Tag Archives: planning

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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Recapping A Few Challenges From Last Month (or Getting Ready Stop Going Easy On Myself)

Posted on December 4, 2018 | Comments Off on Recapping A Few Challenges From Last Month (or Getting Ready Stop Going Easy On Myself)

I usually would just be doing my monthly challenge recap in this post and then announce my next monthly challenge, but I’m going to do things a bit differently this time. I’m going to recap 2 challenges I had last month and that will lead into what my challenge will be for this month.

First, last month I challenged myself to work on getting back to feeling like myself. I knew that I was feeling a bit lost and not like myself and I wanted to find what I needed to do in order to feel that way again. It was another challenge that wasn’t easy to track so I looked at it as a goal for the month versus a challenge.

I’m almost embarrassed to admit that in the middle of the month I actually forgot what my challenge was. It wasn’t something I had to think about every day or had a reminder to do, so it was easy to forget about it. I tried to put a positive spin on it and say that I must be back to myself if I wasn’t focused on doing that anymore. And I do feel like I’m back to being me and I’m very happy about that. But that doesn’t take away from the fact that I really didn’t have to do much for this challenge and it really was kind of a wash.

I also had a challenge last month to participate in NaNoWriMo again and to get up to date on all my online dating stories. I hadn’t done a lot of work on the book since last year and I had a lot of stories to add. I started off on a great note with getting chapter names for all the new stories, writing a few of the stories down that I hadn’t done yet, and updating the few stories that have had changes or new updates. I knew that I wasn’t going to hit the word count goal for NaNoWriMo since my stories aren’t necessarily that long, but I wanted to work on the book until I was current on it.

But after that initial motivation and got a few things done, I did nothing else with it last month. I am glad that I wrote down the stories that I want to write because there were a few that I had forgotten about. I plan on writing more stories than I probably would actually have in a book so I have options. It’s better to have to edit a book and stories down than to need to find more to add because it’s too short. There’s no real good excuse for why I didn’t work on my book more other than I was lazy and just didn’t do it. I had the time between my customers at work on work on them and it wouldn’t have taken that much time. I just didn’t do it and I am a bit upset with myself that I just let that go and didn’t work on it like I planned to do.

From both the book and my monthly challenges being kind of a fail and I went easy on myself for not really doing much, I knew I needed to make a change. My monthly challenges used to be real challenges that pushed me and made me work toward a change in my life. I haven’t kept all of the monthly challenges as a part of my life, but many of them are still daily habits that I enjoy and know benefit me.

So technically my challenge for this month is another one that will be easy to slack on, but it will be better for me in the long run. My challenge this month is to plan my monthly challenges for 2019. I would love to have a list of at least 16 challenges so I have some options to use next year. I want to pick things that can be tracked and measured so I am held accountable to them. And I want to pick things that will truly challenge me and hopefully make me a better version of myself. I’m hoping I can find a good mix of physical challenges (like stretching and yoga), educational challenges (like how I’m working on learning French), and mental challenges (like my meditation challenge that I’m over 900 days into). I know having a mix will be the best thing for me and will help me not feel too overwhelmed.

I know that this month is another challenge I can slack on and not make an effort every day toward, but it’s the first step in making sure that I break this bad habit and have some amazing challenges in the new year!

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

Posted on November 1, 2018 | 1 comment

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.

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Just Trucking Along (or Enjoying Like Being Normal And Boring)

Posted on August 24, 2018 | 1 comment

In the past, when my life has gotten boring I have written about how I need things to make like interesting again. I feel like I need to schedule more fun in my life and then after I do that I end up feeling overwhelmed and over-scheduled. Then I need to focus back on myself and get things to calm down and the cycle between being bored and being overwhelmed continues. This keeps going and every time it happens I write about how I need to find a happy medium.

