Tag Archives: planning

Having Weird Reminders (or Needing To Remove Some Things From My Calendar)

Posted on January 19, 2021 | Comments Off on Having Weird Reminders (or Needing To Remove Some Things From My Calendar)

Even though I have a planner, I don’t use it for scheduling out my day. I use my Volt Planner for goal setting and things like that. My schedule can change a lot so I like using digital calendars to have appointments and plans. Plus, it’s easy to have things that recur set to appear automatically each time (like when I have to submit timesheets for work).

I use the Mac calendar app on my devices and one of my jobs uses Google Calendar (but I can import my personal schedule into my Mac calendar). I’ve used this for a very long time and it’s an easy system for me to use which is why I haven’t tried to find a different app.

And the simplicity of the app also meant I got a bit lazy with entering things into my calendar. I had my work for my old customer service job in there even though my schedule didn’t really change each week. I put my OTF workouts in there even though those were very consistent. I didn’t need to have reminders to not schedule other things then, but I just put it in there to have an accurate schedule somewhere.

When the pandemic started, I didn’t remove things from my calendar. My work schedule didn’t change at first and I figured OTF would be opening again soon so I didn’t feel the need to remove it. But as we all know, that didn’t really happen. But I still kept all those things in my calendar. It didn’t really bother me for a long time because I didn’t have to look at my calendar for anything. I had nothing scheduled and nothing to work around in my day.

But now that I have a job that I need to check my schedule for (not for my normal work hours, but for any meetings I have to attend), I’ve realized I need to get rid of the other things on my schedule. It was actually starting to upset me when I thought about the things I was missing. It was bad enough thinking about my old job and my workouts. But this past weekend was also supposed to be the weekend my parents were going to be in LA and we were going to see “Hamilton”.

This wasn’t the first time we had tickets for “Hamilton”. We had some in the spring last year that were canceled. We figured scheduling them for January this year was a safe bet for things to be better. And they were going to be on my dad’s birthday, so I was so excited to get to spend my dad’s birthday with him. I know that it’s for the best that things are still canceled, but it doesn’t mean I can’t be a little upset about it.

So over the weekend, I worked on removing all my old recurring things in my calendar. It will be easy enough to add them back in when things start back up again. But it’s important for me now to have things on my schedule that I really have and not things that are reminders of what I was supposed to have and not getting to do.

I know it’s a bit silly to be upset about things like this, but when I have so little happening in my life and so much that I feel like I’m missing, every reminder of what my “normal” life was like hurts a bit. I’m glad it was an easy fix for me to make and that it didn’t take me a long time. And hopefully, now I can focus on making plans going forward and not looking back at what I was hoping to do.

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Default ThumbnailRemembering To Do What I Like (or Weird Disappearing Time) Default ThumbnailTrying To Plan Ahead (or Hopefully Things Will Normalize Soon) Default ThumbnailSocial Media Reminders (or Another Thing To Celebrate) Default ThumbnailAn Up and Down Workout Week (or a Weird Week and a Weird Milestone) Default ThumbnailFeeling Optimistic About My Jobs (or Working This Year Has Been Weird) Default ThumbnailSpring Cleaning (or Needing To Declutter Again)

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Another Thing Vertigo Screwed Up For Me (or Wrapping Up My 2020 Challenges)

Posted on December 1, 2020 | Comments Off on Another Thing Vertigo Screwed Up For Me (or Wrapping Up My 2020 Challenges)

I can’t believe 2020 is almost over. This was the year that none of us were expecting. I went into the year really hopeful about what I could get done. And so many things just couldn’t happen because of the pandemic. It’s been hard to not be down about this, but I’m trying.

And November almost felt like a mini-2020 with how tough the month was for me. I started the month strong and then only a few days in I was brought down by extreme vertigo. I’m almost completely recovered from vertigo, but it’s still a little bit there. But a majority of the month was affected by it. And that includes my monthly challenge.

