Tag Archives: routine

Celebrating And Organizing (or And Yet Another Repeat Challenge)

I set out to make sure that I celebrated my birthday in August as my monthly challenge, and I would say that I accomplished that. I know that some people might do a lot more to celebrate their birthday, especially if it’s a milestone one like mine was, but I did exactly what I wanted to do. I had a party with friends, and it was one of the best nights I’ve had in a long time. I’m not great about planning things for myself, but I am glad I did it and loved seeing different friend groups coming together and having fun. I also got to continue my birthday tradition with my birthday twin and had our dinner out. It might have been a bit different than we thought it would be, but it was still perfect and made us so happy to continue the tradition.

I also just tried to be excited about starting a new decade of life, and I really did feel that way. I know realistically that turning 40 means that I’m not that young anymore or at the beginning of my life, but just because I might be in the second half doesn’t mean my life is over. I still love my life and have a lot of things that I enjoy doing. I’m planning for more fun things in the future and I truly believe that my life is just going to keep getting better as I age. And I feel healthier now than I did in my 30s, so that is helping me really enjoy my new age and new decade.

I’m really happy with how my August turned out and the celebrating that I did. And I know that I will continue to celebrate being in my 40s for a while. But I also want to set myself up for as much success as possible, and that helped to inspire this month’s challenge. I’ve done this challenge before, and it always has been helpful for me. I want to do another digital organizing/detox with the different apps and systems I use on my devices.

I have added a lot of apps to my daily routine over the years. Some of these are from challenges in the past, like using Duolingo to learn French, and some are apps I use to do other sorts of tracking in my personal life. But a lot of these apps or routines are just routines and are not really benefitting me anymore. I’m stubborn and want to continue a streak of doing something just to prove that I can keep it going, but that’s not the best use of my time. And even though most of these apps take minimal time from my day, it can add up and I don’t want to keep doing something that takes time if it’s not really doing much good for me.

When I’ve done this type of challenge before, I’ve gotten rid of apps that I know now were really just taking up time. Like the different food tracking apps that I didn’t use accurately so they weren’t benefitting me. Even though I had the best intentions to use it properly, it wasn’t working for me so I was making a minimal effort to maintain a streak but it wasn’t providing any results or data for me that I could use for other things.

There are a few apps I have in mind for this month. I’ve been doing my habit tracker either on paper or on my phone for over 8 years now. I haven’t changed the habits that much over the past few years and most of the things on there are things that I do on a regular or daily basis. I have reading listed as one of my habits, and the only time I can remember a day that I didn’t read was when I had horrible vertigo and couldn’t keep my eyes open. I have going to workouts on my list, and that’s something I do regularly and don’t need to have on a checklist as a reminder to do it. As much as I love seeing the streak of habits I’ve got going on the app, I think it’s time for me to let that app go since I really don’t use it for the reasons I started it years ago.

That’s probably the app that I use the most that I’m thinking about getting rid of during this month, but there are a lot more that I know I will probably delete. I plan on dedicating time to going through my various app folders because the way I organize apps means I don’t see a lot of what I have on there. And I know that keeping apps on my phone isn’t a big deal or makes using my phone harder, but I just want to streamline things. I want to do something similar on my computer, but with the various documents and things I have saved and not necessarily apps since I don’t put too many apps on my computer. And while I should do this on my iPad too, that device is starting to become a brick and not that useful, so I’m not using it that much. I don’t know if I’ll get another tablet anytime soon, but if I decide that I want one, then I might just start from scratch instead of transferring over all my old apps. So that’s a low priority for me. Working on my phone is at the top of my list and I’ll work on my computer after I feel like that work is done. If it takes me more than just this month, then I’ll continue into next month. But my plan is to really dedicate time so this should be done in the next few weeks.

