Healthy and happy | Day 2 of my 2023 Journal

We have rented a house in southeast Sicily for half of the winter. It is such a great luxury, the house is beautiful for the eyes as well as for the heart, and our hosts are amazing, helping and sharing and just being plain nice to us. And for the first time in a very long time, we feel we are almost on vacation.

Putting first things first, we have decided to aim for good health, physically and mentally, while having our winter rest here in Sicily. We all do our workouts, we swim in the pool because we can, enjoy healthy produce, and lots of rest and sunshine. We establish good planning habits and good studying and working habits for the coming year. This will be the cliff to build upon for the coming year of travels: When we have a strong habit and a clear expectation of how much we want to do for our balanced life, we will know it when we sacrifice some of it in the name of adventure.

When you have good health, you have a hundred dreams; when you don't, you have only one. This a simple truth, and we had had the fact of this screaming to our faces when I had cancer, and still shouting from people we love and stories we hear. For this reason, we take the balance of life very seriously.

The photo is of the road leading up to the house, and I took it when I came back from a short run, just before I jumped into the cold pool to swim a bit. I would not have done any of the two if I had not written a letter to myself by the end of the year to be totally clear on what is important to me. I had to face it: There are no excuses. If I want to be happy, I have to stay healthy.

I wonder what everyone else is doing to stay healthy and happy on the road. What are your routines? What is the most important? To be honest, to me, it is not the running, nor the meditation: To me; the most important habit is my quiet morning coffee with either sunlight or journaling (or both).

Love and light

Cecilie Conrad

# 2 of my 2023 writing challenge - Read them all here