I really wanted to get a lot done on the new book that I wanted to write. I had an idea that I wanted to put to paper and I was so excited to see what I could do. And before I was hit with vertigo, I was doing great. I was hitting all my writing targets and I thought I would at least get to the final word target for the month (I didn’t think that would necessarily be the full book, but a great milestone no matter what).

As soon as I got sick, I had to stop writing. I wasn’t able to sit up, let alone sit at a computer. And once that happened, I got out of the groove of writing. It sucked and I tried to get back into it and it just wasn’t happening. I don’t know if I stopped being interested in writing the book or if I just was in a funk. Either way, I just didn’t do much more than what I did before I had vertigo.

But it wasn’t a complete fail. I did start the book. I did get quite a few chapters done. I wrote character bios for many of the characters in the book. I created an outline of chapters going forward. I have a plan for when I am ready to get back into writing it. Just because I didn’t get to my goal last month doesn’t mean I can’t go back to it and write. Maybe I’ll be inspired in a week or two. Maybe it won’t be for a while. But it’s there for me when I’m ready to get back to it.

To close out 2020, I wasn’t sure what I wanted my challenge to be. I know I’m in a bit of a funk still. This year wasn’t my year. This year felt stagnant and I don’t know what I could have done to change that and still feel safe. And I’m ready for next year to be here because I want to believe it will be better. I know just a new year won’t change everything, but I’m hopeful there will be a vaccine that works and is available to all in 2021, and that will allow us to start doing things again.

So my challenge for December is to get myself ready for 2021. I want to believe it will be a much better year than this year was. I want to make sure that I am in a good place to enjoy life again when I can. I want my house to feel organized for when I need to find things so I can leave. I want to work harder in my workouts to get ready for when I can be back in the studio. I want to feel ready to live my life again and not be trapped in my house.

Just like many challenges this year, this one is a bit abstract. But I just want to feel like I’m ending one year and starting another both mentally and physically. I think a lot of people feel this way too. And I just have to find the ways that it can be done for me.

I do think this challenge will be good for me because it will keep me in a mindset of moving forward and planning ahead. I will be thinking of a post-pandemic world and what I want to do. I need to keep thinking that way and not focusing on what I’m only doing now.

And hopefully, with however I prep for 2021, I am ready for the new year and what things it may bring to me.

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Default ThumbnailI Actually Wrote A Book! (or Getting Myself Ready For 2020) Default ThumbnailRecapping A Few Challenges From Last Month (or Getting Ready Stop Going Easy On Myself) Default ThumbnailGaining A Little Control In My Kitchen (or Continuing To Repeat Monthly Challenges) Default ThumbnailDecember Monthly Challenge (or Wrapping Up For The Year) Default ThumbnailThe Week That Didn’t Happen (or Last Week Was A Mini 2020) Default ThumbnailStill Dealing With Vertigo (or This May Take A While To Recover From)

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Trying To Plan Ahead (or Hopefully Things Will Normalize Soon)

Posted on June 10, 2020 | Comments Off on Trying To Plan Ahead (or Hopefully Things Will Normalize Soon)

Everything that I had planned for this spring got canceled pretty quickly once the pandemic started. I think I’m still in a bit of shock about how much I had to cancel and how fast it all happened. I was deleting stuff from my calendar when it started, but I just gave up because it was almost more overwhelming when I was constantly deleting stuff.

We are now about 3 months into this. That’s a quarter of the year where I rarely left my house. It feels like it has taken forever and flown by at the same time. And now as things are reopening, I’m trying to make some plans for things in the future but still be cautious and safe.

I’m not making plans for things in the next month or so. Maybe I’ll do something for the 4th of July, but I really don’t know. But that date feels like a line to me. I don’t want to make plans for things before the 4th. I know that it’s just a random date and it doesn’t necessarily mean that anything will be different or better by then. But it’s just something I have in my head now. Probably because there was a statement by the mayor saying that he felt that LA could be reopened by that date.