I don’t know if I have found the happy medium in my life, but lately things have been a bit boring and I’m so happy with that. I have been doing lots of fun things when I can, but then I have a lot of time where I don’t have anything planned. For example, this week after work I haven’t made plans for anything. All I’ve been doing is laying low at home and relaxing. I’ve read a lot and caught up a bit on Netflix and it’s been making me really happy. It’s not that I have been avoiding plans, but I haven’t been that active in making plans either. If someone invites me to something I would go, but I’m not going out of my way to try to make more plans in my life.

It’s also the tail end of the slow season for one of my day jobs. The slow season can make time drag on a bit during a shift because sometimes I only help 1 customer in 7 hours and I just stare at my computer to see if there will be another computer. But I’ve been enjoying the lack of work with that job. I’ve been listening to a lot of podcasts during work and when I’m caught up on those I’ve been going down random YouTube rabbit holes. I’ve watched some very odd things online lately, but I’ve been entertained by them and it helps the work day go by faster.

When the busy season starts again I won’t have as much time to goof off between customers, but that’s fine since I was hired to do a job and not to just sit at my computer and stare at it. But I also may be getting more hours at my other day job when I sign my new contract soon which will also help to keep me busy between customers. And having more hours at that job will be amazing because that also means I will have more money coming in. I would love to spend that money on fun things, but I have gotten behind in paying off my credit card and really want to get that back on track. So the extra money will go toward that so hopefully I can reach my debt goal I had set for this year. It’s going to be tough to do that, but if I get the hours my boss is hoping they will be able to offer me, it may be possible.

Even with things being a bit boring right now, I’m really appreciating that time. I think I needed the lack of plans in my life to just get back to me and I am grateful that I had that opportunity. I have written about how I was feeling a bit off and low lately and I’m finally starting to feel much more like myself and ready to handle whatever comes up for me next. I want to feel reinvigorated and while I’m not quite there I know I’m getting close. And I think feeling that way will help me when I’m feeling very overwhelmed when it’s the busy season for work, I have more hours at my other job, and my free time is over-scheduled.

I was telling a friend of mine about this the other day and she said that being happy when things are boring is something that comes with age. And I do agree that it’s possible that I’ve grown into feeling ok with this. But I also think in a way it was like exposure therapy because I have had to deal with this so many times over and over. And I finally have learned from it and can take those lessons and apply it to when it’s happening instead of wishing for it after the fact.

Of course knowing my life, I’m writing this now and in a week or two I will either be upset by the lack of fun in my life or I will be so overwhelmed and missing this time and trying to figure out how I can get back to it.

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Is This A Year Of Being Selfish? (or A Month Of Saying No)

Posted on August 1, 2018 | 1 comment

It’s so weird when I look back at my monthly challenges as they rack up throughout the year. This year and last year I didn’t really have challenges planned out the way I did the first time and many times I’m picking a challenge out at the last minute. And as I’ve been looking back at some of the challenges I’ve been doing this year, it seems like the common theme has been that I’ve been doing more selfish challenges. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing as I’ve been realizing that I’ve been putting myself last quite a bit, but I do think I want to work on other types of challenges in the future. But this month won’t be the month to change.

First, a quick recap on last month’s challenge. I did not use my pressure mat every single day, but I did use it more often than not last month. I do want to get into a better habit of using it because I do feel the difference when I take the time to use it. I’m still looking at guides online for ideas of ways to use it and lay on it, but most of the time I just like laying on my back letting it work on my neck, shoulders, and back. It feels really good and I have enjoyed not having some of the back and neck pain I’ve been dealing with for a little while. I’m working on a system of when would be a good time each day to use it or maybe a plan for what days I will use it in different ways, but it’s a work in progress.

Last month’s challenge wasn’t my most successful one as far as consistency goes, but that’s what inspired this month’s challenge. About 2 1/2 years ago I read the book “Year Of Yes” by Shonda Rhimes and it was so inspiring! It made me realize how often I was saying no to opportunities that I really should have taken advantage of. I was scared for a variety of reasons to say yes to things and I knew that I needed to stop letting that hold me back. While I didn’t say yes to everything that came my way, I was saying yes much more often.