Hopefully, while I work on getting rid of apps that don’t benefit me anymore, maybe I’ll also discover gaps in what I could be using to make my life better and I’ll find new apps or new routines that I want to add to my life. I just want to do whatever it takes to make sure that I’m not wasting time on unhelpful routines and that I maximize the free time that I do have in my life.

Resets And New Adventures (or Always Working To Improve My Life)

Happy October! I feel like I say this every month, but it seems like time is flying by so quickly! I feel like we just started September and now it’s over. And I know before I know it, it will be the new year. I think having this feeling is one of the reasons I’m glad I set monthly challenges for myself. It gives me something to focus on accomplishing so the time just doesn’t slip by.

For September, my challenge was to do daily resets of my home. I had noticed that I was putting things off and saying to myself that I could just do it in the morning. But of course, I never did it the next day and some tasks were just not getting done in a timely manner. And because my condo is much bigger than my last place, it was easier to not see the mess that might have been left. For example, I could leave things in the sink and not see them compared to before when if I left something in the sink it basically made the sink unusable. And it was easy to use the excuse that I was still figuring out where I want things to be to not put away something I might have used. So I wanted to try to reset my home as much as I could each day so I felt like I started fresh in the morning.

I wasn’t perfect at all and there were still plenty of days when I wasn’t putting away all my dishes or leaving things for the next day. But I did make a much more conscious effort to be better about this. I also worked harder on finding places for some of my things. I’m still working on a list of things I need to get more organized, like ways I can organize under my kitchen and bathroom sink. And I know once I get those things it will be a little easier. But even without being perfect, I did notice a difference in how I felt in the morning when things weren’t still needing to be done and it felt like I was starting from neutral in the morning.

After working last month on getting a good reset system down in my home so I could feel like each day was a new day, for October I want to mix things up a bit more in my life. This month, I want to make an effort to try to do some new things or get out of the rut that I’m currently dealing with. I have a pretty set routine for weekdays. I go to the gym in the morning, work all day, and then after work I’m usually just sitting at home and trying to relax from my day. I feel like I’m a bit stuck since each week goes by and I don’t have a lot of variety in my life. I try to do things on weekends, but I work on Saturdays and on Sundays, I’m normally getting ready for the next week.

I feel like before the pandemic, I wasn’t in quite as bad of a rut. I know I was not doing as much as I could, but there is a big difference between being done with work at 3pm versus 5 or 6pm. When I was done at 3, I felt like I still had my afternoon and evening ahead of me and I could go out and do something. There were plenty of times I went to Disneyland after work since I had the afternoon free. But now, once I’m done with work I want to get dinner figured out and before I know it, it’s time to go to bed since I get up so early. There are a few wasted hours in my evening when I’m not doing much that I could take advantage of. And even though I try to go to bed early, I usually don’t. So I might as well go out with friends or something that keeps me out a bit later than to be up too late because I was scrolling on social media.

This goal is easier said than done. So many of my friends have moved away so I am working on rebuilding friendships that may have become acquaintanceships. I’m trying to ask more friends about meeting up for dinner or something simple like that to just get out of the house. But I’m hoping if I ask my friends if they want to go out and do something specific versus just asking if they are free and then trying to figure out something to do, hopefully, I will be able to make more plans and I’ll find things I like to do that I haven’t done in a while. Maybe I’ll find a new routine that adds a bit more social time to my week.

Having a routine isn’t bad, as long as it’s something you are having fun with. But now, I’m not having as much fun with my weekly routine and it feels like a rut, so I want to work on getting out of it and start enjoying my life again.

Dropping A Few Habits (or Still Deciding If This Is Going To Be A Good Choice)

There are a lot of habits I’ve had for a long time in my life. Some of them are necessary for my life and basically are things I do without a thought anymore. Some are things that are for my health that I do and maybe sometimes need a reminder to do (such as having an alert on my calendar each month to throw out my old contact lenses and use fresh ones). And there are some habits that I started doing because they were good for me in some sense and I’ve just kept them up because it’s routine.

