I got another Volt Planner for 2021, so I’ll be doing another year full of goal setting! I love using this planner for setting weekly, monthly, and annual goals as well as monthly challenges. I also use it to track my daily intentions and my gratitude list. It is a planner so I can track other things, but that’s what I mainly use it for. When I was able to work out at the Orangetheory studios, I would also use it for some workout tracking. But since I’ve been working out at home, I don’t really do that.
It really is the perfect planner for me and I’ve been using them for several years now. I keep all my old planners because it’s interesting to see what I’ve accomplished and how far I’ve come. My collection is pretty decent so far.
My monthly challenges used to be much more excited. But since we’ve had to isolate at home, they are not as grand and much more personal. For December, my challenge was to get myself ready for 2021. And I did a fair amount of preparation with things I wanted to do like getting different parts of my house organized. But the plan to prep was sidetracked a bit by getting a new job. I think that’s a very good excuse to be sidetracked. And in a way, getting a new job was preparing me for this year. I needed a new job so I wouldn’t be struggling as much. But there was some other stuff I wanted to do that I didn’t get a chance to, like doing some rearranging of things in my kitchen. But nothing I didn’t do was urgent so I can get them done this month.
And for this month’s challenge, I was a bit inspired by the idea of how we’ve all been isolated for so long. And being isolated at home doesn’t have to mean being completely isolated from the people you love. I know that I have been isolating myself more than I’d like to, but it’s what happened to me when I was feeling low. It’s so much easier for me to ask a friend to get dinner or hang out if I’m lonely compared to asking if we could have some sort of virtual hangout. But virtual hangouts are really all we can do (with few exceptions).
So my challenge for this month is to not isolate myself from my friends completely and to make sure that I connect with someone that I care about every day. This means I can’t go run an errand like go get groceries and count seeing people in the store or talking to the cashier as a connection. This has to be with a friend or family member.
And I know there are different levels of being able to connect with someone. Right now, the thing that would make me happiest is seeing someone in person (outdoors and keeping a distance between us). This isn’t the easiest thing to do, and also not necessarily the safest for now. If I can make this happen, awesome. But I also understand that for now, I might not be able to do this at all this month. But it’s something to hope for. Next, would be doing a video call. These are totally safe, but so many people have Zoom/video chat fatigue. I get that. Then I would put phone calls next on my list and texts/message groups last.
My goal is to not just do texts every day with friends, but I know that there will be days where texts are the best I can do. I hopefully can have more phone and video calls with friends and family this month and continue that beyond this month until we can all safely meet in person.
I’ve been isolated at home for almost 10 months now, and it’s really getting to me. It’s easy to avoid people, but I know that it’s not the best thing for me to do. So hopefully this challenge this month will get me back to being more social in whatever ways I can and I can feel much better about the current situation. I need to figure out how to be happier while I wait for things to be safer. And I know having time with friends and family will help do that.
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Almost Through A Year Of Monthly Challenges (or Picking A Good Challenge For November)
Not Perfect This Month (or Challenged With The Monthly Challenge)
Still Trying To Get Back To Normal (or Isolation Monthly Challenges Really Are Not Easy)
Getting More Productive (or More Monthly Challenges)
Another Reminder That It’s Ok To Be Struggling (or We Might Be Isolated But Not Alone)
