Tag Archives: scheduling

Working On Planning My Summer (or Really Hoping Things Continue To Get Better)

Posted on June 8, 2021 | Comments Off on Working On Planning My Summer (or Really Hoping Things Continue To Get Better)

Whenever things seem to be getting better with the pandemic, I’m a little worried that the improvements will lead to another uptick. We’ve slowly been opening up more and more in California (and in LA) and fortunately, the numbers haven’t been getting much worse. I think we are lucky here because so many people are vaccinated or almost fully vaccinated. So as we have more opening up, the risk factor isn’t that much worse.

I know we aren’t out of this just yet, but it continues to improve and seems hopeful. We do have a big change coming up in a week when things are supposed to be opening up 100% and masks are not always going to be required (although individual stores and businesses can still require them) and knowing that is about to happen does make me nervous. But I’m trying to stay in a positive mindset that everyone has been doing what they need to do so we can safely reopen. And I know other states have reopened already, and while they did have an uptick at first things have calmed down as people are vaccinated.

And since things are looking good, I’m finally starting to try to plan for my summer. Last summer was spent isolated for so much of it and I spent so much time in fear of getting sick. And while I’m still cautious and will probably continue to feel that way at least through this year, I am starting to see what is open and what I want to take advantage of and do.

There is the small downside of having fewer friends living in LA now than there was a year ago. So many people that I would have made plans with are no longer local and I either need to find others to hang out with or be ok with doing things alone. And I think I will be doing a mix of that. There is nothing wrong with doing things alone and there are plenty of things that I have done alone for years. But I also want to take advantage of being able to be around others again.

There are some things I want to do that aren’t necessarily time-specific for the summer. I want to go to the beach at least once. I don’t always go to the beach every summer since I need to be careful in the sun, but I also can be careful so hopefully, I won’t get that sunburnt. I also want to look at some easy hikes/walks around LA that either I haven’t done in a while or have never done. I want to do more things outdoors, even though I know that I will likely never be a big hiker. But I want to take advantage of what there is around me because I know I haven’t been doing that. And once I feel safe to go to the movies again, I want to see movies in the theaters. This one might take me a bit longer to be ready to do, but I think I will have a better sense of how I feel about this once masks aren’t required everywhere and we can see how the numbers look.

And there are things that either I want to do with others or don’t like to do alone. I want to be going out for more meals with friends. I have only been to 2 restaurants to eat there since last year. Both times I ate outdoors and it felt pretty safe to be there. I don’t know about eating inside just yet, but again, I have to see how the numbers look as more and more people are out and potentially not wearing masks. I also might want to go to Disneyland. I usually don’t go in the summer since my pass hasn’t been good over the summer, but now that there are no passes, I have to buy a ticket whenever I want to go. I know it will probably be very crowded, so I have to decide if I might want to wait until the fall when things might be a bit less crazy. But I also miss Disneyland so much and really want to have a fun day there with friends.

And one of my favorite summer things to do, going to the Hollywood Bowl, is already on my schedule! The Bowl has announced they were opening for this summer and I took a look at the schedule as soon as it was posted. I found a few shows that I want to go to and discussed summer plans with my parents. And they decided to come to LA for a few days to see me and one of the shows I thought they’d like is the weekend that they are here! I bought tickets the day they went on sale because I wasn’t sure how quickly things would sell out. And I didn’t get exactly the seats I wanted, but I did get us the first row of a section which is my favorite since you have a better view and the barrier to use as a table for whatever snacks we bring with us.

And of course, I’m sure there will be some random friend hangouts that I won’t plan since that’s how things naturally go. It will be nice to be able to be spontaneous again and not have to worry if someone has been around others or what the risks would be to see each other. I don’t know if there will be any BBQs or other things planned since so many of us are being careful and waiting to make sure things don’t take a turn before we plan anything. But the more time that goes on, the better we all have been feeling about it.