I really don’t have anything in my mind for this summer. I was supposed to go to Tahoe to spend time with my parents, but now I don’t know. Flying doesn’t seem like the safest thing to do right now, so I don’t want to fly. And it’s over 10 hours to drive there so I wouldn’t be driving. If things feel safer, maybe I’ll be able to go toward the end of the summer, but it’s very up in the air. And I haven’t even started to think about my birthday. I can’t imagine really celebrating my birthday now. If things are different in 2 months, maybe I’ll do something. But I just feel weird trying to plan something when I have no idea if we will be able to do anything in public.

In the fall, the only thing I was planning for was Thanksgiving. As far as I know, we are planning on being together as a family this year. But that also will require flying so I know it will need to be safe to be on a plane then. And with all the talk about a second wave, I worry that it won’t be ok. I know that I will be with some family no matter what, but I really hope that we will all be able to be together by November.

The only real plans for the future that I have made aren’t until the new year. I was supposed to see “Hamilton” last month with my parents. When that was canceled, we got a refund on our tickets. But we just found out that we had early access to buying tickets to some of the new dates that they added to the run. I believe the show was supposed to leave LA at the end of this year, but now they have dates through February (maybe past that, but I don’t remember seeing them). So I checked with my parents and we decided that we should get tickets and if they can’t do the show we would be refunded again. We ended up picking my dad’s birthday in January as the date we would go, and I’m hoping that we will be able to attend and that it will be safe.

And the only other plans I have are also related to musicals. I did renew my season tickets for the Pantages for the next season. But that season doesn’t start until the late spring next year. Some of the shows in that season have been canceled because they aren’t going on tour anymore, but there still is a season. And I’m excited about the shows that are scheduled. I just hope that no other shows are canceled. And at some point either later this year or at the beginning of next year, I should have the last few shows from this current season. There have been some shows that were canceled, but I believe we have 3 more that are being rescheduled. I guess those aren’t necessarily plans yet since I don’t know what the dates will be, but I’m counting them as future plans.

I know that soon I’ll feel more comfortable with making plans to do things again. Once I feel like things are safer, I need to have some things out with my friends. I’m done with being home alone and lonely. I need some social interaction. But I also don’t want to make plans that feel like they might need to be canceled because that is tough to deal with sometimes. It’s a weird mix of needed to have something to look forward to and not wanting to have to cancel things and be upset.

One day, I’m sure I’ll look back at this time and maybe laugh about how worried I was to make plans. For now, the uncertainty is really making it tough for me to make plans. But the few things that I have planned for are making me so happy and ready to be back to a more normal life.

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Default ThumbnailTrying To Not Be Sad About Missing Things (or This Was Going To Be An Awesome Weekend) Default ThumbnailAnd Another Season Of Musicals (or The Next Season Will Be A Bit Different) Default ThumbnailGetting Ready For Next Month (or Broadway Here We Come!) Default ThumbnailEnjoying The Now (or Not Trying To Skip Ahead To The Good Parts) Default ThumbnailA Free Weekday (or Planning Ahead For Fun Things) Default ThumbnailPlanning Way Too Far Ahead (or I Want It Now)

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An Isolation Monthly Challenge (or Just Trying To Keep Things Going)

Posted on April 1, 2020 | Comments Off on An Isolation Monthly Challenge (or Just Trying To Keep Things Going)

When I set up my monthly challenge for March, I had no clue what the month would end up being like. I really had all the best intentions to work on my budgeting and to get back on track with where my money was going every month. I know that this is something I need to do and that’s why I created the challenge. And for the first week or so, I was doing ok with trying to figure out a good plan for myself with what I wanted to do.

But then everything went crazy. I’ll do another post another time about my mental health right now because it’s been a lot. I’ve written a few things about it, but I feel like how I feel is swinging back and forth a lot. And part of the struggle with mental health has meant that I have neglected to do some things that I wanted to do. And budgeting did slip off my radar.

