My dearest Sarah, If you're reading this right now, it means we have done our first month in to the winter of self care - congratulations! I know that this has been a journey for us to grow and change, so this letter is to remind you of the beginning. From January to end of May, I found this year to be nothing but another blunder - no new job, parents marriage on the rocks, creepy stalking neighbors, and just an overall feeling of bleh. It's hard to be happy when all you feel is this all consuming numb pain that leaves you like a stiff, lifeless husk. I had one perfect week with Laura's birthday holiday, a few beautiful dates, but nothing else, and while I cherish those memories... I just felt stuck. It wasn't until I was watching CGP Grey and he was talking pursuing happiness that it made me realise that I was unhappy. I never had a structured sleep schedule, my room was a hovel, I didn't exercise, was on my phone too much, kept rethinking my past, didn't try new things, and I didn't give myself the attention and love that i deserve. I give so much of myself to everyone else, but what about me? I kept CGP Grey's advice in mind and remembered my own new year's theme (novelty) and thought, I really haven't done anything novel. What can I do now? It was then he talked about themes for seasons, and self care just jumped right out at me. This felt right. It felt like the thing that could turn this year around. Granted, I don't have a lot of money or resources, but I do have my brain, and my beautiful girlfriend Laura, so I took on the theme. In the last two weeks, I've achieved the following: - restructured my sleep schedule - finished the duck mirror - earned $90k - scrubbed my ceiling of mold - opened my windows more - cleaned my room enough that it's functional (work in progress) - done one major bit of exercise a week (dance class, just dance, hiking) - found all the tales of the space age pieces and put on wall - found one offline activity a night to do (reading, painting, boxing, hanging with folks) - set boundaries on me time - removed winters Tumblr off my phone (stopping my need to be angry at someone) - disabled YouTube Shorts I know some of these were trivial things in retrospect, but they're hard things for me at the time, and I'm proud. Wherever you are, whatever you're doing, I hope you're keeping the winter of self care alive in however you see fit. Remeber that slips are ok, so long as they don't turn into slides, whatever amount of progress you can make for the day is still progress, and that you're a lot stronger and smarter than you think. I love you Sarah