I feel like so many of my monthly challenges are going to be all about getting things back to feeling normal. Or at least, I know my challenge last month and this month will be.
Last month, I challenged myself to have some social time every single day. I knew I was isolating myself too much and I wanted to fix that. I had a goal to always talk to a friend or family member. And I’m happy to say that I did accomplish that.
I did want to try to do more video calls, but I didn’t get that many of them done. But I did have more phone calls than I normally do and didn’t have to rely just on text messages for a majority of the days. I do feel a bit better and less isolated, but I also know that until I can start doing more in-person things that it will be a struggle. But I also know I have the tools to feel better and I need to remember them more often when I’m feeling alone.
And now onto my challenge for this month.
Working on my personal schedule has been an on-going battle for me. It’s usually tough for me to balance work, fun, and time to recover at home. But before the pandemic, I had a pretty decent schedule happening with so much being a weekly or monthly thing and I felt like I was finally getting things balanced. Of course, as soon as I feel good about something, things change and I have to start over.
I spent a good amount of last year without a regular work schedule. Even when I still was working a little, working an hour a day is really nothing. And I didn’t have much to schedule into my life since I wasn’t doing anything. And when I wasn’t working any regular hours at all, I know my schedule got really bad and I wasn’t doing any sort of planning.
Once I started my new job, I had to get things back onto a regular schedule again. I still have significantly less to schedule than I did before the pandemic, but I noticed how not scheduling out my days has started to affect me. I’m feeling a mix of having too much to do and having nothing to do. I stress to get things done only to have hours to do nothing later. I feel like I’m still in a bit of a mindset that I want to be done with all work by a certain time so my afternoons and evenings are free. But they don’t really have to be.
So this month, I have a challenge to actually start scheduling out my days. I want to write more than I have to on a schedule because I know that I need to overdo things a bit so I can see how much I really need. I want to include things like my workout times and when I do my morning and evening routines. In a perfect world, I’d love to have when I’m going to eat on my schedule, but I know that can change a bit. I want to put all my work time in there and the time that I plan on relaxing and watching tv.
I’m hoping that by doing this I can find where I’m pushing myself too hard in my schedule and where I need to add more things. And it should be a bit easier than other times I’ve tried doing this because the things I can have on my schedule will be limited. And hopefully, by doing this I will also get my sleep schedule back under control. I’m doing better with my sleep than I was a month ago, but I’m still staying up too late. And if I can figure out when I can do the things that keep me up late at other times of the day, then I can go to sleep when I want.
I know that scheduling myself won’t be a perfect challenge and I will have mistakes and errors. But my goal is not perfection. I just want to see some progress in how I schedule my life so that I can continue to plan to add more things back into my life as things become safer.
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