I’ve tried to keep doing that whenever possible and when I had to turn down an invitation or couldn’t do something I wanted to I felt so guilty about it. I hated to let someone down and even though I know that I wasn’t letting people down if I couldn’t attend something, it still was in my head that I was. It’s a tough habit to break but I’ve been working on this feeling for a while.

But then this year I’ve been doing some more things to put myself first and not feel like I have to say yes to everything. My first challenge this year was related to that with allowing myself to be selfish. But that didn’t connect with me as much as it should have and I have been back in the habit of saying yes more often that I probably would like to and feeling guilty when I say no. I am not trying to be totally selfish and that is something that I don’t think I could ever do, but I do want to feel ok saying no when I want to and not have the feelings of guilt.

The one aspect of my life where I have been more successful with this has been with dating. And I’m not taking about saying no if a guy is pressuring me to do something (if they try that they will regret it). I mean not going out with a guy just because they asked me out. I’ve realized that I have been having dates with more quality guys lately. There still have been some duds, but they are not as often as they were when I started back on the various apps. As someone else pointed out to me, I’ve been getting more selective and willing to block or unmatch with someone who I don’t want to talk to anymore. I don’t have any guilt over doing that and I’m more than happy to stop wasting my time with someone who I don’t want to meet.

Obviously it’s different to say no to something a friend is inviting you out to compared to blocking a guy online that you’ve never met and is starting to bother you. But it’s still the same idea and I need to take some of the lack of guilt and fear I have with guys and apply it to other parts of my life. I need to find the balance with putting myself first and still being a good friend to others and taking chances on things that I might not automatically think I should do or attend.

I think that the reason this has been so tough for me to do has been that I’ve worked hard on saying yes more often and now I’m out of the habit of saying no. And I’ve had a lot of fun saying yes to things when I originally felt like I should turn down. I also like having fun and random things to do because it gives me things to write about.

I’ve realize in the past month or so that I do need to be more selfish. I don’t think saying yes got me sick, but I think stressing about doing things might have made my cold thing last longer. I also think that feeling down had a lot to do with trying to force myself to do things I wasn’t sure about and the guilt I felt if I didn’t go. I have spent so many times making my monthly challenges about being selfish and reconnecting to myself, but I haven’t really been able to accomplish it the way I needed to.

So this month, I’m working on saying no more often. There will be a lot of fun things to do this month (it’s my birthday month!) so I’ll have lots of things I want to say yes to. But I also know there should be plenty of time to work on saying no or at least allowing myself time to debate if I want to say yes or not. I’m not sure if I’ll be successful in this challenge or not, but I am giving myself a much more measurable challenge and something that has action steps to it.

I’m not exactly sure what I am hoping this month will result in for me, but I’m excited to see how it goes and what happens. If nothing else, it will give me some more self-reflection and permission to focus on doing what I want to instead of what is offered to me.

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It’s Giveaway Time! (or I Want You To Have An Amazing 2018!)

Posted on February 21, 2018 | 28 comments

If you’re been reading my blog for a while, you know that I love my planner from Ink+Volt! This is the 3rd year I’ve used a Volt Planner and I find it really helps me with my goal setting on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. I have accomplished more in the past few years than I ever had and I know that it’s all because of the planner. I love setting aside time to work on my goals and reflecting on where I succeeded and failed because it allows me to keep working toward what I want and I am able to process it and move on. I don’t necessarily dwell on when I don’t accomplish something because I know there is another week to set that goal and hopefully I will be able to reach it then.

Well, all my posting about the planner got the attention of the team at Ink+Volt and I’m so excited to share with you all that they let me know they found an extra 2018 planner that I get to give to one lucky reader!

I am so excited that one of you will get to use a planner to make your 2018 as incredible as it can be! I have seen the proof of what can be done by following this planner and I’m always looking at more ways that I can maximize what I do with it. For some inspiration, Ink+Volt has some great guides on their website. They also have a blog and one of my favorite posts on it is all about ideas for the monthly challenges. I have that page saved because I know that from time to time I need inspiration on what I want my challenge to be (I’m already working on ideas for my challenges for the rest of the year). I really view the monthly challenges as the bonus challenges for me because they are separate from the goals I set each month and week. So I stretch myself with these challenges and I am always surprising myself in what I am able to do and what habits I can create just from doing one month of a challenge.

