“Describe one positive change you have made in your life.”

Another prompt caught my attention today, mostly because there are so many ways to answer it. You would think that would be easy — name one positive change.

But I’ve made a number of changes – particularly in recent years – that have been pretty positive. The first one that comes to mind is bringing Finnegan home. What on earth did I do before I had a dog? Seriously. Would you look at that smiling face among the park’s daffodils. Ridiculous.

A number of spiritual changes have absolutely been positive — life altering, in fact. Choosing to be more authentic and trying to be a little less fearful of rejection has also been a plus. Although I’m still a work in progress there. I still have to override my hesitation when posting to social media and shoo away thoughts of “people are going to think I’m so weird for posting a picture of this” and replacing it with such thoughts as “too bad; I like it.”

So I think I’m going to go with making my bed every day as my positive change. That is something I’ve only done consistently over the past few years.

I used to whip back the covers in the morning and wherever they landed was where they would stay for the day. Which also lent itself to a tendency to let other things get messy.

Now making my bed is the first thing I do each day. I actually can’t skip it anymore. It drives me nuts to have an unkempt bed or room. And it’s a place I enjoy retreating to in the evening.

I think what it has taught me is that my home is actually an extension of how I view myself. Keeping things tidy is a way to show myself respect and kindness. When I prioritize making my surroundings look nicer, it feels like I’m prioritizing my well-being. I don’t know if that makes sense to anyone else, but it makes sense to me. Especially because this has been such a concerted effort to create this habit. It is not second nature for me to keep things tidy. But I like myself better this way.

So there it is. A lame, less than sexy answer to a very random prompt.