Monthly Archives: January 2019

My First Challenge Of 2019 (or Planning And Education)

Posted on January 3, 2019 | Comments Off on My First Challenge Of 2019 (or Planning And Education)

Another post about the beginning of the year! This time, it’s about my monthly challenge for January so technically it’s not just about the beginning of the year. I’m in my 4th year of using the Volt Planner and the monthly challenges and I’m really excited to see what I’m able to get done this year!

My challenge for December was to plan for my challenges this year. I had some very abstract challenges in 2018 and it became easy to slack off on doing them because of that. Maybe I needed a bit of a break from my monthly challenges, but I wanted to get back at it in 2019. So I went easy on myself again in December and used that month to plan for the future. I have seen so many lists of ideas for monthly challenges and my plan was to check out a bunch of lists and pick out the ones that seemed good for the coming year.

While I did look at a ton of lists and see some amazing ideas, I wasn’t able to plan the way I hoped to. I think part of the monthly challenges is to see what inspires you and what you want to work on at that time. To plan out what I want my challenge to be several months from now just doesn’t work for me the way I was hoping it would. I found lots of challenges that I liked, but I didn’t decide what months they are going to be for. But I’m hopeful that by having a list of options available to me that it will be easier for me to pick challenges each month.

And for this month’s challenge, it was inspired by my circumstances and not exactly by the list I found. I mentioned this briefly in my 2019 goals post, but my challenge for this month is to take different free online classes. There are a bunch of different websites I have access to for free through the LA Public Library system, but I have decided to start with the classes I can find on lynda.com. I’ve heard good things about that site through other people who have used it and it seemed to have a good variety of classes I could take.

I spent a few days last week going through the site and seeing what options I have and I picked out a bunch of different ones. Some of them are related to making this blog better, some of them are job skills that I’d like to brush up on, and others are jobs skills that I don’t have but think could be good for me to know with my current jobs search. The plan is to work on a lesson for a bit every day and to get through whatever I can. I might be able to finish some in a day if they are fast, but I don’t want to have to set a rule for how quickly I need to get something done. If I’m learning a new skill, I want to allow myself time to figure it out and understand it before I move on.

I do feel like this goal has a couple of benefits for me. First, like I mentioned above, is that adding new skills to my job resume might help me in my job search. Things were slow with job hunting during the holidays but they are picking up again and I want to find a new job as soon as I can. I’m not happy being this stressed out about money and what will happen. I have had some interviews and second phases of applications, but I’m hoping now that the holidays are done that I will get more and maybe a job offer soon. And the second benefit I see this having for me is that it will help me be more productive during the downtime at my current job. I don’t want to waste my days doing things that won’t help me in the long run, and taking classes online is a great way to stay productive!

I’m pretty excited about this challenge and seeing what other classes I might want to add to my list as I go through them. It seems like there are a ton of options in so many subjects, plus I also have a few other online class sites I can use for free through the library that I can move to if I don’t find more through lynda.com. I’m also happy that I found something that is free since a few different educational things that I do are apps that have an annual cost. Anything I can find for free is good and I want to take advantage of them!

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My 2019 Word (or Finding Trust)

Posted on January 2, 2019 | Comments Off on My 2019 Word (or Finding Trust)

Another post about the start of a new year! This time, it’s about my word of the year. I’ve been doing these for the past few years and I really love the time I spend trying to figure out what word I want as my theme for the year. I feel like I’ve always picked words that are around the general idea of being strong or tough. This year, I still think the word is about being tough, but it’s also about being gentle at the same time.

My word for 2019 is trust.

This is a word that is not just about what I need to feel about myself, but what I need to feel about others. With my year of being fearless this past year, I put myself in situations that were unfamiliar to me. I allowed myself to be open to possibilities and that didn’t always work in my favor. That’s not a bad thing, it’s just what happened. But I think because of my history and things that have happened in my past, I struggled to let things that happened go. Just because one person hurt me doesn’t mean another one will do the same. I’ve struggled with this many times in my life, but I think it was highlighted by putting myself out there more this past year. And I want to fix that.

