The Art & Poetry of Mary Coleman

I’m trying to reduce my social media time to twice a week (blog on Saturday and Instagram on Sunday). It’s been affecting my creativity as I’ve started seeking people’s approval desperately and checking my notifications every 30 minutes. I don’t want to write poetry for other people, it’s for me, for me to get my deepest subconscious thoughts out into words. This is something I need therapeutically so I don’t want this avenue of my brain cut off again like it was with art. And seeking approval of others is what developed maladaptive perfectionism in my painting practice. So yeah, I’ll only update this blog once a week from now on and I’ll only share all my poetry from April in a post at the end of the month.

Gentleman Broncos is my favorite comedy movie and that always gets a lot of laughs out of me. Not many people like that movie but my husband and I watch it once a year and love it. The part where the sci-fi author is reading out an excerpt from a romance story of one of his students to his editor to complain about what he has to put up with, has me in stitches every time. “She rode Jacques for pleasure.”

This April I would like to get back to the point I was in late February where I am working on most of my New Year’s Resolutions quite successfully. I regressed a lot in March so I’m trying to get back into it all this month. 

1. Creativity – Write a poem a day for National Poetry Month (work on my book). Do a drawing only if you feel like it. – I have been successful with this in March so I’d like to continue being successful in April.
2. Routines – Get back into a morning routine, a mid-day routine, and an evening routine. – I fell out of my routines the first 3 weeks of March but have been a bit better about it this past week, I’d like to continue doing them in April.
3. Follow a budget – eat out only once a week and don’t buy anything off Amazon except for one monthly haul of necessities. – I have managed to stay off Amazon in March, but I’ve eaten out a lot more than I should have. So in April I’m cutting that back considerably to once a week.
4. Fitness – continue training for the half marathon by running 4 times a week, run the half marathon on April 19th, do strength training twice a week – I only got back into strength training the last week of March. I have been running for most of the month though.
5. Food – Eat 1500 calories a day, get in 65+grams of protein and 25+grams of fiber, avoid sugar and ultra-processed food as much as possible and aim for none at all. – I haven’t eaten very well most of March. I sort of regressed to eating sweets and UPF again.
6. Weight – lose 4 pounds – I think I can realistically lose a pound a week. I haven’t been losing weight since January so this is something I’d really like to get back into in April.
7. Relaxation – in the evening before bed meditate, read a couple chapters of a book, and play video games – I haven’t been playing my video game in March, but I have been reading my book and I got back into meditating the second half of the month. In April I’d like to do all three things before bedtime.
8. Social Media – Limit social media to the weekend only for 2 hours maximum (update blog once a week and Instagram once a week) – I feel I got too dependent on other people’s approval so I’m cutting back my time on social media considerably. I’d like to avoid it entirely during the week.