
Full-time one of my
kids who was already struggling with mental health and physical
health problems. Both of those things really spiraled this year.
And so, so much of the second half of my year was devoted to them
and the needs that they. On top of that, you know, I'm in kidney
failure and the doctors appointments and everything else, it's
just, it's become so easy.
And I've said this
here on the podcast and on my YouTube channel, it's been so easy
for my life to just be work and doctor's appointments and that's
it. And it's, it's just gotten really hard. Things have been, I'm
like running on fumes. It feels like now believe me, when I say I
know I was needed in all of those circumstances and others that I'm
not even going to bring up here.
Cause I don't, that's
not what this book. I don't want it to go on for that long, but.
Those situations needed me and I would not have made other choices
given the chance. I knew that I needed to be here for my family. I
knew that I needed to be here for my husband here for my kids here
in our move and taking care of myself the best I can.
I recognize I was
doing the best I could in those circumstances, but that MTS pitcher
situation, the cliche I was talking about it's me right now. I'm
dry, dry a fucking. My picture is, is fucking dusty. So this year a
big piece of my goals has had to do with replenishing my life,
which is why replenish is actually my word of the year.
And I'll link the
video where I talk about my 20, 22 goals in the show notes. Uh,
it's, it's really important to me this year that I, that I try to,
to. I keep coming in the words, replenish and nourish are the words
I keep using, but they're really kind of what I want to use because
I, if another crisis happens right now, I don't, I mean, I'm sure
I'll rise to the occasion, but I am so close to burning out in so
many different areas of my life.
And I know when I hit
burnout really hard, it takes a major toll on my health mentally
and physically, and currently, especially with my physical health.
There, isn't a lot of. For that, like my physical health is already
on a thread to begin with. So burning out really hard. It would
just be a major problem and it would impact more than just
me.
So this self self-care
list we're going to talk about today is really. Just it's a list of
ideas for me to like, for me specifically, to talk through them
with you, but also to give you some thoughts as to things you might
want to try and incorporate into your life, this. So that we can
all like take better care of ourselves.
I also have a free,
like little printable infographic thing. If you sign up for my
email newsletter this month with some of these ideas on it, some
ideas for you. If you're already on the newsletter, it's going to
come. I believe today, today is the first Monday of the month. So
it should be in your inboxes today.
But if you are new,
then go sign up for the newsletter and you'll get it as a little
bonus. Whatever. Anyway, let's talk about this. Let's talk about my
self care list and I invite you to think about your own ideas while
I'm talking about this and share them on social media. You can
email me Cindy at Cindy country,
baldor.com.
You can respond to the
email newsletter that goes. I see all of those responses, or you
can post it on Instagram, in your stories and tag me at
@llamaletters with some self-care ideas. So we can kind of co like
collate them and have a big list because that would be. So let's
talk about it, right? First of all, and I'm kind of thinking about
these in terms of buckets.
So the first bucket is
to care for my physical health and this, this is probably the
easiest one for me to figure out because I am in kidney failure and
I have very specific things I need to be doing in order to be
compliant for transplant. In order for me to be feeling as good as
I can when like, my, my average is not very good, but I don't feel
very good on the average.
But even that average,
sometimes it can be hard to reach when I'm not doing the things I'm
supposed to be doing. So. It's it's amazing when you're this deep
into a chronic illness, when tiny fuck-ups can make you feel so bad
for so long, it really makes you think about that. And you forget
when you were back in the day, when you might've felt better on a
normal basis, how you took for granted the little fuck-ups and you
could do that.
And it wouldn't like
kill you. Like, even if you're not, even if you're just you're
you're fully, you're fully health. And you don't have a chronic
illness. If you are older than the age of say 30, you probably can
recognize that you, if you try to have like a night out drinking
with your friends, the way you did, when you were 21, the recovery
period is so much longer like two drinks, and you're hung over for
like a day, as opposed to before where you could pound drinks and
feel like sprightly the next morning, because you're getting older
and your body just can't handle it as much as.
Well, for me, it's
like that, but it's with all sorts of small things. If I eat three
McDonald's singular, McDonald's French fries. I swell up and I feel
like I'm going to die for the rest of the evening. Like, that's the
kind of thing that I need to keep an eye out for. So for my caring,
for my physical health bucket on my list is making sure, taking my
meds consistently taking my blood pressure every day, which is a
big one that I'm still struggling.
Even into this year,
getting enough water, giving up soda, going outside every day,
going for walks every day, getting on my Peloton on a regular
basis, all of these things while they sound just like health
maintenance things for me are truly self care because a by doing
them, I am ensuring that I'm going to feel as good as I can on any
given day and B uh, it helps me so that.