And while this planner is dated for 2018, that doesn’t necessarily mean you are missing out. Every week there are prompts to help inspire, encourage, and challenge you. You will have all the weekly prompts for the entire year and you can use them as soon as you win the giveaway! I bet working on one extra prompt a week would be amazing for self-discovery and reflection on the year so far!

There are so many things you can do with this planner. You can use it like a normal planner and use it for your appointments. You can just do the goal setting sections and leave the calendar blank or for drawing random doodles. You can turn the weekly calendar into something unique for yourself (I use mine for my daily gratitude lists). The possibilities are endless and I love that this planner allows you the freedom to decide what the best way for you to use it will be! And I’m always trying new things out and seeing what connects with me at that time. My planner changes throughout the year because my needs and wants change and this accommodates that so nicely!

This giveaway is open to readers in the US only (sorry international readers!). There a lots of entry options, but there are 3 that you are required to do in order to be in the giveaway. You must comment on this post, you must follow me on Instagram, and you must follow Ink+Volt on Instagram. You also have options for extra entries by tweeting about it each day! The giveaway ends on the 28th and I will be using random.org to select a winner from the qualified entries. I will be emailing the winner within 48 hours of the giveaway ending to get your address and I will mail your planner to you.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

I cannot wait for one of you to win this! I’m not exaggerating when I say this planner changed my life! I have become so much better in realizing what I am able to do and I have achieved so much just by making a plan for my goals and taking the steps needed to get there.

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Starting To Wrap Up 2017 (or Getting In All My End Of The Year Things)

Posted on December 14, 2017 | Comments Off on Starting To Wrap Up 2017 (or Getting In All My End Of The Year Things)

I can’t believe that it’s almost the end of the year! I keep thinking I have more time in December, but there are only about 2 1/2 weeks left until it’s 2018! And I feel like I’m playing catch up in so many aspects of my life and I really want to get everything done that I am hoping to do by the end of the year.

It’s been pretty busy for me lately so that has been distracting me from getting stuff done. Busy is good, but now I need to refocus my energy. For the past few weeks, so much of my attention was on the podcast party. But now that it was a success I can stop worrying about it even though I already have started to work on ideas for our 400th episode party in 2 years. But that’s 2 years away and there’s stuff I want to get done in 2 weeks. So that’s the priority.

I like to send out holiday cards because so many people don’t get anything besides bills in the mail. Sending something fun in the mail is a nice treat and I’m happy to do that. Plus, it’s a great way to let my friends know that I’m thinking about them and that I care about them. I decided to do holiday postcards instead of regular cards this year because postcards are cheaper to mail. I won’t save a ton of money, but any time I can save a little bit of money is good for me and working on my budget.

I found some cute postcards and ordered them and got enough postcard stamps to send them all out. But I haven’t started on them and I really need to do it. Fortunately with postcards I won’t be writing as much as I did when I sent cards out, but I still like to personalize them. I will be working my will-call box office job this weekend (where I really just sit there and read for a few hours because the job is minimal work), so if I don’t get a chance to work on my cards before this weekend I think I’m going to use my work time to do them. Hopefully if I do that and get them in the mail by Monday they will get to everyone in time. But if they are late, it’s not the worst thing.

I’ve been also reflecting back on my goals for this year and seeing if there are places that I should be focusing over these last few weeks of the year. Fortunately, I seem to be on pace with the ones I can do (there will be more on that when this year is over) so I don’t have to worry too much about them. But I still want to maximize this time and get as far with my goals as I can possibly get. I’m happy that I have made a lot of progress in my life this year, but I know I can still do a little bit more in these last 2 1/2 weeks.

But one thing that I realized just the other day that I should try to get done before the end of the year involves some planning for my word of the year. I’ve done a word of the year for a few years now, but this year was the first year that I ended up buying a bracelet from MantraBand that had my word on it. I liked having it as a reminder whenever I was out and I’ve decided that I’d like to do that again for 2018.