But I’ve been doing some of my habits and routines for a long time just because I have been doing them for a long time and I don’t know if they still benefit me in any way. But they are things I still am aware of and track and I have to remember to do them or I feel like I forgot something. And as my schedule gets busier again and as I try to build my life again after having so little to do for so long, I have started to wonder if it’s worth it to continue doing these things just because I have been doing them for years.

There are 2 main habits I think about when debating if I should stop. First, tracking my food. I’ve been doing this for so long and have even made it a monthly challenge before. And in a way, it does keep me sane when I have a binge episode because I can have a reality check when I need it. But at the same time, unless I need that reality check I don’t always track everything I eat. Because of my schedule, I’m not always eating specific meals but instead eating small meals and snacks throughout the day. I know there is debate if having specific meals is better than grazing or snacking, but this isn’t about that. Based on what I see on the scale and how my clothes fit, I’m eating a very similar amount either way so I’m not worried about that. But on days that I graze, I rarely enter all my food. I might just add my breakfast and then nothing else. Or I’ll add one thing I ate but not the entire meal. Figuring out how much I’m eating is necessary, but the serving size from a container might not match up with the food tracking apps, so it can get frustrating.

Since I’m not usually tracking everything, I have started to question why I do it. For a long time, it was because I wanted to keep up my streak on the app in case I was going to go back to tracking everything. But I could always start back up without having a streak on the app. And maybe not focusing on tracking whatever I think of will motivate me to focus on my food in another way. I’m not sure yet.

The other thing I’ve been questioning tracking has been my daily steps. This again was a past monthly challenge that I kept up for a long time. But things came up in life and it’s been a while since I’ve had a 10,000 step day on my FitBit app. This doesn’t mean I haven’t been hitting 10,000 steps, they just aren’t always being tracked. I don’t wear my Fitbit that much during the day. I do have a clip so I can put it in a pocket or in my bra, but it’s not comfortable anymore. During my workouts, I used to keep it clipped to my pants, but that was bothering me too. My phone does track steps, but it’s not as accurate as wearing my Fitbit. And I know I could wear it as a watch, but I like my regular watch more and I don’t like the look of my Fitbit on my wrist. I do still use it every night to track my sleep because that is valuable information for me, but that’s all I’ve been able to accurately track for a long time.

So just like with the food tracking, I’m wondering what the benefit is for me to be half-tracking things. This one doesn’t concern me as much as the food tracking one goes, it’s more about me being ok not wearing my Fitbit or trying to find a random place to clip it to or put it when I go out somewhere. So accepting it as just a sleep tracker, for now, is what I think I want to do. That doesn’t mean I can’t change my mind and wear it if I’m going out somewhere and want to track my steps. But I’m not going to worry too much about it and look at what the app says each day for my total steps. I know those haven’t been accurate for a while, but I still have been looking at them and they do make me think about if a day was a good one or a not-so-good one. Having that stress off my mind might help.

Stopping these habits won’t change that much about what I’m already doing each day. I just won’t be tracking them and using them as a judgment of how I’m doing. And if I start to feel like I’m getting out of control or panicked, I can start tracking again. But since I’ve been only doing a fraction of the tracking I should be doing anyway, I don’t think this will make that much of a difference other than having a few fewer things to worry about in my daily routine.

Just Enjoying My Boring Routine (or Still Working On Adding More Back To My Life)

For a good chunk of this year, I have said that I need to work on adding more things back into my life. I missed so much while being isolated in my house. I was bored for days and weeks and I was ready to be out of my house and busy with anything else. And I do still feel like I need to keep adding more back into my life, but I don’t feel the same pull to force myself to do that as I did before.