Um, when it comes time
for transplant, not only am I in as good enough of constitution as
I can be for transplant, but also the transplant center will have
no reason to thumbs down me. There's all these, you know, articles
in the paper about people being denied, kidney transplants or heart
transplants, because they refuse to get the COVID vaccine.
And all I have to say
to that is motherfucker. Do you know anything about organ
transplant? It's not just the COVID vaccine, a it's all vaccines B
uh, It's a. That's all vaccines. And if you're not compliant, not
just with vaccines, but with everything they tell you to do, then
they won't do it because getting a transplant not only requires
the, the gift of life that is the organ, but so many people and so
much time and resources go into a transplant that they do like, and
there's a limited supply of both organs and.
The teams to actually
perform the transplants that they want to make sure the organs are
going to the people who are going to make sure they take care of
it. Anyway, as a tangent point, being caring for my physical
health, it's all the basic habits I know I should be doing, and I
just need to be consistent.
Next is caring for my
mental health and this year, a big piece of that is going to be in
reclaiming time for myself. So time off time off that I take with
my kids or my husband or both, but also time to take off just for
me, like to go have a cup of coffee on my own, or to go to a movie,
or I'm probably not going to a movie it's still pandemic time, but
like doing things for me just on my own that are not working
like.
Cultivating hobbies
that have nothing to do with work like acrylic painting. I'm
working on some for my living room right now and cooking with my
walk. Although I haven't been doing that much since my, I had a
couple of falls recently and I jacked my hands up and I just
haven't had the, the nerve to, to cook with the walk, but that's on
my list, you know?
Uh, the houseplants
I'm trying to deal with that will actually show up in another
bucket and prioritizing personal planning over work planning. That
for me is probably the biggest piece of self-care that I've already
been successful with. And it's already starting to show some subtle
results is sitting down every morning with my coffee and pulling my
personal planner out first.
And thinking about my
day outside of work has been pretty epic so far, and I'm using. And
I mean, epic, like it's been really great so far in forcing me to
really focus on my life as a whole, not just work, which is
something I was not doing this past six months. Or even fucking
that six years, Jesus, but like it's, it's felt really good.
I noticing some
changes just in my home life, in terms of the way I'm present in my
home life. So that in and of itself of all of them is the biggest
piece of this, but really prioritizing time for myself as well as
time with my kids. And my husband has been is, is already like high
on my list for this year and is going to stay high on my list for
the.
The next category is
my spiritual health. Now I am not someone who believes in, in, in
like gods or a God or whatever. I am a humanist, but I'm also a,
you, you and I have really been missing my, you you community. I.
Had really taken a step away from it during the pandemic because of
my kidney function dropping so drastically, I've been so involved
with it before being on the board and everything else.
But between between
feeling like shit and also like everything going virtual, I wound
up taking a strong step. Even before we found out about the Denver
move. My step back had been pretty, pretty hardcore. Now that we've
moved, uh, we have a new, you, you congregation we'd like to start
visiting, but with the Omicron variant, they'd gone back to virtual
services.
And I was I'm, I'm
really not a fan of the virtual services just in general. So I
wasn't sure, but I'm going to start attending those at least once a
month. And I really want to start introducing myself to people. My
hope is by the end of, by the end of this year to be. In their
choir, like to have joined the congregation and then joined the
choir, assuming choir stuff is going to happen.
You know? So that is
one way to really care for my spiritual health, but in other and
other, another aspect of that is reading. I actually have a bunch
of books on my Kindle waiting for me to read them. And some of them
are fiction. You know, I'm going to read new fantasy series this
year, blah, blah, blah.
But a big piece of
that is reading books that fill me. Spiritual cup and the books in
that category tend to be books sort of in a few different veins.
Right? I have some books I want to read that are about, they're
like deep dives into different aspects of religion, which for me,
the seeking of knowledge about other faiths, other religions, I've
always been a big piece of my spiritual life.
Not because I believe
in the things that these books say, but because I like to draw my
own bits of wisdom from different faith traditions, even if the
dogma of them is not something that I'm super into, but also really
learning about other religions is something that really gives me a
lot of spiritual nourishment.
I don't know if that
makes sense, but it makes sense to me, the. There's two other kinds
of chunks of books, sort of in this category. Another chunk of
books and books in this category are books that are kind of social
justice, a bent of social justice. I've got a handful of those that
I really want to read.
Um, and then finally,
the final kind of chunk of those is some books specifically
written. There's an author named Kate bowler. She's a minister and
a teacher, I believe at duke university. And I've read one of her
books. It was called. Looking at my Kindle app because it was
called, uh everything's. Um, Whereas it, everything happens for a
reason.
And I was like, oh
fuck you. Right. But then the subtitle is, and other lies I've
loved. And this is a great book that she wrote about her feelings
when she was diagnosed with cancer. She has another book that just
came out. Called, uh, no cure for being human and other truths. I
need to hear so that one's on my list of books to read as well as
this goes to the more history of other faith traditions.