Hopefully, I can have a summer that has a lot of fun stuff happening. I don’t plan on going too crazy since I know then I will hit burnout, but I want to make up for lost time from the past year. And I can’t wait to see what adventures I get to have this summer and what traditions I get to have again and what new things I might want to turn into traditions.

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Fully Using My Work Time (or Having A Job Where I Feel Productive)

Posted on June 4, 2021 | Comments Off on Fully Using My Work Time (or Having A Job Where I Feel Productive)

Since graduating college, I’ve had a lot of jobs in many different fields. Overall, most of my jobs are in the customer service sector (even as a tour guide at a film studio), but the jobs themselves have varied. But most recently, I have mainly had direct customer service or data entry jobs.

Some of these jobs have been jobs where there is a lot of downtime because my responsibilities are mainly when a customer is reaching out. My box office job is like that. We can be extremely busy at times, but there are other times when we only have a handful of customers and several hours with nothing to do. That’s why my data entry job has been perfect for me. I have the ability to work that job between customers. And the data entry job is one where I have no downtime while I’m working, but it can also be done on my own schedule so I can do the work whenever I can fit it in.

When I started my new customer service job, I wasn’t sure if it would be a job where I was always busy or one where I had a lot of downtime. And it has changed from the time I started almost half a year ago until now. When I started, there was a lot more downtime because my focus was just on customer support so I was really only busy when we had customers reaching out to us. And that worked for me because I was new to the job and needed the extra time to keep learning the different processes and not feeling rushed or stressed when trying to help a customer. But as I’ve been at that job, things have been getting busier and busier.

Now, besides my regular work, I’ve been taking on some extra projects. I’ve been working on helping to organize certain work systems. I’ve been working on helping to create a training manual for other employees who aren’t as familiar with how the customer service team works as well as future customer service employees. I’ve built some systems to help us track clients and other things we need to track. I’m really being kept busy during the hours that I’m scheduled.

All of these things are being done during my work time, so I’m not doing anything outside of my work hours. But I’m now really busy for the hours I’m scheduled to work. And I know this is pretty normal for most people. Having a job like my box office job with a lot of downtime is the weird situation. And I know I’m lucky that I have had a job like that where I could do other work during work. But it’s also nice to have a job where I am busy during my work hours. I like feeling like I’ve accomplished a lot each day. I can see progress being made in the bigger projects and not just that I’m answering the same thing all day long (like at my box office job where I am always saying “the sold out show is sold out of tickets”). And I do still work some hours each week with my box office job where I do have that downtime. So there is a balance in my life.

As much as I complain sometimes about being overscheduled or too busy, it is nice to have a job that makes me busy. It helps to have a clear delineation between work time and my time. When I was mainly working my box office job, when I finished work I could stay on my computer doing a lot of the same things I was doing between customers. But with my customer service job, when I’m done with work I might still be on my computer to do other work, but there is a much clearer line between my work time and non-work time. And that’s something I have needed for a long time. Especially lately since I don’t have much planned in my life after work time each day.

Just like I always do when I write about being happy to be busy, I’m sure I’ll hit a time of burnout and being overwhelmed. And that is a bit more in my control because I can take more time on some of the extra work projects I’ve taken on so I don’t feel rushed or overwhelmed. And I also have gotten better about being an advocate for myself and speaking up when things are getting to be a bit much.

But at least for now, I’m so grateful to feel productive like I do now. This is a feeling that I haven’t had in a while and it’s just another thing that makes things feel a bit more normal and less like I’m isolated and not doing much with my life.

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A Little Of My Old Life and A Little Of My New Life (or Yet Another Thing To Balance)

Posted on May 12, 2021 | Comments Off on A Little Of My Old Life and A Little Of My New Life (or Yet Another Thing To Balance)

When the pandemic started, everything shut down very quickly. I have said it was like a light switch. One day, things were open and seemed normal. The next day, I didn’t know what do to or what I would be able to get done. And while it was a little tough to go from feeling safe and able to live my life to feeling locked in my house, I think that transition also was easier because there was no thought necessary. I didn’t leave my house unless I had to. Most places I would have gone weren’t open anyway. So I just stayed home and went to the grocery store when I had to (if I wasn’t getting my groceries through a delivery service).

