Struggling To Figure Out A Monthly Challenge (or Finding Myself Again)

It’s almost the end of the year! I can’t believe that in 2 months it will be 2019! And with the start of November I am recapping a monthly challenge and sharing a new one. While this year as been the year of more abstract challenges, I feel like this might be the most abstract one and a bit tough to explain. But first, I want to share how my October challenge went.

I wanted to continue building on my challenge to not shop online by being much clearer on what I wanted to buy when I did shop online or in person. I did do some online shopping last month, but it was much more deliberate than it has been in the past. I did work on using my Amazon wish lists and just leaving things in my cart online to not shop until I had something I really needed. Then I would reevaluate what I was actually going to purchase. The only time this didn’t work was with ordering a bra online because I thought I added both of the ones I wanted and it only had 1 in the order. Since I really wanted both (I think the women reading this understand that when you find a bra that fits you want it in multiple colors to go under anything you might wear), I did 2 orders back to back to get everything ordered that I was hoping to have. It wasn’t impulsive or done for just convenience like I had in the past, which is a good sign.

For shopping in person, I got much better about making my lists. I usually would make a list on a sticky note before I went to the store and that helped a lot. I wasn’t forgetting things at the store like I sometimes do and I was cutting back on how often I had to go to the store. I did still have some impulsive buys when I saw things I wasn’t expecting (like the Wonder Woman sheet mask I saw at CVS when I was getting contact lens solution), but it was much less than before. I still took my time when shopping and wandered around the stores, but it was more of seeing what else is out there than trying to figure out what I wanted to get. I had already been doing shopping lists from time to time, but I’m glad I forced myself to do them more often and I plan on keeping this up.

Now for November’s challenge, I really struggled to figure out what I wanted to do. I had lots of little ideas, but none of them seemed to really connect to me or feel worthy of a monthly challenge. Some of them were things I was already planning on doing this month and that almost felt like a cheat since it wasn’t a new challenge. I probably was thinking about this since the beginning of October and by this week I still didn’t have an idea of what I would do.

But I was inspired by a phone call I had with my aunt the other day. We usually talk every week (we discuss the tv shows we both watch), but we had been having trouble connecting on the phone so we hadn’t talked in almost a month. We both have been dealing with lots of randomness so it wasn’t either of our faults that the phone call took forever to happen. And while we were talking we discussed what was happening in our lives. And I just kept saying some variation of how I just don’t feel like myself or like I’m back on track to normal life.

I don’t know exactly why I’m feeling like this, but I know that some of the smaller challenge ideas I had for this month are a part of that. I am struggling with money right now and it’s a huge stress on my mind. Worrying about money as often as I am right now isn’t what I’m used to. I do worry about money, but not like I am right now. My food has been off too, but that is due to lots of different factors that I’m trying to resolve. My sleep has been a bit of a struggle, but it’s slowly getting better and I’m closer to the amount of sleep I know I need to get. And some things are just piling up and I’m so far behind (like catching up on podcasts or reading) and I can’t figure out why this is happening or where my time is going.

So this month, I’m trying to find myself again. I don’t know where I went or what happened, but I need to fix this. It’s such an abstract challenge and I have no idea how I will measure if I am successful or not, but it’s exactly what I need to do right now. This is similar to many of the other abstract challenges I’ve done this month, but this time I’m not being specific on what I’m trying to accomplish. I just want this uneasy and unsettled feeling to go away and to feel like I know I can and should. And I want to do whatever it takes to make that happen and I’m not sure what it will involve.

I know some of the things I need to work on and what I can do to try to fix them, but I don’t know if those individual things will make me feel more like me again. It might take other things that I haven’t thought of that I will discover as the month goes on. And having this challenge as open and general as it is will allow me to do what I discover I need to do. And hopefully in a month when I recap this post I will be able to share that I am feeling much more like me (even if I’m not all the way there yet) and will know what changes I needed to make in my life to get there.

You Might Also Like

Sorry Not Sorry (or Another Abstract Monthly Challenge) Almost Through A Year Of Monthly Challenges (or Picking A Good Challenge For November) Getting Back To Stretching (or My Body Is Telling Me What Monthly Challenge To Do) Thinking Of Changing Up My Monthly Challenge (or I Guess This Would Be A First) Struggling To Figure Out Challenges Right Now (or I’m Just Going To Try To Stay Hopeful) Another Monthly Challenge (or What To Do When You Are Crazy Busy)