I don’t have to have my bracelet (or necklace if I get one of those instead) on January 1st, but it would be nice to have it then. Plus, I do need to decide what I want to use as my word of the year and I’m using their website as my guide. I do want to pick a word that I can have as a piece of jewelry. Fortunately, they’ve got a ton of options and I’ve currently debating between about 7 words that could be really good for the new year. But again, I need to decide sooner rather than later so I can order it and then also get ready to have it as my word for the new year. I do a few other things as reminders on my phone and laptop so I want to get as much done now so it’s all ready to go.

And the last thing I need to catch up on is making my plans for the holidays. I don’t really do anything for Christmas, but I want to see if maybe I’ll be meeting up with friends for lunch or dinner. I’ve texted some friends to start the planning because I know if we don’t do it now it will be Christmas Eve and we are trying to figure out our schedules so we can meet up. And I’ve gotten a few invitations to different NYE parties and I’m working on how many I can hopefully stop by so I can maximize how many friends that I will get to see that night.

This catch up time isn’t necessarily stressful, but it did seem to creep up on me and I wasn’t as prepared as I usually am for wrapping things up for the year. It also probably doesn’t help that this year I don’t necessarily get any time off for Christmas or NYE because the holidays fall on what are already days off for me so we don’t get additional days off. I just will have my normal schedule and will need to make sure that I don’t forget that it’s also holiday time.

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Another Attempt At Mindfulness (or I Think I Need To Work On This Until I Figure It Out)

Posted on November 1, 2017 | 2 comments

I’ve tried to work on mindfulness multiple times and it has never seemed to stick with me. But it keeps coming up in my life and I feel like that is a sign of something. So I’ve been inspired to try mindfulness again and the timing is perfect since it’s time for another monthly challenge! But first, time to recap last month’s challenge.

Last month, I challenged myself to work on doing daily speed cleaning. Ideally, I would spend 5-10 minutes a month focused on a small space in my house to clean and organize it. I wanted to do this because I had felt like my cleaning was getting overwhelming and I didn’t know where to start. So I wanted to take away the pressure from doing a big cleaning in my house because that seemed to be what was stopping me. I set an alarm to work on this each day and I tried my best to do what I could.

I wasn’t totally successful with this, but it went better than I thought it would. There were several days that I couldn’t do cleaning because either I was gone all day (like during the Convention) or I had no energy because I was sick. But when things like that weren’t stopping me, I really did accomplish a lot. And by telling myself I only had to do one small cleaning thing allowed me to just do it and not worry about not having time to finish it. There were some times that I did a really small cleaning job like using a new multi-hook hanger to put all my tank tops in one spot (it also saves room in my closet). And then there were other times where my small cleaning job ended up getting me motivated to do a bigger cleaning job. But it has gotten me into the habit of spending a bit of time every day working on this so that I don’t feel overwhelmed again.

Last month went well and I’m really hoping this month will too. Mindfulness has been a struggle for me each time I’ve tried to work on it. I’ve found little things that have worked, but they aren’t enough. I want to be more aware of so much in my life. This isn’t just a food thing because there are days where it seems like the entire day slipped away without me knowing what happened. I want to avoid days in a fog like that if possible.

The book that I’m reading as my 10 pages of a recovery based book right now is all about eating mindfully. I actually wish I had read this book when I first started trying to be more mindful because it’s pretty great. Each section has a lesson along with some action steps to take. And so many of these action steps are things that I haven’t done before or thought of doing before. I actually think I need to go back and start reading from the beginning to take notes on things because I haven’t been doing that. And that is part of my challenge for this month.

I want to go through the book again and other resources I can find and start finding action steps to take to work toward mindfulness. Maybe the reason why it has failed to stick with me before is because mindfulness is more of an idea and less of something I can do. If I had steps to take and work with, that would probably be better for me. I need something tangible or to check off on a list to work with and I don’t know why I didn’t think of doing this before.