There are still some concerns about the pandemic for me. For a while, the numbers were getting better every day and things seemed so much safer. But the past week or two has been different and numbers have been increasing every day. Now, things are close to where they were months ago with the number of cases every day. The deaths and hospitalizations aren’t as bad, and most of the research says that a huge majority of cases now are from unvaccinated people. So I should still be safe. But I’m still being careful when I can with wearing a mask when I am out and not taking too many unnecessary risks. I’m not as fearful as I was earlier this year with going out, but I do notice some anxiety and I have had a few panic attacks at the grocery store recently. I understand that masks are optional now if you are vaccinated, but it still makes me nervous to see people in a store without them (fortunately, almost everyone seems to still be wearing a mask).

But I also think that the reason I don’t feel the need to add more to my life right now is that I’m finally busy again with work. Even though all of my jobs are part-time, when you add up all the hours I do each day I am working full-time hours. Sitting in front of a computer for hours a day is draining and I usually want to rest when I’m done with work. I also still have regular things to do after work that I’m not doing in the middle of the day like I did when I wasn’t working. And I’m working on cooking more at home so that also takes up time.

For me to do more fun things in my life, I do need to plan ahead and add them to my schedule. And I know I can do that and I’m sure if I asked my friends if they wanted to plan something, we would. But I’m back to where I have felt before in my life when I just don’t feel the push to be super social. But this time it’s different since I’m coming off of a year of not be social at all. So I know I should make an effort to make plans, but I’m really just enjoying the routine and normalcy right now. This is something that I was missing for a long time, so routine doesn’t feel as routine as it used to.

I know that more and more things are opening and happening around LA, and I do want to take advantage of this amazing city that I live in. But while going on adventures is a bit about the novelty of it all, so is having a normal schedule again and I’m really just enjoying having something like my old life back and being in a routine that I can count on.

And I’m sure that it’s only a matter of time that I will be bored of my routine and really craving to go out and do something. And I’ll figure out what I can do and what seems safe and I’ll have much more interesting things to write about.

Having A Busier Routine Is Nice (or This Feels Even More Like Normal)

Over the past year, I went from having one routine to another. And there were plenty of times that I had no routine that I had to follow. I tried to create my own routine when I had nothing happening. I kept up my workout routine and checked in with my work friends from my box office customer service job on a regular basis. But there was a lot of time that I spent doing nothing productive and I even got into some bad sleep habits with sleeping in later than I would like.

Once I started my new job, it was a bit of an adjustment to go from no schedule to a work schedule. Even though I don’t work full-time, I do have work 6 days a week (soon it will be 5 days a week). I had to make sure I was getting up on time to get my workout done before work. I had something that was making each day feel a bit different. I still struggled a bit with the adjustment, but it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. I think the fact that I worked on my sleep habits a bit before I started at the new job helped me a lot.

And I’ve only been adding more and more to my weekly schedule. I now work back at my old job 3 days a week (that may go up to 5 days soon, but it depends on a lot of factors). I have a pretty good routine going with how to balance my different jobs and make sure that I’m doing the correct work each day. And just last week, I added going into Orangetheory back into my schedule too.

Even though my workouts are the same days a week that I was doing them at home, it’s very different going into the studio to work out. First, my workout is now an hour long when it was closer to 30 minutes for a while. And because this workout is so familar to me, it feels really great to have it back as a regular part of my life. And I’m actually getting out of my house more often because of the workouts. I know that I will be leaving my house at least 4 days a week to work out, but it’s usually more often than that because of other things in my life.

And getting out of my house has been another nice routine that I have gained recently. While I have worked from home for several years, I never spent so much time in my house without getting out and doing something. And just getting into my car and driving the few mintues to my workout has been a really good thing for my mental health. It helps me not feel so alone. I feel like I’m a part of the world again. I feel like there is some forward motion in my life again. Just the simple routine of getting into my car and driving that short distance is something so familiar to me that makes me feel like my old life is coming back now. It’s a great feeling and yet another thing I didn’t realize how much I was craving until I started doing it again.