And I got used to my isolated life. I didn’t necessarily enjoy it, but it became familiar and easy enough to do. I didn’t have much in my life, but I also didn’t think too much about things since I didn’t have many other options.

I’ve shared on here before how it’s been tough for me to feel ok going out and doing more. Even though I’m fully vaccinated, I still am nervous about being out and about. The more that I do it, the better I feel. I think seeing how careful so many other people are has been helping me. I have only seen people throw a fit about wearing a mask a few times, and they were either removed from that location or left when they realized that nobody else there was on their side. And every time I add something back into my life, I am reminded about how much joy those things bring to me. For example, going out to dinner was amazing and made me feel more like myself again. Going to the grocery store more often than using delivery services is something I didn’t know how much I’d appreciate until I’d do it again.

But there are new routines and habits that I have started over the past year and I’m not necessarily giving them all up. There are some things that were almost an even switch. Such as no longer working out at home because I’m back at Orangetheory. That was easy for me to decide to do and I didn’t think twice about it and didn’t think about trying to do both the studio workouts and the home workouts. I would have done it if I needed to, but fortunately, I haven’t had to do that yet.

Then there are things like how I am dating. That’s not an even switch. Even with me going out for in-person dates again, I’m not completely giving up on virtual dating. I do still have the goal of meeting someone in person, but it is nice to almost have a pre-date to see if I want to take the time to meet them in person. I’ve joked to friends that with virtual dates, you don’t have to wear pants and you can make sure you just look good on camera. Much less effort than going to an in-person date. But dating in real life is still the plan for the guys I actually want to date, but I’ve been mixing up what I did before and what I’ve been doing this past year.

And then there are things that are new to me because of the pandemic that I’m still doing and plan on trying to keep in my regular routine. A big one is still doing things with my Netflix Party group. We’ve been watching things together for over a year now. And we have a good routine down. We watch a tv show together as a group on Wednesdays and movies on Saturdays (although we have watched some of the MCU mini-series on Saturdays too). This was started so none of us would feel too alone or isolated when things were at their worst with the pandemic. But it’s become something I look forward to every week now! And even though I can go out and do things with others in person, I want to prioritize my schedule so that I can still join on Wednesdays and Saturdays.

I know that this transition is going to be something I need to be aware of so I don’t overwhelm myself. I know that if I have too much on my schedule, I can almost struggle to do anything. But I also feel like I have to make up for lost time from this past year. But I know that at some point, I will find a balance of what I want to do from before and from now and it will make things in my future feel like a really amazing and full life.

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Still Doing More Planning (or Yet Another Almost Repeat Challenge)

Posted on May 4, 2021 | Comments Off on Still Doing More Planning (or Yet Another Almost Repeat Challenge)

Maybe it’s because I’ve been doing monthly challenges for so long or maybe it’s because the pandemic almost feels like a restart, but I’ve been doing a lot of repeat challenges lately. I’m ok with repeating them because it’s clear that I still have work to do on a previous challenge. And it seems like each time I do a repeat challenge, there is a little bit that is different from any other time I challenged myself to do it.

In April, I had a challenge that was similar to past ones. My challenge was to figure out what my real free time was each day. Because I had been working on scheduling things, I started to feel like I wasn’t having free time in my day even though I knew it was in my schedule. So I focused even more on making my schedule clear to me and easy to access so I could tell when I could step away from work things for the day.

