These are the days. On journaling and slow mornings.
I hope we will always be able to have the time for ourselves and our family, that we have now. To start our mornings with a rich breakfast, all three of us making coffee in the kitchen, with its bright morning light. To go on the balcony with our hot drinks for a bit of fresh air and to start the day with perfectly boiled eggs and some home made sourdough bread. To have the time to notice the little and simple things arounds that bring us joy. Like the blooming hyacinths or the beautiful imperfections of a handmade ceramic cup. There is such a great balance at the moment between our work and family life, that I feel immensely grateful for.
I am grateful for the fact that we see things in this light and we realized that time and presence are, for us, the keys to a life well lived. That we chose to focus on the time we spend together and made choices to facilitate our way of living. This involved tiny steps like the way we do our shopping and big ones, like the way we see our career. It’s all part of a process towards becoming what we want to be. We still live a normal life of course, like any other family. Because slow life is not always, and not necessarily an easy life. There bills to pay and clothes to fold, there are grey winter days with fever and traffic jams. But we try to get over all of this quickly and focus on what makes us happy, on what we have rather than what we don’t. Our small everyday rituals, the excitement of a first picnic in the park in the early days of March, the itineraries that we have every afternoon after kindergarten, visiting favorite bakeries and coffee shops, meeting our friends for dinner and the grandmas for a french eclair. Stoop hanging on the stairs of the Romanian Atheneum, listening to the orchestra rehearsing while feeding pigeons. When the boys help me choose a pretty dress and they surprise me flowers from the market. These are the days and the moments that I forever want to remember.
The little notes of what someday will become our family journal. I was never the one to keep notes like this, but at some point age will happen, I am aware of that. So journaling doesn’t look like such a strange idea anymore. But I’ll do it my way. No specific rules, no imposed frequency of documenting our days. Every morning or once a month, with long detailed stories or just in few words, or maybe with just some photos printed. The idea is to put it all on paper. The doodles, the daydreams, the mundane rituals that now have such a leisurely pace.
Of course it can all be done through a simple pen and paper, but it’s always nice when you have a reason to look for pretty stationeries, right? And I have a huge passion for this, so currently my favorite journals are these ones:
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