I have tried to catch up this month with getting back on track and I know I am making some good strides toward it, but there is a lot that I wanted to get done this past month that I didn’t even get close to doing. I wanted to do the online classes with how to use the software the best way possible and I never did that. I occasionally had to look up how to do something so I did learn a bit, but nothing like what I wanted to do. I still feel like there is so much I need to learn in order to feel comfortable with budgeting things the way I was able to do it before.

But I had to be gentle with myself because I know that I had the best intentions going into the month and I didn’t have any control over things going crazy. I know that maybe some people would have been fine and able to continue working on the goals that they had set up for the month. And maybe under other circumstances, I would have been able to do so. But that’s not how things worked out this time for me and I am ok with that. We are all dealing with something that we have never experienced before and we don’t know how we will react or deal.

And being in an unknown situation is what made me think of my monthly challenge for this month. I know that there is a chance that I will settle into how things are right now, but there’s a good possibility that I will be struggling the same way that I am now. Things keep changing so there is no way for me to feel settled or like I can be comfortable with how things are. I cannot control the world around me, I can only control my reaction to it.

And that’s what my challenge is for April. I want to stay more in control of how I’m dealing with everything. And the main part of that for me is trying to maintain a somewhat normal schedule. I do still have 4 days a week that I have to get up at my usual time to do work, but I have 3 days a week that I can sleep as late as I want. I did take advantage of that last week, and it’s thrown off my sleep schedule. Things aren’t my normal schedule and I can’t always do everything when I’m used to doing them, but I can create a new schedule for myself that is as close to normal as possible.

And along with that schedule, I can get better about regular meals. I have been cooking more, but I haven’t been great about eating as often or when I should. Having dinner at 9pm isn’t good for me, but it’s happened more than once. I usually don’t eat breakfast, but I have been doing that lately and I think it is out of boredom. I need to plan meals the best that I can and work on scheduling when I am going to cook and when I am going to eat.

The only thing I have been ok at trying to maintain is having a few fun things in my life. They are limited to things I can do on my computer or phone, so that is a bit of a struggle for me mentally. But it does help when I have something to look forward to in the afternoon or evening. I’ve mainly been doing movies with friends, but I should try to find other things that I can do virtually with friends. This will be over one day, but it might not be soon. I need to get to work on adjusting my life so I will thrive during this time. Surviving isn’t enough for me right now. I need to find ways to continue pushing forward and working on myself. And I think figuring out a plan for this time is the best way I can do that right now.

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How Is This Month/Year/Decade Almost Over? (or I Think Everyone Is Shocked It’s Almost January)

Posted on December 19, 2019 | Comments Off on How Is This Month/Year/Decade Almost Over? (or I Think Everyone Is Shocked It’s Almost January)

When I set my monthly challenge for this month, I knew it was exactly what I needed to do. I wanted to get myself in the best spot possible to get ready for the new year. While I know that the new year doesn’t have to mean anything special, I did want to use it as a deadline to get some things set up. And I like having the new year start off with new goals and everything ready for me to work on those goals. And when I set that challenge, I had every intention to spend time every day working toward that idea and being productive.

And I have been doing little things almost every day and have been getting things set up in my life to make sure that I make the most of my time during work and when I have free time. And somehow I thought I was more ahead of things than I actually was because I didn’t realize how close the month is to being over! And from what so many of my friends have been saying, I think that everyone was surprised to realize that we are over halfway through this month and it’s almost Christmas.

I’m guessing a part of this is because of how late Thanksgiving was this year, and maybe another part is how quickly time seems to go by. But I honestly was shocked when I paid attention to how many days left I had to mail holiday cards before Christmas. I had ordered my cards but hadn’t worked on them because I figured I would have plenty of time to get them done. But I finally realized yesterday that if I didn’t get them done and in the mail today or tomorrow that they won’t necessarily make it in time. I did holiday postcards again because they are easier so I should be able to get everything done in one day. But I hate that I am rushed to get this done when I could have taken my time.

