present in 2016 - the idea

I don't know if you noticed but I've been working on a little project for the last "few" days :)

I've been calling it "present in 2016" and the more I think about it the more excited I am.

So, what's this all about? It's actually very simple - I'd like to invite you to be more present in the upcoming year; to notice things that are happening around you, things that happen only to you, the little things that you find on your walks or while you're out drinking coffee and browsing a nearby magazine. I invite you to note them down in your journal or a notebook or a planner and with doing this, this action alone, making yourself be here more, noticing more, observing more.  

I know we live in extremely fast world, things need to happen fast, everything needs to be done almost yesterday and with all the tasks of our everyday lives we put ourselves in “auto-pilot” mode; it’s our safety mechanism for coping with all the stress. And sometimes we notice that the whole week, or even month has gone by and we have almost no idea about what happened during this time - and it bothers us, right? I know it does bother me and I am trying to live by the rule of “slowing down to smell the roses” a lot and I will continue to do so even more.

Why exactly am I so excited about this? Well, it’s because I’d like to invite you to join me in this quest of “being here”. Grab a notebook, use your favourite journal, make yourself a weekly planner from the files I prepared or just go and buy one - it really doesn’t matter - as long as you have all the days in a year in it and some space to write things down - something like this:

weekly planner for 2016 designed by yours truly ;)

Then, I challenge you to start noticing things and at the end of the day, note them down. Did you open your newspaper on a page and something really grabbed your attention? Tear that out and glue it in your notebook. Were you thinking about a question and an interesting song came on the radio and it had just the answer for you? Note it down. Did you see something interesting while commuting? Note it down. Yes, it’s this simple. All these things make you be here more, more perceptive and often, they make the time slow down a bit. Try it, you’ll be surprised.

I will open up a FB group for this because I’d love to hear about your synchronicities, special moments, hear about a good guided meditation you found on-line or anything good really. We need to share, write things down and with doing this, help each other.

And if you know me, making art will not stay out of all this :)  I think a really good challenge would be to make weekly art pieces that would mirror what actually happened in that week. And because we’ll be noting things down, it’ll be easy to sit down, relive the week again and do some kind of art to honor it, to show we’ve been there, felt it, seen it...  I know some of you already do it and I’d love you to join me and share your art with others and inspire all of us.    

I’ll be setting up the group in the next week but I wanted to give you all a heads up to think about this and hopefully making you want to be present a bit more ;)

Let me know if you’re interested in joining and what kind of things you’d like to see in the group as well. I know that if we go and do this, it’ll be really really good!

Wishing you all a very happy Sunday!

With love,

nini

p.s.

if you like my little planner that I made for myself, I am offering it as a downloadable file in my Etsy shop - 2016 weekly planner  I'll be honored and very thankful for your support if you'll use it.