I do still have a lot of free time every day that I wish I could fill with more fun stuff. But I have a pretty great routine going for me right now for the first half of the day. I am getting up earlier than I used to (so I can make it to my workout) and most of the things I have to do every day are done by either noon or 3pm. So then I have time to relax or do something else after work. And just having an after work time is nice. I allows me to try to create a bit of a separation in my life, even if I can’t get out of my house every day.

And once things are fully open again and it’s safe to live our full lives again, the nice thing is that my work schedule isn’t going to change too much from what it is now. I will hopefully have some more hours with my box office job, but that will just mean that I work until 3pm every day instead of only some days. And my morning workout might slighly change time when they add in more classes, but it will be close to the time that they are now. So in a way, I’m already in my normal schedule for the future. I just get to focus on adding more and more things to my day as I can do them and add to my life and what I get to have fun doing.

Continuing To Get Back To Some Of My Old Routine (or I Really Appreciate Self-Care So Much Now)

I’ve written a lot over the past year about how I miss things from my old life that were a part of a regular routine. Some of these things were related to going out or my workouts. And some of them were related to self-care. At times, I was embarrassed about how much I missed some of my self-care routines. I know it’s not that important to have my hair done or to get a pedicure, but those are things that make me feel like myself or bring me joy. And not having them has been hard, especially when compounded with everything else that’s been going on in our world this past year.

There are plenty of self-care routines that I’m still putting off for a little while. As much as I miss pedicures, I can wait longer before I go in for one. This isn’t just for my own safety and health (even though I’m vaccinated, that doesn’t mean I don’t have to be careful), but also for the safety and health of the employees at the salon. And I’m still waiting on getting waxed even though I know the waxer I go to is working again. For me, waxing isn’t just a vanity thing but one of the only safe hair removal options for my upper legs with my autoimmune condition. Shaving can actually be very painful and cause issues with my skin, so I avoid it when I can. I know there are other options besides waxing (there is a chance that laser hair removal could partially be covered by insurance and I’m planning on asking about that soon), so I can wait a little longer before going back to waxing. I don’t love having to wait, but it’s easier on me to wait on that than it is for me to wait on getting my hair cut or colored.

Getting my hair done this past year has been interesting. I know I don’t need to get it cut or colored, but it’s really hard on me when it’s not colored and my gray hair seems out of control. At the beginning of the pandemic, I was coloring my hair at home. It wasn’t perfect, but it worked. And even though my hair was getting long and a bit scraggly, since I keep it away from my face at home it didn’t bother me too much. There have been times where I really didn’t pay attention to how long my hair got until it seemed almost out of control. But I would just put it back in a clip and not think about it more than that.

I have slowly started to get back to having my hair done more professionally. I’ve been back to a salon once when there weren’t many people around (and we were masked) and I went to my friend’s house to have her do my hair as well. I waited a bit longer than normal between those appointments, but that was partially due to feeling like it was a bit of a risk going even with all the precautions because I wasn’t vaccinated. But now that I’m vaccinated, it’s a little less stressful for me to think about getting my hair done with my friend at her house.

So last week, I got my hair done again. It was at her house again and we were masked, so it felt like we were keeping things as safe as we could. This time, it was a cut and color so I feel even more like myself. I didn’t do anything drastic even though I’m tempted to do so. I just wanted to have my hair look like me again. And that’s exactly what I got to do when I had my hair done. And not only did I have a boost in my mental health from having my hair done and feeling like myself, but I also got to have hangout time with a friend which is something else I don’t get to do that often!

I know that I’ve always appreciated having my hair done or doing any other self-care things I have done in the past. It’s a privilege having the time and money to do these things. And I live somewhere that makes it easy for me to find places to go for different appointments. But I appreciate any self-care thing I can do even more right now. It feels so special to have the chance to do them. I’m so grateful I have ways to go and still feel safe. And I’m grateful that I am working again so I have the money to spend on things like this.