I think another thing that makes this month seem over a lot sooner is the fact that I have several days off next week. My job doesn’t give us much time off for holidays, and most holidays seem to fall on Mondays when we already have time off. But this year, it’s one of the best setups for maximizing days off. I will have no work from when I’m done with my half shift this Saturday (which is my normal Saturday shift) until work starts on Thursday. I can’t remember the last time I had that many days off in a row. I didn’t realize I had that much time off until earlier this month so I didn’t make any plans to do anything. They will probably end up being very lazy days at home, but that’s fine with me. But not having those days feel like normal days also limits how much time is left this month.

I know that I won’t be completely slacking off on all my days off. I will still have lots of things I need to do and I want to get done. But I also know that there will be lots of time to read or watch some SAG Awards screeners. And in a way, doing that will feel like catching up on work or being productive since they are things I want to get done. I just ordered a new AppleTV (my current one is about 7 years old and isn’t really working correctly anymore), so watching the screeners should be easier than in the past because I hopefully can watch them on my tv.

I still have a bit of time left this month, but I’m just shocked how much time has already gone by without me getting as much done as I thought I would. I’m trying to make that motivate me to get going and not to be upset about what hasn’t happened. And hopefully by the time this month is over and I’m doing my recap of my challenge as well as how I did on my goals for the year, I will have a lot of things done and will feel as ready to go with a new month, year, and decade.

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Default ThumbnailUnder 90 Days Left In The Year (or Doing A Bit Of Reflecting) Default ThumbnailAlmost Through A Year Of Monthly Challenges (or Picking A Good Challenge For November) Default ThumbnailTaking A Month To Reset (or This Doesn’t Really Feel Like A Monthly Challenge) Default ThumbnailA Birthday Month Challenge (or Education And Celebration) Default ThumbnailIs This A Year Of Being Selfish? (or A Month Of Saying No) Default ThumbnailAlmost The End Of A Decade For Me (or The Birthday Countdown Has Begun)

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Under 90 Days Left In The Year (or Doing A Bit Of Reflecting)

Posted on October 9, 2019 | Comments Off on Under 90 Days Left In The Year (or Doing A Bit Of Reflecting)

Life has been crazy for me lately, but I’ve had a bit of a break over the past few days. I spent a lot of the time when things were calmer getting stuff done that I had been putting off. I also spent some time catching up on social media. While I do run some social media accounts, I haven’t really done a lot on social media for myself. And when I was catching up on seeing what other people have been up to, I saw a lot of posts from a few days ago talking about how there are only 90 days left in 2019.

I have said this a million times, but I have no clue where the time went. I was just thinking about how I should figure out if I was going to do something for my birthday, and my birthday was 2 months ago! I think I missed the chance to do that, but there’s always my half birthday. I know that time flew by because I have been very busy and my life is quite repetitive. From week to week, things do tend to stay the same for me. I have a similar schedule every day and even the things I do outside of work tend to be similar. And things have been crazy with trying to fit a lot of stuff in when I’m not working and things tend to chunk up together so I have a cycle of being extremely busy followed by a time where I don’t have much planned.

But I started to think more about what I have done this year and what I still want to do. I took another look at the various goals I set for this year and I’m glad that I have been making some progress on them. I don’t think I’ll be successful with all of the goals I set this year, but it would be a miracle if that happened. The goals I set are a mix of those that I know I can do and some that are more difficult. My priority is to get the ones accomplished that I know I can do plus a few of the harder ones. I think I’ll be able to do that this year, but I also want to make sure that I’m not being complacent and just doing the goals that I can do without much thought.

