Morning Walk Day 2 (Patreon)

Morning Groupys 🌞👋🏻

Where’s my morning walk squad at? Did you guys get your steps and sunlight in? If the answer is “No” or “Not yet”—get going! Tomorrow is never guaranteed, be present, and go on a walk and be alone with yourself for 20 minutes.

I’m up earlier than yesterday, which I don’t know how that’s possible given that I slept even later yesterday…

But I’m up and on this morning walk I tried to, for once, think about nothing. I slept at my office last night, so I walked to a park near my office to check it out—turns out it’s a giant gated off area of just foliage and land (this place was just dubbed CITY NAME OPEN SPACE) and it was green on Apple Maps so I thought it was a park 🤷🏻‍♀️

But this misunderstanding gave me an even more mindful walk. Instead of spending a long time at the park and just hurriedly walking back, I took my time and enjoyed and savored my surroundings as I walked back to my office.

I saw so many beautiful things and practiced a skill I used to train and have long not exercised called “street photography”. It was actually my interest and continual use of street photography that it trained me to know how to frame a shot and capture a moment within a split second, which helped me immensely when I was photographing and shooting concerts back in the day.

It’s not how it once was, rather than being armed with a professional photography camera I just used my phone but the pixel mapping is insane nowadays on the iPhone so I still wanted to share some of my snaps.

I also stopped at a 7 Eleven to get a water and wound up having an insightful and meaningful about books, mental health, mental brain training with the cashier clerk when she took interest in the books I was holding. It was a great start to the morning and it put a smile on my face to have such a deep conversation with a stranger.

I also wanted to share with you a few poems (in my photos) from one of my favorite new poets I’ve been into, yung pueblo. I hope those words either help you, give you guidance, or even inspire you to read more of his works.

Finally, I choose to be grateful today.

I already am, but making the intentional choice everyday and SAYING it out loud, are two different things. Personally, people laugh at me whenever I do self-care and express gratitude, especially towards myself. It used to cause a cycle of then self hatred and not being grateful for my own body or anything, and those around me.

But it’s weakness. If they laugh at me for being grateful every waking second of my life, instead of also being grateful, I see now it really says more about them than me, and instead I choose to be compassionate. Because letting their apathy for life and the world bleed into me is also weakness. I choose to be grateful and I choose to be strong and love those who love me and even those who don’t. I want to help people.

Help people, but have boundaries

Love others, but don’t let them harm you.

That’s all I’ll leave you guys with for today.

If you are not grateful today—it’s OK. I will be more than grateful for the both of us. I will do more than my share in working hard and do my best to inspire. And until you are ready to be or can be grateful, I will be here grateful for your existence, grateful you’re alive and here.

Thank you for being alive to see another day, another morning. Do your best! Don’t work hard, don’t be perfect, don’t be grateful even—do your best, truly. And don’t let assholes walk all over you.

We got this 🫡😁👊🏻

PS. Hope you enjoy my song recommendations from this morning walk~ I’ll try to share more often. But I’ve been OBSESSED with these songs lately~