I can’t wait until I can add my other self-care things back to my life again and I hope it will happen soon. But we don’t know when things will be better, so it’s just something I will have to wait and see. But I continue to feel like things are improving each day and that we are only getting closer to what feels like normal.

Always Cleaning (or At Least The Pandemic Helped Create This Habit)

I don’t think I’ve ever really had a messy house, but I also know it hasn’t been as clean as it could be. In my old apartment that I shared with a series of roommates, I feel like I was a bit messier. Even though I had less space that was just mine, I wasn’t as concerned about keeping it clean. I would let magazines pile up as I needed to read them. Or not clean out my bathroom cabinet for expired products. And I remember moving into my house and saying I would never let it get that messy.

Of course, I didn’t become a neat freak just because I moved. I was cleaner than I was in my apartment, but I never really had a great cleaning routine down. I have tried so many times to have a regular cleaning schedule, and it just didn’t happen for me. I had a monthly challenge a few years ago to spend a little bit of time every day doing a speed clean, and that worked. And I’ve managed to keep that habit up ever since then.

But while I was bored and out of work last year, I got into cleaning a lot more. I looked into what products might be best to use and what tools I needed to have to make cleaning easier on me (like using microfiber cloths instead of paper towels and having a little scrapper tool for any sticky residue). I even got a cleaning caddy to keep my supplies together in one space. It wasn’t the cleaning schedule I wanted to create for myself, but it was working for me.

And I was worried once I started working again that I would let the cleaning routine stop again. I know I’m not working full time and I do have a lot of downtime in my day, but having something scheduled still makes me feel rushed in my day where I don’t have the same amount of time to do things even if I have the time. But with so many things since I started working, it turns out that easing into my new work schedule really helped me keep things going. I haven’t really slacked off much with my cleaning, and I’ve actually gotten a bit more planned out with when I can do certain things. I know that doing a big cleaning job is probably going to be the main task for the day (like when I scrubbed the grout in my bathroom tiles). And on other days, I can fit in all the surface cleaning plus vacuuming.

I’ve been unemployed other times in my life and I’ve never picked up a cleaning habit as I have now. I think part of it has to do with being a bit fearful of germs and trying to stay healthy. I never was the person who cleaned every item that I brought into my house, but I’m much more mindful of what surfaces I’m touching every day and what has been cleaned and what still needs to be cleaned.  I’m hyperaware of keeping things as safe as I can, and cleaning is one of the few things I can do and have control of.

I don’t know if I’ll ever say in the future that I’m grateful for the pandemic for a lot of things. While I have learned a lot about myself during this time of isolation, I don’t know if that outweighs the negatives of this time. But I will be grateful for a few things that I have changed about my life during this time. The first is cooking more often. And now having a cleaning routine. Two things that I wanted to do for a long time but never seemed to be able to stay consistent. But I guess the pandemic forced me to make these changes and I can only hope that they will stick with me even when things are safer again and I have a full and busy life.

Having A Pretty Boring Routine (or This Keeps Repeating)

When the pandemic started, I wrote about how I wasn’t sure how I’d be able to keep up this blog. Honestly, at that time I really was hopeful that the safer at home orders would only last a month or two. I knew it would be longer than we were originally told, but I had no clue that it would last for 7 months with no end in sight just yet. I was worried about how I would manage still writing for those few months I would be stuck at home and thought I might have to change up my blog schedule.

I’m still shocked that I’ve managed to keep things going the way they always have for this long. I don’t have a lot going on every day. I occasionally will have something fun I get to do or I make an effort to go out and escape my house, but for the most part, I have very little to do.

Even though I’m technically not working my customer service job right now, I do log in 3 mornings a week to help out my manager (who is working now) in case she needs it. She did the same for me when I was the only one working, so I wanted to return the favor. And it’s really not a big deal. I rarely have to help her do anything. It’s only if there are a lot of customers she’s trying to help and there is something in our ticketing system she can’t find. Usually, I am logged in but watching random things online or doing other things in my house. Sometimes I’m logged in for only an hour and sometimes I’m working on something else so I stay logged in a few hours. It’s something that helps me keep a schedule and makes me get up on time.

