Layering. (It’s Not Just For Cakes Anymore.)

*(Celebrating our new apartment with the cacti at Jardín Botánico Histórico (Botanical Gardens outside of Malaga) - and more catch-up pics at the end of this post!)*

Friends! It has been too long since I wrote a post and so much has happened. One, we've found - and officially moved into! - an apartment in Malaga, Spain. We're blocks from the sea, various playgrounds and other green spaces, plus walking to the gym/cafes/restaurants/bakeries/grocery stores and public transport so we're pretty much in heaven. It's a long awaited stationary-ness (not a word) after about 4 straight months of being on the road. With our toddler. And a few backpacks. And no child care. And a loose semblance of a plan. It was (and continues to be) an amazing journey filled with highs and lows and plot twists and pivots, but all-in-all let's be real - it's not been one for the faint of heart, either! If you want to catch up on all that - and figure out how we landed, why we left, and everything in between - check out Episodes 8, 13, 18, and (our latest this week) 22 of Life Leaps Podcast. Because today I'm here to talk about layering.

So much of our time since we left our Washington, DC apartment a few months ago (December 16, 2022, to be exact!), and left for Europe a month later, has been about uprooting and deconstructing - and just plain logistically moving - our lives. We had greater goals - of course - (see our first blog post!) - but to even begin to reach those we had to (much more so than we initially realized) spend a whole lot of time uprooting ourselves, swimming around in the realm of 'where do we land/what do we do/how do we do it' to get to the point where the whole *reconstruction* *regeneration* *rebuilding* *achieving-of-our-original-goals* part could even really begin. Bottom line, we've spent a whole lot of time figuring out banking, cell-phone-setting-upping, apartment hunting, child care arranging, and generally paper-working, our way through our days than we ever imagined we would (and that was once we figured out the much bigger questions, as you'll recall, of where in the heck are we going to live!? I mean, we thought we were moving to Portugal and ended up in a different country, for crying out loud!) And with Juan working, my side projects, no child care, and all of the above, our initial lofty goals to "create more time / space / capacity for creativity and thoughtful personal and career development, saving money, etc. etc." seemed more and more like a joke. In truth, we've often felt like we had less time than we did at home for those goals and that was, at times, a little disheartening and frustrating. And sometimes just plain exhausting. But we knew there would be an end, at least a *settling* of sorts, and we have now reached it! Like I said, we've got a country - a city - an apartment - a child care arrangement (huzzah) - a cell phone - a bank account (you get the gist) and we're now in the realm of busy but not overwhelmed and that's a great place to be. It is, now, then, TIME TO REBUILD.

Which brings me back to layering. My theme for the last few weeks, since we finally got child care (the final puzzle piece), is just that. Every week I am focusing on one 'theme,' one 'layer' of life that matters to me. It started with buying good food and eating more at home. Check. Found a great organic market, started cooking (it helped that Annet, an amazing life-saver of a woman who is living with us for a bit to help with our son Luca during the day, is a also a person we now cook for), and started creating that together-at-meal-time (and, for once, properly cleaning up after mealtime) rhythm. That was enough for one week. The next week, i.e. last week, was my physical health. Specifically exercise. I finally got a bike, as did Juan, and the first full day Luca and Annet were ready to go off solo together (last Monday!) I walked my butt directly to the nearest gym and signed up and did the first class in sight. (Body combat, if you're wondering.) I created a general workout schedule and a time to meet a friend to do the same, and decided it had to be in the morning otherwise I could forget about the willpower it takes to do it. I also knew I needed to do classes because this whole 'I'll turn on a video and do it at home, at my leisure' thing was not working for your girl. So I body combatted, yoga'd, swam, biked, you name it (OK yes I overdid it and may have pulled a wee little muscle, but at least I started the process!) last week. This week's 'layer' is a bit tougher but I'm doing it. It's figuring out what kind of content I want to consume and reflect on. That is, how can I work on the whole mind-body connection thing, read books that nourish and encourage me to think and reflect on that, and journal daily even if only for a minute. (Interestingly, as you can see, this layer has also sparked slash forced me to sit back down and do something else I love again, which is writing!) I say this layer is tougher because it's less concrete, easier to avoid, harder to measure, and easy to do in a totally non-meaningful way. But, I am trying! I've decided to first read Ekhart Tolle's A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose and - this being my (ahem) *fourth* attempt at getting through it in the last year - I am here and now committing to actually finishing the damn thing and reporting back to you on exactly how and why we should all be doing what the title says. ;)

Next week will likely be more outward-looking - breathing life into the podcast. I want to do a little online course, and have a few good conversations, to help me feel like I'm creating the best content for the people who would get the most value out of it, and think about how I can grow and improve, as opposed to just barely having time to do the episode each week!  The following week, who knows?  But the key is step-by-step, layer-by-layer, theme-by-theme, and this makes me feel like I'm able to more thoughtfully approach each area of my life that matters to me as opposed to just doing what I've always done by reflex or habit. My guess is this process will be more like a corkscrew, where I revisit, refine, and continually evaluate each layer again and again as time goes on - we always do - but I'm looking forward to charting that territory and seeing where it leads.

So, that's all for now! Plus a few catch-up pics from the last month or so since I've checked in. ;) Talk soon!