I wasn’t sure exactly how I was going to accomplish this, but I actually found a tool at the beginning of April that has been a huge game-changer for me. It’s a little calendar app called Itsycal. It syncs with different calendars you might have and adds a little calendar with a daily schedule breakdown to your computer toolbar. I know that I could just open up the calendar app on any of my devices to see what my schedule is that day, but having it so easy to access has been great for me. I review it several times a day to make sure that I’m planning ahead for my day. I’m able to see when I’m done with scheduled work each day very clearly. And even though I do have things that I have to do each day that are not on my calendar, it still is so helpful to see all the things that have to be done at a certain time.

I do still need to work on feeling like I can step away from my computer when I know I’m done with work. But I’m getting better about being very clear about what I have to do and what I can wait to do if I’m feeling like I need a break.

And just like I’ve been doing a lot, this month my monthly challenge is another one that I’m bringing back from the past. I’ve had a lot of different monthly challenges about meal planning and cooking. I have gotten better about cooking because of the pandemic and that is something I am proud of. But meal planning is still something that overwhelms me a bit. The idea of planning for every day in a week at once is a lot. But I recently saw something online that inspired me to try meal planning in a different way.

This person had created weekly meal plans to pick from each week. They designed a full 7-day meal plan (their plan may have just been dinners, which is probably what I’d do too) and added it to their collection. Yes, it’s a lot more work upfront than regular meal planning, but after they created all these different weeks it was easy from then on. When they were getting ready to grocery shop for the next week, they picked one of the weekly plans they already created. Other people commented saying they had 6 or 8 weeks planned out and they just rotated from one week to the next so they didn’t even have to think which week to use.

It might still be overwhelming to create weekly meal plans, but I do like the idea of having them ready to go when I’m done with that initial work. I don’t know if I’m going to create enough at first to just rotate through them without needing to make more, but that is a nice goal to have in mind.

So my challenge this month is to at least get started on creating weekly meal plans. I want to see what I can pull together that will make grocery shopping easier and that will allow me to plan a bit more in advance. I don’t feel like I have to be super strict if I create these plans because I do want to have some room to get delivery food or go out to eat with a friend. But to me, the goal of a meal plan isn’t to be perfect but to have a plan in mind. I don’t want to be looking into my fridge or freezer with no clue on what I want to have for dinner.

Hopefully, I can take advantage of some of my newfound free time and get at least a few weeks planned out and maybe start implementing this idea!

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Having A Busier Routine Is Nice (or This Feels Even More Like Normal)

Posted on April 29, 2021 | Comments Off on Having A Busier Routine Is Nice (or This Feels Even More Like Normal)

Over the past year, I went from having one routine to another. And there were plenty of times that I had no routine that I had to follow. I tried to create my own routine when I had nothing happening. I kept up my workout routine and checked in with my work friends from my box office customer service job on a regular basis. But there was a lot of time that I spent doing nothing productive and I even got into some bad sleep habits with sleeping in later than I would like.

Once I started my new job, it was a bit of an adjustment to go from no schedule to a work schedule. Even though I don’t work full-time, I do have work 6 days a week (soon it will be 5 days a week). I had to make sure I was getting up on time to get my workout done before work. I had something that was making each day feel a bit different. I still struggled a bit with the adjustment, but it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. I think the fact that I worked on my sleep habits a bit before I started at the new job helped me a lot.

And I’ve only been adding more and more to my weekly schedule. I now work back at my old job 3 days a week (that may go up to 5 days soon, but it depends on a lot of factors). I have a pretty good routine going with how to balance my different jobs and make sure that I’m doing the correct work each day. And just last week, I added going into Orangetheory back into my schedule too.

Even though my workouts are the same days a week that I was doing them at home, it’s very different going into the studio to work out. First, my workout is now an hour long when it was closer to 30 minutes for a while. And because this workout is so familar to me, it feels really great to have it back as a regular part of my life. And I’m actually getting out of my house more often because of the workouts. I know that I will be leaving my house at least 4 days a week to work out, but it’s usually more often than that because of other things in my life.