But I also can add some more goals for the last 90ish days of the year. I don’t exactly know what I want to get done, but I want there to be a change in my life. I have been living a life that doesn’t seem like a lot gets done or changes. And I need a change in my life. I am tired of living the same day over and over again. There are so many things that I want to change about my life that I’m not in control of, and I need to think beyond those. If I just focus on the changes that require someone else, I won’t make the changes that I can do on my own. And I think my focus has not been on the ones I’m in control of. I don’t quite know what those changes are just yet, but I know there are things I can do. And I’d love to work on them (or at least figure out what they are) during these last 90ish days of the year.

This is all still such an abstract idea for me because I have just been doing some thinking about it and not planning or doing any action steps. And I know I have been aware of this before and I haven’t been able or willing to make changes. I don’t know how many attempts it will take in order to finally make the change, but hopefully, it will happen one day. I don’t want to have 10 years go by and realize I’m still living the same life. I’m shocked when I realized how many years I’ve been working at this job because I don’t know how time went by without a lot of changes. I want to make sure that my life is as awesome as I want it to be, but it’s not there yet.

I don’t always love using the calendar to set goals and plans. I do set goals at the beginning of each year, but sometimes those goals are already things I’ve been working on. I don’t believe in waiting until the first of the month or a Monday to start a new plan. But for some reason, knowing there were only 90 days left in the year connected to me and got me to think about how I want to end out this year. I want to have some things to think about as accomplishments for 2019 and it’s not too late to start working on them.

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Default ThumbnailMy 2019 Goals (or Another Year Of Planning Some Big Things) Default ThumbnailA Mid-Point Check In (or Some Slacking and Some Progress) Default ThumbnailStarting To Wrap Up 2017 (or Getting In All My End Of The Year Things) Default ThumbnailStarting The Year With A Lot Of Transformation (or Who Will I Be By Next Year?) Default ThumbnailOne Year (or Actually One Year And A Couple Of Days) Default ThumbnailReflecting Back On 2014 (or How I Did With My Goals)

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Refocusing And Getting Back To Me (or Doing A Bit Of The Same This Month)

Posted on October 2, 2019 | Comments Off on Refocusing And Getting Back To Me (or Doing A Bit Of The Same This Month)

Last month, my monthly challenge was to reset myself. I had been dealing with so much in my life over the summer and I really needed to get back to me. I felt like I was not in the best mental space and I was feeling the effects physically too. I knew I needed to get back to myself and figure out how to make it work again.

I did my best with the challenge. Where I had the most success was getting my sleep back on track. There were still some nights where I was up too late or didn’t get a lot of sleep (like the night before my Dri-Tri), but in general, I was doing much better last month with my sleep. I was getting to bed closer to the time that I knew I needed to and I wasn’t as tired when I woke up. I know I should feel lucky that my sleep issues didn’t include oversleeping, but when I was staying up late and had the chance to sleep in, it would have been nice if I could do that. But I guess it was better that I only had to work on my bedtime when I was working on myself.

I didn’t make as much progress in working on my food or self-care practices. Food is always going to be a struggle for me, I know that. But I wanted to do a little better and be a bit more structured. I think the structure is improving and I am not having extreme hunger issues, but the quality of what I’m eating needs to be worked on (like it always does). And my self-care did improve a bit with making time for myself. But I always wanted to work on self-care practices for my skin and appearance. That is still not back to my normal routine yet, but I have worked on some of it and I’m slowly getting back to what I know makes my skin look better and makes me happy.

After spending last month working on refocusing and getting back to my normal self, I realized that there are other places I need to refocus in my life as well. And the biggest one is my acting career. Lately, it has felt like I have been doing so much for my career because of all my work with the election. But that doesn’t help my career directly. I still work on self-submitting every day and networking when I can, but there is more that I can do and I haven’t been doing it.

