Greetings and Salutations my Blog Friends!

It is Thursday evening, and I am at work, wrapping things up and waiting for Bret to finish up. I would always 100% work later on a Thursday to keep my Friday off.

Which is what I will be doing. Sweet.

—

HAHAHA!

Greetings and Salutations, Blog readers!

I didn’t even know I had this file started! I have been taking some time to get healthy and sorted, and also to just relax and even though everyone I talk to online is like “I absolutely haven’t noticed a slow down in your output of content” – that is due to me having prewritten some things.

In reality I haven’t blogged in a couple of days, allowing some prewritten blogs to fill to void. I haven’t posted a blog for today yet, and frankly, I should be worriedly posting that up right now, but, here’s the thing…I have been trying really hard to relax and stop holding myself to high standards because I am trying to reduce stress, because editing and writing all the time, on top of having a full time job, is hard enough, and I need to be as kind as I can be to myself.

I do need to get some stuff done though, and I am a big believer in sometimes self care is not pampering yourself, but getting yourself in gear. Frankly, believe one of the greatest forms of all around self care one can do is the “Gyst” day.

Get. Your. Shit. Together.

GYST.

Gyst.

That’s the “gyst” of it. – If I had a special shirt for this, it would say that. And, frankly, I should, because I believe in “Gysting days”.

Gysting, where your Get Your Shit Together, is meant to do just that, get your shit together. I try to hydrate, like deeply hydrate, not just water but like infused water and pure juices or fruit, smoothies, etc. Do good things for your body, but make sure you are fully hydrated. Don’t starve yourself with a cleanse, however, because the Gyst is, to me, meant to make you feel good but also make your soul feel good. Hydrate, eat healthy, but don’t starve yourself.

Gather up all your dirty laundry and get that cleaned, or at least contained to a basket. Tidy up around your house, light a candle, start your essential oil diffuser if you have one, do whatever dishes you need to do, dust, remove old trash or mail that needs to be cleared…Toss old junk and clean up dust and dirt. When it’s all clean, sweep up the floors, mop. Ensure all the stuff you are doing to make the area smells good isn’t fighting with odors. When you have finished, take out the trash.

For me, this process involves doing the litter box, emptying bathroom trash after scrubbing the toilet, sink, tub, then cleaning the mirror, putting essential oils on the inside of the toiler paper roll so it smells good when you spin the roll. I sweep up at the end, and then wet mop, leaving a small candle lit for a while to really make it nice. I relight this candle when company comes over. I may do a cleaning series, so let me know if you like this sort of stuff.

Once the bathroom and kitchen, generally the dirtiest rooms, are clean, I dust the living room, sweep up, mop, and keep drinking water. Once I have the apartment cleaned up, in my Gysting process, I work on laundry, and do a nice exfoliation and face mask on my face. Some times I’ll shave, sometimes I’ll just shower, either way I do some spa like self care things, like face masks, on top of doing productive things like tidying up space.

After that, I will get to any prep I can do, be it food prep, blog prep, post prep, whatever projects I have, working on those, I will do some productive list making, mostly looking at what I have coming in the upcoming days, so I can avoid any stress. If I did a clay mask, I do a moisterizing one too, and will finish up and writing or posting projects I want to get ahead of, and that is how I safe guard my stress levels and also provide self care to my blog, and me.

And that is my average gysting day, which I try to do on Saturday or Sunday of each week.

This weekend, I have done some light puttering, so my cleaning portion of the gysting will be easier, and I am hoping to do some laundry tonight and knock the cleaning out in one really productive hour tomorrow.

Tonight, my goal is to make a nice dinner for Bret and I, and to write a few blogs, I have been wanting to add to my back stock of blogs that I will be scheduling in the coming weeks.

I have been dedicated a lot of energy into the blog, into zombie content, to try and not only have my eyes and mind set up perfectly for zombie editing with Flake City- but also to give me time to edit without worrying about the blog as much, because content Is scheduled for it. Of course, the challenge then becomes getting myself motivated to edit, and to not waste my time that I so graciously gave myself, and to also not slack off on the blogging too much…If I give myself a window that I can focus on Flake City and I don’t blog, the entire time, then I run out of that free time, and next thing you know, the blog is behind again, and, worse yet, is the stress.

You know, that background stress of “I need to post this.” Just that nagging feeling you get when you have things you need to tend to. I hate that stress, it takes up entirely too much of my energy. My goal is to get far enough ahead to where I have plenty of breathing room, but to keep blogging within that time period, because sometimes self care is maintaining things to keep your stress levels down.

Anyways, it is Saturday night and I have a bit of writing to do, obviously, as well as some Gysting to do tonight and tomorrow so I should get to this. My read rates indicate that many of you like my zombie reviews and discussions, so, I have some nice in depth ones I want to drop in the coming weeks.

I hope you are all having a wonderful weekend.

Thanks for reading!

Abbi