And getting out of my house has been another nice routine that I have gained recently. While I have worked from home for several years, I never spent so much time in my house without getting out and doing something. And just getting into my car and driving the few mintues to my workout has been a really good thing for my mental health. It helps me not feel so alone. I feel like I’m a part of the world again. I feel like there is some forward motion in my life again. Just the simple routine of getting into my car and driving that short distance is something so familiar to me that makes me feel like my old life is coming back now. It’s a great feeling and yet another thing I didn’t realize how much I was craving until I started doing it again.

I do still have a lot of free time every day that I wish I could fill with more fun stuff. But I have a pretty great routine going for me right now for the first half of the day. I am getting up earlier than I used to (so I can make it to my workout) and most of the things I have to do every day are done by either noon or 3pm. So then I have time to relax or do something else after work. And just having an after work time is nice. I allows me to try to create a bit of a separation in my life, even if I can’t get out of my house every day.

And once things are fully open again and it’s safe to live our full lives again, the nice thing is that my work schedule isn’t going to change too much from what it is now. I will hopefully have some more hours with my box office job, but that will just mean that I work until 3pm every day instead of only some days. And my morning workout might slighly change time when they add in more classes, but it will be close to the time that they are now. So in a way, I’m already in my normal schedule for the future. I just get to focus on adding more and more things to my day as I can do them and add to my life and what I get to have fun doing.

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Working On A Work/Life Balance (or Almost Repeating A Recent Monthly Challenge)

Posted on April 1, 2021 | Comments Off on Working On A Work/Life Balance (or Almost Repeating A Recent Monthly Challenge)

I know I say something like this every year, but I can’t believe we are a quarter of the way through 2021 already! I hope that as the year progresses, things continue to get safer and soon the pandemic will be a thing of the past. And while the first quarter of the year wasn’t perfect, it was an improvement over a lot of last year.

And while things aren’t open up completely just yet and I’m still trying to be careful and cautious, my monthly challenge for last month was to work on planning more things that I can do. Being home and being isolate is good for health reasons, but my mental health suffered a lot. I know that the sacrifice was worth it because I didn’t get sick, but trying to plan ahead is important and gives me something to look forward to. I didn’t end up doing too much this past month to be a bit more social, but it was better than it has been before. Even just having time to hang out with friends has been good. And going to things like the Drive-In Drag show has made life much more interesting lately. But I’m still trying to find things to do to fill up my free time. I know that I might feel a bit better about doing things once I’m considered fully vaccinated (which is really only a few days away). I’m starting to take some more chances with being social, and I need to allow myself to do that while also being aware of what risks I’m taking.

And since I’m trying to find more fun things to do in my life, I need to work on really finding what time I have to use for free time. I’m not working a ton, but I’m working more than I have lately. I will be having a slight reduction of hours at one job, but I’ve increased my hours at my other and I might be starting back at my old customer service job this month! If I’m back at my old job, it won’t be the same hours I used to work. I will actually be working around the hours for my new customer service job. But that will make my hours seem very close to what they were before the pandemic (with the exception of working on Mondays now with the new job).

With all of my work being done from home and one job being completely on my own time, it’s really easy for me to feel like I’m working a lot longer than I really am. If I work from 9-3 as set hours for my customer service jobs, goof around on my computer for an hour or two, work on my blog post for the next day, and then do 2 hours for my last job, it can feel like I worked from 9am-7pm even though I didn’t. I want to find a clear delineation between work time and fun time. Even if fun time is just reading a book or watching tv, I want to feel like my time is mine and I am not trying to finish up some work stuff later.

So that’s exactly what my challenge is for this month. I want to find a way to separate that time. I want to be planning for what hours I’m really working and what hours I’m not. This is similar to the scheduling challenge I recently did, but I’m putting more of a focus on what hours I’m working more than an overall schedule. I need to figure out what my real work schedule is. I know it’s not as many hours as it seems because I am mixing up fun time and work time. I need to be in more of a habit of having my own personal office hours and being able to walk away when I’m done.