I need to learn to trust people around me. I need to learn to allow others to help me when needed and know that they will do the right thing. I’m trying to surround myself by all amazing people so they can help me build that trust, but I know it’s going to be hard. I’ve said to my bosses in the past that because I have lost many jobs before that I’m always terrified that I’m going to be fired. I still have that fear, but it’s gotten better. I need to apply that same mindset to other aspects of my life.

But this isn’t just about learning to trust other people. I have to learn to trust myself too. I need to trust that things will work out for me. I’ve been working on that idea with my job hunt, but I know that I have so many other parts of my life where I don’t feel positive that things will go my way. One good example with this is dating. I’ve matched with so many men since I started online dating. A lot of times, I’ll message with them for a bit and then I never hear from them again. I didn’t want to delete those conversations because I was worried that maybe they would reach out again and realize they couldn’t. I need to trust that if that guy is the right guy, they wouldn’t leave me waiting for a message back. I’ve occasionally done clean ups of my matches and gotten rid of people I didn’t talk to, but I still kept some that probably should have been deleted. And the other day, I finally did that. I wish I had counted how many matches I deleted, but I know it was over 100. I still have a bit of fear in my head that I screwed up something, but I’m trying to remember that if it was meant to be I would be matched with them again.

I have a feeling that while the idea of the word trust is to be gentle in a way, it will end up making me tougher. Hopefully I will be able to drop people and things that are not worthy of my trust quicker and I can put my energy to those who are trustworthy. And I’m sure as the year goes on I will have more feelings about what trust will bring to my life and I’m excited to see what focusing on trust will result in.

And as I have in the past few years, I got the MantraBand with the word trust on it so I can wear it to remind me about what I want to focus on.

I also love what it says.

To trust is to know and have faith that there is a divine plan in every moment in your life. Let go of what you cannot control and trust the process. Be present and experience life as it unfolds. Trust your journey. All is well.

I feel like that sums up what I hope a year of trust will bring to me.

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My 2019 Goals (or Another Year Of Planning Some Big Things)

Posted on January 1, 2019 | 1 comment

Happy New Year! I hope that you all had an amazing New Year’s Eve (and got home safely) and are already getting your 2019 off to a good start! It’s so crazy to think that the new year is already here because 2018 felt like it flew by. There were a few months that felt like they took years, but overall the year was over in a flash!

Over the next few posts I’ll be sharing my 2019 goals and plans. There’s a lot that I have in mind and I didn’t want to overwhelm everyone with writing a novel on here. So I’m breaking it up into the posts throughout the week. But today’s post is one of the bigger ones because I am covering my 2019 goals!

I like having goals instead of resolutions because it feels like they are more achievable. Goals make me think of steps to complete them whereas resolutions feel like you have to be all or nothing from the beginning. Some of my goals could be seen as all or nothing, but I feel like they all have the opportunity to be something I work on throughout the year.

My first goal is one for Orangetheory. I actually will be doing a separate post about my OTF goals, but since I’ve written about my goal number of workouts in my regular goals post before I wanted to include that. I want to do at least 200 Orangetheory workouts in 2019. I feel like this should be very achievable for me. In 2018 I did 206 workouts. I work out 4 days a week almost every week. The only times I didn’t do that were when I was out-of-town or was sick, but even then I usually got in 3 workouts in a week. I don’t want to try to do more than 206 since I want to give myself some leeway with travel and anything else that might come up. But if I strive to do 4 workouts a week every week, then I can miss a few weeks and still hit this goal.

My next goal is something that I’m hoping will be accomplished soon. I need to find a new job. This could mean another part-time job that fits in with the job I already have, or it could be a new job that makes me have to leave my current job. This goal is not just something to try for, I need it. I cannot survive on the money I make at the one job I have left and I need to do something to change the circumstances that I am in. I’ve become much less picky as the job hunt has been going on but it’s been rough. I’ve been trying to dedicate at least 3 hours a day for job hunting and I’ve applied for hundreds of jobs. But nothing has happened yet. But this will change eventually and I will be so happy when I can say that this goal has been checked off my list!