This month’s challenge won’t necessarily be about putting mindfulness into practice right away. I’ve tried that a bunch and it hasn’t worked. But instead, this challenge is going to be about researching action steps and ideas to put into use over time. I want to devote time every day to re-reading the book I’ve been reading as well as looking online or in other reference books to make a list that I can use moving forward. I want to make mindfulness work for me and it’s not something that I can just turn on right away. I need to work toward it and I have failed at doing that before. Because other challenges have come to me so easily, I assumed that this one would too. But I am learning and have realized what I hope will be the missing step to be able to implement this into my life in the long-term.

I know that this seems like a much more passive monthly challenge than others have been, but this is what I think I need to focus on this month. And there are only so many things I can add to my life with these monthly challenges, so having one that is more of a reflective thing is probably going to help me not get burned out on them. And I totally don’t want to experience burn out because I just got my 2018 Volt Planner so there will be another year of monthly challenges next year!

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Another Goal Setting Session (or A Quarterly Check In)

Posted on October 5, 2017 | Comments Off on Another Goal Setting Session (or A Quarterly Check In)

The podcast I work for has started to do quarterly check ins/goal setting workshops, and we just had our 3rd quarter check in this past weekend. I hosted it again at my house (even though it means I have to clean it also means I don’t have to worry about getting somewhere) and we had a really great group at the workshop.

A lot of what we did this time was the same as last time, but that’s not a bad thing since we aren’t in the same place now as we were 3 months ago. We started with just chatting together and getting to know each other before we moved on to the more serious work. But since most of us didn’t know each other, getting to chat a bit helped to make us all comfortable since this can be very personal work and we didn’t want anyone to feel uncomfortable sharing.

The first thing we did was the 4 Tendencies quiz by Gretchen Rubin. This was the same quiz that we did last time and I had the same results that I had the first time. I wasn’t surprised since I was pretty strong in what tendencies I fit into the first time, but it was still cool to take it again to see what happened. And I believe that nobody else in the group had done this quiz before so it was fun watching them discover what each thing meant and what tendencies they fit into.

After that, we worked on our personal reviews of the past 3 months. This was broken down into multiple sections. First, we wrote down what didn’t work. I had a bunch of things to put in that section, but I realized that there was a theme when I was writing. So many things that didn’t work had to do with me not feeling like I deserve something or am worthy of something or that I was letting someone else set the rules and guidelines for the situation. Some of this was related to dating and some of this was related to work. But so many thing fit into those descriptions and I hadn’t realized that until I was writing it down.

Next we wrote down what is important to us right now in life. This was more varied for me than what didn’t work. I had things like being more open and honest, working on union work and my acting career, strengthening my relationships with friends and family, and working on my fitness.

The next section was a two-parter. First, we wrote down what we want. For me, that included having success in my acting career, living within my means, having healthy and happy relationships, and getting into recovery for my eating disorder. The second part was what we wanted to live through ourselves. I want generosity, helpfulness, and being of service to come through me. I know that those are all pretty similar, but I feel like when I can help that I am at my strongest so I want to do that as often as I can.

The final section was what is next for us for the next 3 months to bring us to the end of the year. And mine fell into the ideas that I had written in the previous sections. I want to stop tolerating mediocrity in myself and in others. I don’t want to give up control to others because that doesn’t do anyone any good to just go along with things. I want to be more active in multiple aspects of my life. And I want to work on living a full life and not to forget to have a life outside of the routine I’m already in.

After we went through those sections, everyone had the opportunity to share and everyone did share. All of us are working through very different things, but that didn’t mean we didn’t learn from each other. I was taking notes as everyone else was talking and I got some great ideas that I know I want to use for myself. And after we reviewed what we had written, we all worked on some action steps to take to make sure we work on what we had written. For me, the action steps all boiled down to one main idea: stop taking crap from people and when I want to be involved in something that I should not worry about it and go for it. Obviously that is easier said than done, but it has given me something to think about.

