I’m on day 18 of my 90 sunrises in 90 days. I haven’t missed a single one. Although, I have almost been late to two of them. Once was right before daylight savings time, the literal worst day of the year in my opinion. The other time was just the other day. I got up a little later than usual and tried to fit in my morning writing and my workout before the sunrise. I’m usually pretty good at planning it all out and I usually check the sunrise time before bed so I can be sure, but that day, the world was just a little off by a few minutes. I had to race to the beach to make sure I caught the sunrise in time.
When we moved to the beach, we changed car insurance companies. We went with Progressive. They have an app you have to download on your phone so they can see how well or how terrible of a driver you are. So now, I feel like I have a police officer in my front seat anytime I go anywhere. I can’t even lie. It does stop me from driving like a speed demon. It even stops me from looking at my phone when I’m at a red light.
I even thought the other day that everyone should have an app like this on their phone as I was looking in my rearview watching a very distracted young lady playing with her phone while creeping up on my rear end. She eventually remembered that she was driving and not in a Tik Tok making contest and hit the brakes. That’s when the old lady voice came out of my head and said, “everyone should have an app to make sure they aren’t driving while distracted.”
I immediately realized that I had become old.
Anyway, I did end up making to the beach on time for both of my near missed sunrises.
What I have found while committing to this process is that nobody is counting on me to show up at sunrise. I tell myself mother ocean is waiting impatiently for me every single day, but in reality, showing up for the sunrise is just a thing I promised myself I would do and has become a solid lesson in following through.
I’ve never wanted to be a good intention with no follow through person. I dated one of those guys once, for quite a while, and he was always really sweet and he always “intended” to do really nice things and plan really nice things for us, but he never actually did any of the things he talked about. From that point on in my life, I have been a huge fan of “actions not words.” And if I am going to expect that from others, then I have to place that expectation on myself as well.
So, when I said 90 sunrises in 90 days, maybe it was a bit of overkill, but showing up at the beach every day has been kind of spiritual for me. There’s usually very few people there. I’m usually the only person with shoes off and feet in the water, which means everyone else walking on the beach are too far away for any real conversation. I can take in every wave and every bird. I can watch each individual grain of sand get pushed into the shore and taken back out wave by wave. I can ponder the vastness of the ocean and think of all the wonders beneath its surface.
It’s as close as I can get to my creator in my opinion.
And I treasure every day that I get to see the darkness turn into light.
It’s a thing I missed out on a lot before I decided that I wanted to be a “morning” person.
I would rarely see the sunrise. Sunset was my jam when I lived in Knoxville. I captured a few sunrises when I was there, but not many. The five minute drive seemed like an eternity just to watch a sunrise over the mountains. Now, I would probably drive 30 minutes just to watch the sunrise at the end of the world.
I just love it.
It probably helps that I’ve been working my way through a book called The Artist’s Way. I’m not sure if I mentioned it before, but it’s a 12 week self guided journey to creativity. A journey that I felt I desperately needed to be on.
In the first week of the program, it required an “artist date” where you take your artist out and do something fun. I went to a salon and got a pedicure with the the reddest red toe nail polish they had. I haven’t had a pedicure in over 3 years. I had almost forgotten how much I love them. The more I thought about my artist date, though, the more I thought that my sunrise at the beach with myself most days could also be considered an artist date.
If nothing else, it’s been good for my soul. And I have quite a few more days to go, so I will just keep on keeping on.
On a workout note, Beachbody just came out with a gut protocol program. I’ve done one of these before and did not finish it. I’m excited about this one because a.) I’m a Beachbody believer. If they are a cult, I have drank all the kool-aid. b.) Because of Beachbody, I am a believer in the power of accountability in numbers. The other times I’ve done or attempted to do a gut program, I have been doing it all on my own because most people don’t want to participate. Now, we’ve got a whole gut gang of gals joining us to do this program. I’m helping to run the group. Yes, I’m a coach. Yes, you can join our group. We are starting our prep work on Monday. We will be talking about everything from food to poop. Yep, you read that right, poop. It happens, and we are going to talk about it. Not a lot, just a little. We also have a workout program that goes with it that is no impact. If I’m being honest, I’m looking forward to the workout program ALOT. The one I am currently doing is pretty hard core. Not that I expect this one to be easy, but it’s supposed to be gentle on your system while your system resets itself.
I’m trying to get 10 women to join me for this go round, although, I’ve been slacking in my networking and that’s kind of a requirement for “network marketing” so I may not hit that goal this go round, but we are going to be doing another round of the program in 5 weeks so if I miss it this time, I will hit it next time.
I could go on and on about that topic, but I will stop for now. I hope you all have been doing well out there in the world wide web. I think I’m back.
RouletteWeekend 