I will say that one thing that is working in my favor is that I only do work stuff on my computer. I do have the ability to do some of it on my phone or my iPad and I do have my work email on my phone (in case I need to be reached), but I don’t work unless I’m on my computer. Part of this is because it’s not easy to work on a smaller screen or not have a keyboard. But it’s also nice to know that other devices are not for work and that I can relax while I’m on them.

I will probably do a lot of the same stuff I did with my scheduling challenge. I’m still not sure if having a paper schedule is better than a digital one, but I’ve been playing around with it. And while I won’t know for sure if I’m going to start back at my old job just yet, I’m going to schedule as if I am (it’s only going to be 2 hours a day when I return). And if I’m done with work stuff early because I didn’t need that time, that’s fine. I’d rather have too much work time scheduled than not enough.

Hopefully, this will make things a bit better for me and I won’t feel like I never step away from work. I want to have a balance with my time. Even though I’m not filling up my free time with a lot right now, I know that more is coming back into my life. And I’m continuing to prepare for that time to be here!

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Hitting A Bit Of Burnout (or I Took On A Lot At Once)

Posted on March 19, 2021 | Comments Off on Hitting A Bit Of Burnout (or I Took On A Lot At Once)

For so much of last year, I didn’t have much to do each day. I was struggling to fill my time and not be bored. So once I got a new job, I was grateful to have something to do plus I needed to start making money again. And it seems like getting my new job was the kick-off for other things starting up again or being a part of my day. But I also think that because of how empty my schedule was not that long ago, I added more things than I should have done at once. And now it’s getting a bit overwhelming.

I’ve struggled so much in the past with finding a balance between having free time and being overscheduled, and I’m aware that this is a privileged problem. I know many people would love to be overscheduled and working a lot. And I’m not saying I’m not grateful or understand that I’m lucky. But I also know that sometimes I can either take on too much or go too hard with things.

And lately, I’ve been noticing more and more signs of burnout. I’m glad I can recognize it earlier than I have in the past, but recognizing it doesn’t fix the feeling. I started to have some signs I was getting closer to burnout last month, which is why I made my monthly challenge in February about planning out my day each day. And that did help a bit. I noticed where my days were being overpacked and where I had almost too much free time.

But this month, things seem to have gotten busier for me. I’m not going out and doing things that often, but I have more things I need to do that are at a specific time. And the things that I do that aren’t time-specific are usually being fit in between those scheduled events. So sometimes, it feels like I’m going non-stop. For example, yesterday I had work, then I had to drive somewhere for a work-related thing (more on that next week), then run an errand that I had been putting off, and then I had a Zoom meeting I need to be on. From the time I logged into work until I logged out of Zoom, I was scheduled for about 11 hours of my day. I also had to fit in the other job that I can do at any time, so I was doing it in chunks between everything else. By the time I was able to sit down and write this post, I was exhausted.

And I am happy to be exhausted and feel productive again, but I also know I can’t keep this up. Fortunately, not all days are like this. They usually don’t have so many things back to back so I have some decompression time when switching from one thing to another. And they also usually have more fun things scheduled so I look forward to something. I don’t know if the burnout is harder now because I don’t have much else in my life and I can focus on it more, but something is hitting me harder than I would expect when I compare this time to burnouts in the past.

I’m taking some steps now to make sure that I take care of myself and my mental health. I’m looking at how I can plan each day a bit better so that I don’t feel as stressed to get everything done. Obviously, there are some things that I don’t have a ton of flexibility with because they are not on my own schedule. But I know I have plenty of things that I can find ways to adjust and move around. And I need to keep working on creating a daily schedule each day since that does help me feel better about my day. When I can see it written out, it helps me know that there is a time to do everything. I’m not trying to cram everything in when I might have some flexibility to do some work later.

