Friday Reflections #10: Cosmic hugs, gaming love, and raving about apps
A lot of life improving things and words you get to take with you!
Welcome to Friday Reflections! A weekly newsletter sharing 3 thoughts and things I loved and learned from the week as I navigate learning how to create a life I’m nourished by, and thriving in, without my mom (or caregiving for her).
This week’s been a good one!
Over the weekend, after months and months of mental struggle… something finally clicked for me around confidently advocating for myself as a writer!
If you read last week’s Friday Reflections, this shouldn’t be a big surprise. But later last Friday I was finally–for the first time–able to write a scripting journal entry1 that felt real and exciting about my future as a full time writer/creator!
I spent some of the weekend updating my vision board app for the first time since downloading it last year, and added a ton of cards to my affirmation deck.2
Every day, I review a combination of these things and it always makes me feel really good. :)
So with that excitement and this two-week break that’s now coming to an end, I’ve been showing up excitedly to write and create every day. And let my weekends feel a bit more like weekends.
Right now, life feels more balanced and like whatever I do is enough.
Goodness, it’s nice.
And one last mention/update before we move onto the three things: I had my second therapy appointment (bolded so it would stand out, in case you were specifically wanting an update about therapy).
This was the first session where we really dove into the issues at hand, and I feel super blessed that I lucked up on someone I really liked immediately.
I think my favorite thing about the sessions is that she gives me different perspectives based on what she’s observing from my ramblings. And I noticed she’s staying on track with my goals and game plan on what I hope to get out of therapy.
I sometimes hear people complain that therapy ends up being a rehashing of the past over and over, and that isn’t how my therapist operates, thank goodness. She gave me a tool to use around analyzing my emotions and also gave me homework to do before our next session.
I’ll someday go deeper into what I’m learning and getting out of therapy when I’ve made some progress, but for now, I’m just enjoying the process.
So yeah! That’s the therapy update. 🙂
Now onto the three things!
Thing One: Apps I’m using daily
I just looked into it, and one of the apps I’m going to mention in this section is one I’ve been using every day for an entire month (as of today! May 12th!).
Just a week or two ago, I wondered why I never mentioned it. But I guess it was for the best! Now I can confidently say I’ve been using it for a whole month so I know it’s not a throwaway app for me.
The other two are used daily, but in a different way. I’ll explain later in the newsletter.
Structred app is a minimalistic time management planner app that’s been my guiding light. This is the app I’ve been using daily for a whole month! It was the least visually cluttered and ovwerwhelming app with all the features I needed (and you can make the layout even more minimalistic or have more informaiton showing than this!).
This app slaps.
I can visually see how my time is being spent (the color fills in during the time of the activity).
I can create routines for certain days that repeat.
I can visually see how long a task will be (both with a visual and by telling me how much time I’ve allotted time a task).
I can see how many hours I have in-between tasks (which helps me gauge what other work or play I can realistically add to my day).
I can keep an “inbox” of tasks I wanna do someday, but don’t have a specific date it needs to be done.
I can get notifications five minutes before a task starts, when it’s starting, and when it’s finished (or no notifications at all!)
I can customize it in any way I want!
The only thing you can’t do is pause an activity, which makes sense. Cause if you could pause a task, I’d assume it’d push everything else forward on your calendar… Which isn’t great if it’s pushing around fixed appointments too.
My workaround for that is to give myself five, ten, or 15 minutes of wiggle room in-between moveable tasks.
Ultimately though, I think it’s a good thing you can’t pause tasks. Makes you reconsider the times you do wanna pause a task and really think, “Do I need to stop? Or am I just procrastinating?”
What’s at stake if you do choose to procrastinate is that you’ll either have to sit for a few minutes and move everything around on the app so you have a chance to redo that activity again without it overlapping any other tasks or appointments, make a new version of that activity and find a place to put it during your day, or just nix it.
Yay, stakes!
Lastly, I’ve found getting specific about the tasks you wanna do for the day helps. So you can add allotted times for each task rather than make a general “work on passion project” task only to work on one piece of the whole project the entire time.
When going the more specific route, it’s helpful to set up how you want your time to be filled the night before (something I need to do more often).
Let me know if you check it out! Unfortunately it’s only on iPhones, but they do have an Android beta waitlist! While searching, there’s an “app” out? Maybe it’s the beta? Either that or they should sue? If that looks too sketchy, I found an article about possible alternatives.
Forgot, cause I don’t have a Mac and pretty much only see my iPad as a drawing tablet, but it also syncs to other iOS devices. I pay $2.99 to use ALL its features, but also found out during research for this newsletter that a yearly plan costs $9.99.