But she's got a book
called blessed, which is about the, um, the history of the
prosperity gospel and that one I've started, but I haven't finished
yet. And so books like that are on my list. To care for my
spiritual health, you know, just expanding my horizons, reading
about other people's perspectives, reading, things like that.
That's, that's kind of
on my list. So anyway, that's that bucket then? There's the
situational health, which is caring for my situational health,
which. A lot of that has to do with the house, the, my space, my,
the place around me and everything like that. So on this list is a
lot of like project based self care stuff.
Right. So working on
my home environment with. Organizing and projects. I'm trying to
get at least one organization project under my belt each month.
This year, uh, last month I put all my Christmas decorations away
in reorganize, the big closets down here, which felt so good when
it was done this month, I'm going to be working on my closet.
I'm also going to be
working on, oh, what did I say? I was going to work on this month.
You know, it's amazing when you don't remember shit, even though
you just said. Uh, the laundry room is on my list. Cause I have
some cabinets that I want to reorganize and I wanna get one of
those little racks that hangs off the wall that you can unfold to
hang, you know, like sweaters and shit from anyway point being, is
that working like doing organizational projects around my house is
so much fun for me, but I need to actually make the time for
it.
Otherwise I start to
get stressed out and then I don't do it because I'm worried I don't
have the time for it. Definitely that I would love to start a
raised bed garden in the spring. I could put a garden in the ground
if I wanted to, but a, our soul, uh, soil here is Sandy because we
are near the dam and they, I guess when they dug out for the
reservoir, they put all the sand in RNA.
So it takes a lot of
work to get the sand really ready for green vegetables. And I'm
just, I don't have that many fucks to give right now. Plus I've
seen some raised, a friend of mine showed me some raised bed
gardens that are like waist high. Like they're up on stand so that
you don't have to bend over so much, which is huge for me because
bending over is one of the hardest things for me because of my
kidneys.
So I'd love to do
that. Um, I want to find a new farmer's market this year that it's
going to be our new favorite that we go to on a regular basis. I
want to play with my Layla and my, my Layla puppy and my Lulu
kitty. I want to care for and add to my indoor houseplant
collection, which one of my goals for this year on my bucket list
goals for this year is to get a large one.
And we will see how
that goes. I actually, as I'm recording this, have a couple of
plants that according to my plan to app are going to be, need to be
repotted soon. And that's going to be an adventure cause I've never
done that successfully. So we will see how that goes. All of those
things around the house, decorating the walls and doing the
projects, playing with the dogs, going outside, stuff that has to
do with my environment.
That is my situational
health. And that's what I really want to care for this year. And a
lot of my goals are kind of based around this, this, uh, particular
candidate. And then finally, and this is one that is hard for me to
say, because it doesn't feel like self care when I say it. And that
is caring for my financial health.
I I've talked about it
before. I have a very stressed out relationship with money. So the
thought of doing stuff with finances does not feel like self care.
When I say it it's like seen, it sounds like self torture. But
ultimately I know it will bring me peace to feel in control of
things because when I feel out of control, I feel very unpeaceful
so feeling like I've got at least some level of control over things
will help me feel peace, some peace.
And also knowing that
I have taken care of some of these kinds of adult things will also
help me feel peace. So some of the things on this list would be to
hire an accountant this year. Um, set up automatic savings and
retirement, which I actually did already. And it feels pretty good.
We'll see how it feels as it starts happening.
Um, and having
meetings with Jesse about money, trying to help both my kids with
their first bank accounts to have good money habits, and then model
them for them as well. Like I flat out told RJ, I was like, yeah,
I'm not the person you want to look to for good money habits. Look
to Jesse, but we'll do this together.
Caring for my
financial health is part of it because I know that that's a source
of stress for me. And if I can just face some of those fears that
might actually bring me a level of peace, which is important for
self care. So these are some of my ideas for self care in 2022, I
would love to hear from you either via email or on Instagram, what
some of your ideas for self-care are this year.
So be sure to tag me
at @llamaletters, let me know. Anyway, thank you so much to my
patrons for sponsoring this episode, as they always do. If you are
curious about becoming a patron, you can check out
www.patreon.com/cindyguentertbaldo
to find out. I hope this year is full
of ways for you to take care of yourself because you are
fabulous.
You deserve it. You
are not unworthy. And that's important to understand I'm saying
this for you. I'm saying this for myself as well. So just remember
that. Look yourself in the eye in the mirror and know that you are
working. Because that's, it just is. Ooh, somebody loves me anyway.
I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day rest of your
week.
I'll catch you next
time. And until next time then peace out.