We ended the workshop with some visualization and discussion of affirmations. Even though I use a daily affirmation app, I got some ideas for affirmations that are more specific to me and I’m looking into how to create some sort of affirmation alert for myself that randomizes which one I see. I won’t have time to work on that for a little bit, but hopefully I can do it during this last quarter of the year.

Even though I’m pretty big on goal setting for myself, having these workshops is so amazing and I always learn so much from them. I learn more about myself and what I’m thinking about situations. And I learn how I want to change things and create real action steps that I can take to accomplish them. It’s very empowering and I’m already looking forward to the workshop we have for the first quarter of 2018!

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Another Monthly Challenge (or What To Do When You Are Crazy Busy)

Posted on October 3, 2017 | 1 comment

The beginning of a new month is always exciting for me. But it’s been even more exciting since I started using my Volt Planner last year because it means it’s the beginning for a new monthly challenge! It can be a struggle sometimes to think of a new challenge each month, but once I pick one I really get into it. And knowing that I’ll be doing that again each month is something I look forward to.

Last month, my challenge was to tweet more. Specifically I wanted to tweet more about SAG-AFTRA and union related issues. My role as a SAG-AFTRA delegate is officially just as the convention (which is this week), but I don’t want the end of the convention to be the end of my involvement. And while being on social media isn’t the most active thing, I figure that every little bit helps. And I also got a lot out of doing this because every day I was reviewing tweets that might be ones I wanted to share. So I was learning more every time I reviewed them. I feel so much more educated about union issues (and not just actor union issues) than I ever have.

This month, I struggled a bit with picking something to set as my challenge but it wasn’t for the usual reason. I have a couple of things I want to do, but this month is going to be very crazy for me. I’ve got the SAG-AFTRA convention, lots of doctor appointments, work, podcast stuff, some projects I’m working on, and then trying to have a social life. I know that I will be a bit stressed and I didn’t want to pick something that might add more stress to my life. I’ve picked some challenges that have done that in the past, and it can work when the month isn’t going to be stressful. But I know October will be crazy. I’ve been telling people my life won’t be normal again until after the 16th because that’s when I seem to finally have free time in my calendar.

But there has been one thing that I’ve had on my monthly and weekly planning sheets in my planner that I don’t see to ever get around to. I really need to clean my desk and my closet. I probably need to work on my entire house, but I really see how packed my desk and closet are and I know I don’t need everything I have. I also keep bringing more things in without removing stuff so it gets more and more cluttered. But when I look at it it seems so overwhelming.

So I’ve set my monthly challenge for October to do speed cleaning/organizing every day. I have an alarm set and I want to do maybe 5-10 minutes every day. The idea is that I’d focus on one thing each day. For example, with my clothes I’d look at tops one day and dresses another. I don’t need to look at my closet as a whole since that has been what is looking like too much of a project. With my desk, I might break it down my the drawers or by category but I’m not sure yet. And there are so many other areas in my house that I could organize by breaking it down into chunks like this.

I had read “The Life-Changing Magic Of Tidying Up” a while ago, and while I don’t agree with everything in the book there are some really good points. I only want to have things in my home that make me happy and bring me joy. My definition of those things are a bit different from what the book talks about, but the general idea is the same. There are things in my closet that I look at and get annoyed about because it doesn’t fit anymore (either too big or too small), it doesn’t fit right, or it just is something I never can figure out when I should wear it. I don’t need that taking up space in the tiny closet I have.

But besides decluttering, I just want to have a clean house that makes me happy. It’s never too dirty, but there are times that I have to spend a good amount of time cleaning every room before I have company over. I know that nobody cares if my house is a little messy, but I do. And if I worked on 5-10 minutes of cleaning a day (either by cleaning one room or doing one type of cleaning like vacuuming or dusting), it shouldn’t get too overwhelming before I have company over.

I know that even 5-10 minutes of cleaning might be a bit tough for me to do on the craziest days I have coming up this month, but that’s ok. I understand now that I don’t have to be perfect every single day but instead I want to get into the habit so that it becomes something I don’t even have to think about each day. It would be nice to know that I have a clean house pretty much all the time and not a semi-clean house most of the time and a super clean house occasionally.

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