Spontaneity

Dear Friend,

Everyone has routines. We wake up at the same time every day, we go to the same school or work, and we see the same people. Each day brings different ideas and conversations, but the general outlines are the same. Routines are good. They help us keep our minds on the right track, they help us get things done, and they help us stay focused. However, routines can easily become bad if we get so settled that we are afraid to do anything different. Our routines can begin to define us and make us predictable and boring.

This is why spontaneity is key. Once in a while we have to do something different from our routine. Whether this is something drastic like living in Italy for a year or doing a spur of the moment DIY, mixing things up really makes your life more exciting and fresh. Think about it. Have you ever said "Wow, remember that time that I did the exact same thing that I always do?" No. We remember the times that things didn't go according to plan, or we made a "yolo" decision. Life was made to live, not to just settle into a rut and not get out. Tonight we watched the movie 'Eat Pray Love' which we highly recommend. In this movie, the protagonist is faced with several problems, one of which is breaking her routine. This can be scary for anyone. The best metaphor we can come up with is standing on a cliff forever, which is extremely sedentary and boring, or taking the leap of faith and building wings on the way down. (note: we do not endorse jumping off of cliffs. This is a metaphor and not meant to be taken literally. Use your head).

Challenge: do something this week that scares you, or something you would never think about doing and tell us about it in the comments if you would like. For example, tonight the two of us did a late Safeway run. We bought a container of fruit, tortillas, hummus, mini Reese's cups, mini muffins, and an iced tea and had an impromptu picnic at 10 at night in the back of Kylie's car. Only we would be sitting alone in the Safeway parking lot in the rain, sharing iced tea in tacky plastic shot glasses, and discussing everything from friends to college to the exact meaning of "the sun will come out tomorrow", which was what the inside of our iced tea cap said. It's times like these that we're going to look back on for the rest of our lives and think about how truly blessed and lucky we were.

If it scares you, it might be a good thing to try.

Yours truly,
Kylie and Catherine