Some of the things I should be doing are things I can’t do because of money issues. I’d love to be in an on-going acting class and I haven’t found one that fits what I’m looking for and my budget. But I want to keep looking to see if I can find the perfect class for me. And I know I need new headshots, but those aren’t cheap (or if you do them cheaply, they don’t usually look good). But I have been saving for those and I am going to try to find a way to get them done soon.

So this month, I want to work on refocusing myself on my acting career. I want to make some good steps forward with things that I can control. I have a lot working in my favor, and I just need to make the effort to take advantage of them. But I don’t always know what the path is to do that and I can work on figuring that out without spending money. I don’t have any specifics on what I want to do this month (I know, another abstract challenge), but I have some ideas of things I can do or focus on. And while I doubt I will see results with auditions or bookings within the month, doing these things are going to be setting me up for those in the future.

It’s so easy to call yourself an actor because you don’t have to prove that you are doing anything. I know that I’m not just claiming to be an actor, but I also know there is so much more I can do for my career while I am not fully living as an actor. And this month, I want to add more of those things into my life and see where it takes me. I can only benefit from doing this, so it will be worth challenging myself and seeing what’s possible.

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Taking A Month To Reset (or This Doesn’t Really Feel Like A Monthly Challenge)

Posted on September 3, 2019 | Comments Off on Taking A Month To Reset (or This Doesn’t Really Feel Like A Monthly Challenge)

Last month, I challenged myself to celebrate more often. That made sense since August is my birthday month, but it didn’t quite go the way I expected it to go. A lot of things didn’t go the way I expected them to go because of how much energy the election took. I did try to celebrate as much as I could and appreciate the little things in life, but I really had a bigger expectation of what I was going to accomplish.

I thought I’d be celebrating my birthday and bigger things like that. I ended up celebrating nights that I was in bed before midnight or didn’t wake up multiple times to get more work done. And I celebrated when I had the rare moments last month that I wasn’t nauseous. Those are still things to celebrate, but not exactly what I thought of when I originally started the month. But I guess I have to allow myself to be flexible and I did celebrate how I was able to do so. But like many of my challenges, this is one that I want to continue and remember that it’s important to celebrate even the little stupid things sometimes.

Because of how crazy and hectic August ended up being for me (and because I know that October is going to have a bit of craziness too), I wanted to figure out a good monthly challenge for September. I had a list of ideas that I created before the beginning of the year, but nothing really felt right to me. I wanted to find a way to be centered again and not feel like I am living from stressful moment to stressful moment. I also can feel burnout creeping up on me and I want to do what I can to stop it.

So I had to let go of the challenge ideas that I had because none of them would really accomplish what I want to do. Some of them might have ended up stressing me out even more because it would be adding something else to my life or only having me focus on one part of my life. I had to rethink about what the monthly challenge could look like for me. I realized I needed less of a challenge for September and more of a goal and plan.

So for September, my “challenge” is to reset my life back to normal. I have been doing horribly with some parts of my life that I know need to be regulated like sleep and my eating schedule. I need to spend this month getting back to a healthy place with things like that because if I don’t it’s going to be even more stressful for me. I need to work on getting to bed on time and not worrying about not being reachable in the middle of the night. I probably need to set alarms again to remind myself to eat because there were several days last month that I forgot one or more meals in a day. I know there are more parts to my life that I want to reset, but sleep and food are the big ones.

I also want to reset my free time scheduling and use it productively. I haven’t had a lot of free time lately so when I have it I usually nap or spend it doing as little as possible. I want to be productive and maximize each day. I want to get my spending and budgeting back on track because I haven’t been tracking it the way I need to. And I even realized that some of my self-care practices took a backseat last month and I want to get back to the regular routines that I have had in the recent past. Making sure I take care of my skin and appearance isn’t the most important thing, but it helps me feel better about myself.

Hopefully, by taking this month to get back to what I know to be my normal, I will feel less stressed soon. And maybe I’ll discover new habits I want to add to my day or old habits that I can drop or do more efficiently. While it’s not a challenge like most of the challenges are or what I want them to be, I am still excited to see what happens by the end of the month.

