For this week's post I'd like to provide an update on how things are going in my Year of Grace. I'm about a week in as I started the Year of Grace on July 5th. In a previous post, I documented my thinking as it relates to transitioning from one yearly theme to the next. The Year of Grace is supposed to be my attempt to show kindness and compassion to myself. So, what am I doing to achieve this above and beyond using my Theme System Journal on a daily basis? In this post I will explain how I'm using the Obsidian app and the Due app to keep my yearly theme "in front of me" during the day.

Obsidian and the Year of Grace

Those of you familiar with the Obsidian app know that it has Community plug ins that users can download and integrate into their workflows. I figured out how to use the Templater plug in to create an Obsidian file that includes the name of my yearly theme and a little reminder of what I am trying to do with that theme. I created a hotkey command that I can use to "paste" the text of the file into whatever file I am working in. Here's what it says...

Year of Grace

This is your daily reminder that you are working towards trying to show yourself kindness and compassion.

I "paste" this into every Morning Pages entry I write as a reminder to myself of what the theme is and what I am trying to do, in this case, for me.

Due and the Year of Grace

I've been using the Due app for years. During this time my "reminders" have evolved from merely "nudging me" to write in my Theme System Journal or to take my medications to more sophisticated, mindful reminders. I've written here before about how I've taken the Buddhist Eightfold Path and turned them into emoji-like reminders that I get throughout the day; not to remind me that I'm supposed to be doing them right in that moment but as a gentle "nudge" that I should be aspiring to the one that has presented itself to me. To help me during my Year of Grace, I've decided to add a few more of these reminders. U2 is one of my favorite bands. I have a Sirius/XM account and have had their U2 Radio channel locked in to my car for months now...I cannot get enough of them! For those who do not know, they have a song called, Grace. So, I took a line from the song and broke it up into 2 different Due reminders. Here is a picture of what they look like...notice at the top of the picture you see the second part of the line. Five reminders down you see the first part of the line in the song.

I've scheduled these mindful "nudges" 2 hours apart so I am not expecting them when they are presented to me and I get to have 2 different times of day to consider their meaning to me.

These are just a few ways that I am keeping my yearly theme in front of me in the very early days.