Next is something that was inspired by my reduced employment. I want to reduce and eliminate as much recurring spending as I can. I see recurring spending as things that charge me monthly or annually and I might not need them. There are a few that I know I will be keeping like Hulu, Amazon Prime, and Netflix; but there are other recurring costs in my life that I can get rid of. And I’ve been working on this for the past few months but I know I can get it down even more. The easiest recurring spending to eliminate has been magazine subscriptions. I have been cancelling them as I get them in the mail so I don’t forget. I believe that I’ve cancelled all of them by now and the ones that are coming to my house are just finishing out the subscription. I’m also looking at things that I purchase on a regular basis but am not necessarily automatically charged for. Things like toiletries and cleaning supplies could probably be much cheaper than what I spend now. I’m trying to be much better about coupons and looking at sales to make sure I get things when they are the cheapest. Even when I am making more money, it is always good to spend less so I can save more toward things I want to use the money for.

Along with reducing recurring spending, I want to work toward living a more minimalistic life. I know that this can be taken to the extreme, but for me I have a much more basic idea of how I want to live more minimalistic. I live in a small house so I don’t have a ton of stuff, but I know I have more than I really need. I don’t need to keep adding to my house necessarily, but sometimes there are things that I love and want to get. But I want to be much more mindful of this and really decide if I need something. I might also see if I can try to do the “one thing in, one thing out” idea so I don’t accumulate a lot of stuff. I’ve been working on doing this with my clothing and it’s gotten my clothing spending down a lot. I also have been doing this with shoes as this past year I only got shoes to replace ones I had but were worn out. There’s so much stuff I’d love to get, but I don’t necessarily need. So by looking at living with a sense of minimalism, hopefully I don’t buy things that won’t get enough use or that will just clutter up my house.

Moving away from money, my next goal is one that I thought I had been doing but I’ve realized that I need more work on it. I want to spend my free or down time in a better way. Everyone has their lazy moments where they spend a day on the couch reading or watching tv. And that’s fine to do every once in a while. But I have a lot of down time with my current job (that will hopefully change when I get a new job) and I know that I am not being smart with my time. I’ve watched a lot of random things on YouTube or read too many articles on Buzzfeed lately. I am devoting some free time to job hunting, but I have had to limit it to about 3 hours a day because I was getting really burnt out. But there are other good ways to use my free time. I’m looking at some free online classes through the public library that could be fun and help my job search. I’ve also downloaded the New York Times crossword puzzle app and have been working on those. And I can also just read during that time since that is still a better way to spend my time. I also want to look at my time outside of my working hours. I’m pretty good about only watching tv that I have recorded or watching something on a streaming channel so I’m not just mindlessly flipping through the guide or a bunch of channels. But I want to work on finding a way to make that time more productive and less scrolling through the options to find something to watch.

My last goal for 2019 is a bit harder for me to explain. I want to get my blog to the next level and also possibly my social media. I know there are some people on social media who only post photos that look perfect and professional. I don’t necessarily want to do that, but I also can step up what I post. I’ve been using Instagram Stories more often now for the silly stuff and trying to limit what I post on the regular feed. I want to do more of that and possibly step it up a bit more. And for my blog, I’m not exactly sure what it means to take it to the next level. I am going to look at having a new layout and look, but I also want the posts to be better. I know that by posting 5 days a week that every post can’t be amazing, but I want the amazing posts to outweigh the random not great posts. I also want to look into working with more affiliate organizations. I won’t turn this blog into just a place for sponsored posts, but I would like to have more opportunities offered to me. I just don’t know how to do that just yet.

I really thought I was going to make this post a shorter one since I was only posting about my goals for this year, but clearly I had a lot to say! These goals are achievable and I hope that I can get a majority of them done by December 31st! Here’s to what I hope will be an amazing and incredible year for everyone!

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