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A Social Media Monthly Challenge (or Wanting To Put Some Positivity Into The World)

Posted on February 1, 2019 | Comments Off on A Social Media Monthly Challenge (or Wanting To Put Some Positivity Into The World)

My monthly challenges are typically things that I do to better myself or improve my life in some way. I see them as a way to grow and to challenge myself with something that I might have been scared to do before. Doing something for a month isn’t a huge time commitment and I’ve almost always been pleasantly surprised that I end up wanting those challenges to be a part of my every day life moving forward.

Last month’s challenge was one that I set to work on bettering myself. I did a little bit of online learning every day. I had such high hopes for this challenge and what good things I would be able to add to my skill set. But I think my expectations were a bit too high. While I did enjoy doing the online classes, it felt more like I was sampling the classes and seeing what the subject was about instead of learning. I think maybe my expectations were high because I have done online classes at community colleges before when I just wanted to learn a subject (it’s a pretty cheap thing to do). And these online classes I found for free weren’t the same.

I also might have been doing more sampling of different subjects instead of just focusing hard on one thing. Maybe if I was focused on learning everything that I could about one thing, I would have felt differently. I’m not upset or disappointed about the challenge I did in January, I just had a different end result from what I thought I’d have. But I am grateful that I found so many amazing free online education services because I am going to continue to take advantage of them. I don’t know if it will be a daily thing, but it will be something I turn to when I need to learn more about a subject or want to add a skill set. I might have to build upon the free classes with something I pay for, but it will at least be a start.

But for February, I’m going to make the challenge a bit more than just something  for me. While this will benefit me, it will hopefully also benefit other people as well.

I’m a fairly active user of social media. While I don’t always post things to make my life look amazing, I do keep a lot of it positive. Mainly, I think I keep things positive on Instagram and Facebook. I know that I post real and tough things on there too, but it’s easily a mix of good and bad. But on Twitter, I’ve noticed that I have posted more negative or serious things.

I’m sure that’s happening because it’s very easy to share someone else’s post on Twitter. I can retweet from so many different sources with a simple click and I do follow a lot of more serious accounts. And I feel like the serious things that I’m sharing are important things like political issues that I’m passionate about. If I see a problem or misleading information that can harm others, I make sure I express my opinion. Social media is designed to do just that.

But because I share so much serious stuff like politics or news, I feel like I don’t balance it out with more positive things. I do share good things from time to time when I do my daily tweets about my union, but I don’t do a lot of random happiness or silly posts. And when I do post them, like this tweet about my grandma and my aunt and uncle’s new puppy, I always feel good for putting something out there that can make someone smile.

I’ve also done text messages to friends who I know are going through a tough time with silly photos or videos saying that they are to be used when they need a cuteness break. And realizing how happy doing those texts make me has inspired my challenge for this month (and hopefully beyond since I think this is one that I will keep up).

I want to share something on Twitter every day that is just to share positivity or to make someone smile. It might be something I created myself or a photo I took and it might be just me retweeting something that makes me happy from another account. There are a bunch of accounts I can follow that post only things like that and I’m going to use those as a resource to retweet when I don’t have something of my own to share.

While this might not balance out all the serious things I post, it will help. And you never know when someone scrolling through your feed is needing that random smile. Posting something every day is a pretty simple effort but it can have a big impact if it gets to the right person at the right time. And there is a good chance that I will be the person that needs the mood boost from time to time and sharing something online will be benefitting me more than anyone else.

This should be a pretty easy challenge for me to do because I can create a list of good accounts to retweet from as well as set a reminder for myself to post something. I’ve gotten so used to doing my daily union tweets so this will be adding on to that habit.

But just because it’s easy it doesn’t mean that it won’t affect me. I’m excited to know that I’ll be putting more good and positivity into the world every day and I can’t wait to see how much happier I will be by the end of the month!

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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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