Other days I have a workout in the morning. I’m getting more into making sure my workouts are not boring or too repetitive, but there is only so much I can do at my house. There are more and more options for outdoor workouts and I am exploring those options to see if any of them seem right to me. It would be nice to expand things, but I also don’t want to take risks that could get me sick. I hate that I’m turning into a bit of a germaphobe right now and I’m trying to make sure that I don’t take this to an extreme. But I also know that I have to be cautious and smart and that if anything happens to me that I would have a hard time forgiving myself.

And I have my Netflix Party groups on Wednesdays and Saturdays for a few hours. Technically, it’s now called Teleparty because you can use more services than Netflix now, but I think we are all still calling it Netflix Party. I can’t express how grateful I am for that group because they really are helping to keep me sane and are the best sounding board for so many things.

But those few things only take up a few hours each week. I have so much time that is just filled with nothing. I’ve said it before, but I’m getting very bored. I’m not bored to the point that I want to just forget there is a pandemic and am willing to take risks. I know some people are just over the situation and I understand how they feel. But I am bored and still staying inside.

I’m trying to find things to do so I at least am not just sitting and looking at my walls. I have watched more things online and read more books than I ever have before. But even watching tv and movies and reading books is not as entertaining as they have been before. I’m trying to find more things I can add to my daily or weekly routine that takes up time. Maybe I should look into online classes or something? But besides being bored, I’m also dealing with a bit of a lack of motivation. There are so many things I could do, I just don’t want to. I mean, I could cook super fancy meals every day if I wanted to. But I don’t.

So like I’ve said many times over the past 7 months, I’m bored of being bored. I know I’m not alone in this feeling, but it’s hard to deal with it. And it’s hard to think I’m not alone when I see so many people going out and not worrying about things. But I’m trying to stay strong and focus on doing what I can to keep myself busy and entertained. And hopefully, something will click with me that I could add to my routine and will make things more interesting for me.

Getting Back To Normal (or Friend Hangouts And Doctor Appointments)

Even though I wasn’t out-of-town that long for Thanksgiving, it still took me out of my routine. And when I got back, it felt like I needed to focus on getting back to normal and doing what I usually do. It’s funny how being away for even a few days can affect me as much as being away for a week. And since I’m not gone that often, it isn’t super easy for me to get back to my old routine. But last week was one where it did seem to work out well for me.

It never hurts to have an outing to a theme park since that is something I do pretty often (and I’m aware how lucky I am to get to do that). But that alone isn’t enough to make me feel normal again. It also didn’t help that last week I didn’t have my normal work schedule until Friday.

But what was surprising that did help was having a doctor appointment. I had to see my dermatologist on Thursday for a follow-up appointment. It was at a new medical office building (which was right by my old work), but having a normal doctor appointment was a nice change for me. I’m so used to crazy doctor appointments (and hopefully those will be very limited now), so having a normal one felt routine. It was an easy appointment and I was out of there pretty quickly, and I’ll be back again in a month for another follow-up (which might be my last one).

And not as surprising was feeling normal after hanging out with a friend who I hadn’t seen in over half a year. She and I just never could make our schedules match so we could meet up. But on Saturday she texted me to see if I happened to be free that night for dinner. Shockingly, I was and we made plans to get dinner and finally catch up!

It was so wonderful to get to have a fun dinner out. I’m so used to seeing her all the time (she used to go to Orangetheory with me) and it’s weird not catching up as often as we used to. The last time we hung out, I still thought I was having surgery. And she had been seeing a new guy and was talking about maybe moving in with him. Now I don’t need my surgery and she is living with her boyfriend (and they are talking about getting engaged!). So much has changed in the months we hadn’t seen each other!

