With a five-​​year-​​old daugh­ter who can out-​​craft me any day, I have many oppor­tu­ni­ties to color. Every time I focus on the col­or­ing, no mat­ter what it is I am actu­ally col­or­ing, I find myself more relaxed. The repet­i­tive nature, the col­ors, the sound, the shad­ing, the progress, the fin­ished product—it’s all relaxing.

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I talk to myself—all the time—sometimes out loud but most of the time in my head. Don’t pre­tend like I’m weird; you do it too. Some just do it more than oth­ers. Many may not even real­ize they do it. So often we put our­selves down with­out even real­iz­ing it. We dam­age our own self-​​confidence.

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I feel like a com­plete hyp­ocrite writ­ing a post on my com­puter, while the TV blares car­toons, think­ing of the next time I’ll be able to sneak away with my audio-​​book-​​loaded iPad. That’s okay; the 52 Weeks of Self-​​Care chal­lenge is a guilt-​​free challenge.

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There’s some­thing about the sun that’s renew­ing. It does won­ders, espe­cially for a stressed-​​out, hur­ried, I-​​must-​​stay-​​inside-​​all-​​day nurse. I’m not the only per­son who needs to head out­side or open the blinds (when I’m in a place with win­dows) for self-​​care.

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A messy desk dri­ves me nuts. I feel like I can­not con­cen­trate unless every­thing is clear around me. That doesn’t mean I’m always neat and orga­nized. Oh, no. Some­times I sim­ply move the piles of stuff to places where I can­not see. Remem­ber “out of sight, out of mind?”

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