So you know I just upgraded to the yearly plan, right?
1 Second Everyday is an app where you document one, to one-and-a-half seconds of your day and it creates a slideshow of your year! I know I’ve mentioned this app before, and just wanted to give it another shoutout to say I have indeed been using it daily.
It’s so wild to look back at what you’ve done over a small handful of months. How rapidly life can change, and seeing reminders of what you accomplished.
I’ve talked about the importance of capturing moments over always staying present before, and once again, this app makes the list. It’s super quick and easy to accomplish capturing something quick and meaningful you will look back on.
A quick tip: I like capturing a moment on my phone’s camera so I have that moment saved, rather than directly on the app where you can’t download it in case you wanna switch it out for a different moment that happens later that same day (when you pay for it, you can back up your project and add multiple moments per day).
Horizons: Vision Board Maker is the perfect vision board app!
I’ve had this app since November 2022, and only had a small amount of photos and a quote or two on it at first.
Things were getting bad at home. Intense. Mom wasn’t doing well.
Then everything happened, fast forward to now, and like I mentioned at the beginning of this Friday Reflection: I had a shift! I just found so many things to add to this vision board app. And ever since, I’ve been looking at it first thing in the morning if nothing else.
It’s SUCH an aesthetic app and has found a way to feel minimalistic (which helps me not feel overwhelmed by so many visuals smashed together).
You can tag things, add quotes and pictures, and change colors. They offer quotes you can add to your vision board (or you can add your own), and you can add words of affirmations or descriptions to each quote and photo as you scroll through each intentional piece of your vision board up-close.3
Love it!
Okay finally, onto thing number two.
Thing Two: Dangerous video games
Okay, so ther’s three: Stardew Valley, Slime Rancher, and Hungry Hearts (it’s an app, and there’s a game before this one! You’ve gotta play it in order if you check it out!).
And they’re dangerous because I’m addicted.
I won’t make another detailed list describing each like I did with the apps, but I will say that playing these games reignited the spark of love I’ve always had for games that include customization, farming, and strategy.
And all three games I mentioned have at least two of the three elements!
Stardew Valley is a game I have on my switch I literally just started playing and can already tell… it’s gonna get bad. Haha!
So bad, that I’m thinking of playing with a writing idea for it!
I truly was hyperventilating with excitement around my writing project idea and research for Stardew Valley so…
Stay tuned.
Thing Three: Hugging the cosmos
Lately, I’ve been gravitating to the cosmos again. The more “woo woo” side of things.
I had started checking into The Pattern app (which has always been scary-accurate) and it’s just been a very insightful and validating nudge the multiple times I check it per week.
And while I was looking up something astrology-related, I ran into someone talking about the CHANI app again. So I redownloaded it, and it’s pretty freakin’ cool!
But alongside checking out astrology apps, I noticed there were a lot of reoccurring themes to my own personal Human Design chart.
I’ve been keeping up with Human Design studies here and there, and it’s just really neat to see my design show up in areas of my life, and in astrology.
Also, just remembering to navigate my life by my design has been very helpful during this how re-discovery journey.
All these tools have felt the most like “home” for me right now and I appreciate having things that feel like a base for my self-reflections and insights during this season of my life.
Thanks for reading another week of Friday Reflections! It was a bit of a long one, but for good reason: I had so much to share! And it wasn’t even everything.
Things seem to be turning around right now, and I’m feeling very blessed to be in such a good mood. Your thoughts can definitely influence what actions you do or do not take.
See ya next week!4
I’m sure I mentioned this before, but scripting in this sense is when you write a journal entry as if your desires already happened. No matter what manifestation tool you ever use, the most important thing is that you’re able to FEEL into it. So you’ve gotta find what works best for you.
This video inspired me to make an affirmation deck. And I used a few from this video to add to my own deck.
So I just updated the app for the first time since 2022 and they’ve changed the layout a bit. You can scroll through affirmations, inspirational quotes and “heart” your faves, and/or add it to your vision board as well. I’m not 100% sure, but I also think there’s a free trial before a one-time cost of vision board upgrades or “everything” upgrades that I found out about after updating my app.
And get ready for some more pieces that aren’t just Friday Refletions! Coming super soon. :)
I actually use the Reminder app on my (android) phone and have several color coded lists of things to do which I move along in my calendar. Looking at them helps me to remember what my rewired brain might not.
The Vision Board app looks intriguing; I'll check it out.
I followed your Human Design link (because I can always use another mirror to fine tune my reflection) and am totally fascinated by what I'm finding. This will be a perfect thing to study while I'm cat sitting this coming week.