January self-care challenge, Day 5: Entertain yourself
Self care sometimes involves being sensible or organised, but it also includes joy, fun, and things that entertain and inspire you. Yes, it’s time to get that Friday feeling.
Today’s activity is to spend at least one hour making the most of some free or cheap entertainment, your leisure time and/or any hobbies and interests you might have.
This of course should be something very individual to you, but could include:
- TV or movies
- Music or radio shows
- Audiobooks or podcasts
- Streaming comedy
- Gaming
- Reading books, magazines or websites
- Dancing
- Baking
- Crafting or doing art
- Writing
- Stargazing
- Decorating
- Galleries or museums
- Pampering
- Making cocktails
- Doing puzzles
- Making a ’22 things to do in 2022′ list
- etc
Whatever you get up to, enjoy yourself!
What’s happening here
Thursday was a busy day. I ended up walking around the neighbourhood for nearly an hour running errands and getting some general daylight and exercise, including dropping everything off at a charity shop that I wanted to get out of our hallway. It was a pleasant change to sit down later in the afternoon to do 10 minutes of meditation, using the free section of the Balance meditation and sleep app. It won Google’s Best App of 2021 award, and if you’re quick you can get yourself one year free which includes the premium (i.e. usually paid) features.
We currently have an almost empty fruit bowl on the counter, so I’m starting to use up more fruit from the freezer and will have to dig out some tinned peaches as well at this rate. So glad we froze some of our homegrown cherries, raspberries and rhubarb last year, it brightens up a cold January. We’re also about to run out of bread again, so I made some half-white-half-wholemeal dough before I went to bed last night and it can be shaped and baked this morning after a long nap in the fridge overnight. It’s another no-knead recipe so that’s just five minutes of preparation in total, and the rest is waiting for it to autolyse, rise, bake and cool while I do other things.
Today is hopefully going to be less busy, and I obviously can’t go out with just 70p left in the budget so it’s looking very much like a quietish night in. The plan is to read some more of a library book while the dinner’s cooking, then have a healthy ‘fast food/takeway’ style meal in front of a recorded or streamed movie. We still need to eat ourselves out from under the cabbage mountain so it won’t all be burgers and potato wedges, but there might be a glass of wine or a small martini at some point too.
Do you have anything left out of your £10 budget? How are you keeping yourself entertained today?
Dear Penny, first thing this morning I enjoyed my time for pampering, I did the whole thing, with products kept for best. Then, I baked a lovely New-York style lemon and poppy seeds loaf. Time for lunch break, with a Cantonese fried rice, part of the empty cupboard challenge. Then onto my bed for a lazy afternoon nap and some good books borrowed from the library : some interesting readings about Stoicism philosophy rules for life. Good, I can not remember the last time I took a break…ages.
Hi Patricia, wow, you have been busy! Sounds like a well-earned break. Penny x