Tonight something special arrived. 🙂
I've *never* held a published book of my creation before.
Is it self-published? Yep! The industry's not always ready for our labours of love, and the translation community wasn't interested.
But still a joy. And good timing too, after my first day's work on the next, Tomás Carrasquilla's most famous novel! 🇨🇴🥳
So what did I do? 🤔 Baked a celebratory loaf of course! To share with neighbours this week. 👌
@MLClark I spent the majority of my life focusing on being kind to others and never to myself ... in my later years I'm trying to focus more on me and caring about me since none of the aforementioned people gave two shits about me in the end. I'm slowly learning to put myself first which feels insanely selfish and hollow. It's an ongoing process for me but I'm trying to do better at encouraging, instead of punishing, myself and being so doom and gloom all the time about the things I want to do.
@thewebrecluse That is incredibly hard but also supremely vital work, Elaine. 👌 I'm so glad you're giving yourself the space for it now. After so many years of habituated self-punishment, it's not going to be easy to teach the voice in your head to be kinder to you. And chances are pretty good that you'll sometimes backslide into old patterns along the way!
So one day & one brilliant act of self-care at a time, eh? It matters, as do you. ❤️
Just want to +1 this thought.
Doing the hard heart work is... well, hard. It's so worth it, though.
You got this, Elaine. :)
@thewebrecluse Hey you. I hope you're still being kind to yourself, wherever this little note finds you. ❤️