July: Joy Over Performance
I promised I'd meet you again at the end of the month, to tell you how I lived out this exercise of creating for and in joy.
So here I am. I sit down with my notebook, as planned, and try to sum up a month that didn't want to be summed up easily.
The Month I Chose Joy Over Performance
Early July, I wrote a line in my journal, almost without thinking:
A beautiful mind in a beautiful body with a beautiful face... This is the renewal of my life goal. I'm still growing. Still learning. Still becoming the woman I'm choosing to be.
I didn't know yet that this line would become the thread running through my whole month.
July wasn't a month of results. No launch, no big number to announce, no box to proudly check off. It was more a month spent sitting with one question, one I'd never quite dared ask myself this directly: what woman am I becoming?
This month, I started answering by choosing, a little more each day, joy over performance.
Creating More, Consuming Less
The first thing I changed was my relationship with social media.
I no longer want it taking up so much space in my life. I want it to go back to being what it should have always been for me: a work tool, a doorway to what I offer! Not a primary source of information. Even less a permanent quest for validation.
Instead, I gave books, blogging, journaling, and deep-rooted projects their rightful place back, the ones that take time to mature but stay, once finished.
Quality over quantity. It's no longer just a strategy. It's become a way of living.
Rest Is Part of the Work
It was hot this summer. And I was tired. Not just physically. My brain, for its part, had clearly decided to go on strike, no notice given.
Before, I think I would have pushed through anyway. I would have felt guilty for slowing down, as if my brain were betraying me by asking for a break.
This time, I tried listening differently. To remind myself that rest isn't the opposite of work, but one of its conditions. That I don't have to be productive every hour of every day to have the right to fully exist.
I won't tell you I've solved it all. I still feel guilty sometimes the moment I slow down. But I notice it faster now. And I correct myself more gently.
Learning to Trust Myself, and to Let Myself Be Loved
I keep thinking back to that trade show where I caught myself feeling happy, without needing to justify it through resilience. Not pride dressed up as strength. Just joy, for its own sake.
And then there was something else, quieter, but maybe even more important. I started looking more closely at my own protective mechanisms, the ones that helped me hold on, for a long time, against what hurt. I know them well. They've served me.
But I understood, this month, that they also sometimes stop me from receiving what I deserve: being fully loved, without constantly protecting myself.
This isn't settled yet. It's never settled all at once. But I'd rather tell you honestly than give you a tidier version of my month.
What I'm Carrying into August
If I had to keep just one thing from July, it would be this: I didn't change my life. I started changing how I inhabit it.
It's quieter than a big turning point. But it's often far more lasting.
So tonight, I'm opening my notebook, and I invite you to do the same, if you feel like it:
What am I choosing to become, rather than what I'm choosing to accomplish?
The Bullet Journal Bogolan goes with me through these end-of-month notebooks, where I put down what I haven't told anyone else. It's available in the shop.
I'll meet you again in August, for a new exercise: resting without waiting to have earned it.
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