But not only was getting to catch up with a friend an awesome night out, it also made me feel back to normal and connected with my life. I struggle with being over scheduled and under scheduled at the same time. The balance is tough to figure out and it seems like that’s a pretty common struggle. But as with many struggles I have, I think recognizing it as a struggle is one of the ways I can make it better. If I know that I’m having a tough time, I can work on fixing it. I think that’s one of the reasons I have over and under scheduling issues. I see that I’m over scheduled and I cut back, but then I’m under scheduled and add more things in, and the cycle goes around.

But the reality is that this struggle is one of the ways I feel like things are back to normal. I’m used to fighting this fight and it feels routine at this point in my life. I know that with the holidays I’ll be dealing with it more, so I guess I’m just getting an early start to the craziness for me.

Routine Time Again (or Getting Back On Track)

After the incident my oven breaking, things got a little weird for me. The routine that I had been in for a while was stopped because I couldn’t do my meal planning the same way. I had been given multiple dates that my oven was supposed to be fixed where the repair people never showed up, so I stopped trying to plan things out. It just got frustrating getting food thinking I’d be able to make it, waiting hours for the repair guy to show up, and then having to go to the store to get something else to eat because I couldn’t cook what I had just bought.

Finally this week, after waiting more than a week to get my oven fixed someone came by. I’m grateful to have my oven back, but I’m a little annoyed that it took over a week for someone to come by for a repair that was completed in less than 10 minutes (I’m serious). I finally started to try to eat the foods that I couldn’t make because they needed to be cooked in the oven to get things back on track. I had been living off of a lot of microwaved meals while my oven was broken and I know they aren’t always the best choice for me. There are worst choices like getting delivery food, but the best stuff is usually things that I’m making in my oven.

When my meal planning stops like it did this time, it’s a bit tough for me to get back on pace. The way the meal planning was successful for me last month was to do all the planning and shopping one day and then just work through that food doing the week. And with the timing of the oven issue, it disrupted 2 meal planning weeks with last week and this week not being the way I wanted. And I’m struggling a bit to get back to it now.

I don’t want to sound like I’m putting things off until the weekend (that sounds like people who put off dieting or exercise until Monday or the next month). But I haven’t been able to take the time out to plan like I normally do or go to the store to get what I need. Fortunately, this week is almost done and I should be able to do my normal meal planning on Sunday like I like to.

With my food being thrown off, a few other things in my life got weird too. With work, I’m so used to having my lunch planned out in advance so it was easy to grab what I was going to eat in the middle of working (funny how it only took a month for this to feel normal to me). With the lack of meal planning, I was spending too much time thinking about food. And with thinking about food a lot, there were some not so great food days.

I’ve said this so many times before, but each time I have a setback like this I have to be grateful that I recognize it as a setback sooner rather than later. I can focus on getting things back to how they have been instead of waiting until I’m very uncomfortable or have gained back a ton of weight to do so. I can easily remember what I was doing a week or two ago that was working instead of struggling to remember what I was doing a month or a year ago.

I’m glad that I’ll be able to get things back quickly so I can focus on all the other things I need to focus on in my life. I can do some great meal planning for the week coming up so that all my other time can be focused on work, going to Orangetheory, having fun, and getting things ready for surgery. Time is much better spent on those things than trying to figure out what I want to eat for breakfast, lunch, or dinner.

I feel like a broken record sharing a similar story over and over again. But I feel it’s important to do this. I don’t remember reading any bloggers who talked about the ups and downs and the random struggles that they had that set them back a few days. But when I talked to people, it seems like this is the norm. It’s especially the norm when you are recovering from an eating disorder. But people don’t seem to blog about it because it’s not interesting or attention getting. But it’s the truth and that’s exactly why I wanted to share it. Hopefully sharing my struggles will help someone else realize that things are hopeless and they can get back on track too.