I’m sure finding the balance of free time and being overscheduled will continue to be an issue for me. For all I know, in a week or two I’ll be writing about how I’m bored and want to do more things. In some ways, it’s nice to have this as a problem again because it does feel a bit normal to me. But I also know that I will move things around to make them better and things will be better for me for at least a little while. And maybe I’ll figure out the perfect way to start adding more things back to my schedule as they open up. I’ve been looking forward to things being safe again and I know I need to find the time to take advantage of those when I can!

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Default ThumbnailI Tried, I Still Hit Burnout (or Finding Some New Limits) Default ThumbnailTrying To Avoid Holiday Burnout (or Staying Home For Self-Care) Default ThumbnailTaking A Break To Be Sick (or Hitting A Road Bump) Default ThumbnailGetting Too Comfortable (or Getting Ready To Quit) Default ThumbnailSeeing How To Make My New Schedule Work (or I Have A Better Idea Of My Free Time Now) Default ThumbnailGetting Myself Back On Schedule (or At Least This Is A Slow Transition)

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Scheduling And Joy (or Continuing To Plan For When Things Are Coming Back)

Posted on March 2, 2021 | Comments Off on Scheduling And Joy (or Continuing To Plan For When Things Are Coming Back)

Last month, my monthly challenge was to work on writing a schedule for each day so I wouldn’t forget to do things I need to do. It’s been a rough adjustment from being out of work to being back to a full day most days. And even though I didn’t have a ton of stuff to do outside of working and my workouts each day, I was still noticing where my days were being wasted doing things I didn’t need to do and where I was forgetting to do things I wanted to get done. So creating a schedule for each day seemed to be a good challenge.

I had an old notepad that was designed for doing daily schedules on, so that’s what I used. It had a few sections on the page that I didn’t really need or wanted to use, but it was easy enough to use it. And for the most part, it worked. I started off strong with doing the schedule every day. Then I realized I only felt like I needed it when I had other things to do in my day. If I just had my work and workout and nothing else to do, then I didn’t do them. But when I had work meetings, things to make sure I was watching, or other tasks like doing my taxes; then it was perfect.

And I think that’s exactly how I want to keep using this idea. I don’t always have to create a daily schedule (although I am getting better at setting alerts for things that go into my calendar app so that’s helpful). But when I have something different or extra in my day, this is the best way to make sure I get it done. Even if I just make a to-do list with tasks, that’s helping me to remember to do things. And I know that as my schedule starts to fill up in the future, doing this is going to help keep me on track and not let things slip my mind.

And connected to the idea of my schedule filling up, I want my monthly challenge this month to be about finding more joy in my life. I’m still pretty isolated and lonely, but last month ended up being my most social month in almost a year. My parents were here for the day. I got to spend time with a friend (who is being as safe and isolated as I am). I did a few other fun things that I haven’t written about just yet. I felt like I was starting to have a life again. And even though I have known how badly I needed this, I don’t think it really hit me until I allowed myself to have more joy in my life again.

It’s still going to be hard to find ways to do this. I have very few friends that I could see in person right now because many of them have jobs that require them to be around a lot of people. Or they have someone in their household who is extremely high risk and they can’t risk seeing anyone. I am not going to take too many risks these days because I know we are getting so much closer to the end of the pandemic. I don’t want to slip and then get sick. People are still getting sick and dying every day. But at the same time, I have seen how much better I feel when I have things that feel much more like my old life back.

I’m going to look into more online events that my friends and I can all watch together. I might look into outdoor things too, but that might be a bit more of a risk than I want to do just yet. I have been wanting to do this for a long time, but this is the first time I have this push after experiencing a small bit of my old social life back again. And I think knowing what I’m missing and not being so separate from it is going to help motivate me to try harder.

I do still want to be hopeful that it won’t be that much longer before things are safer and I won’t have to work as hard to find ways to have joy, but I’m not going to depend on that hope. I’ve done that for almost a year now and I know that for my mental health, I can’t keep putting it off any longer.

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Default ThumbnailBack To More Scheduling (or Seeing How Much My Time Unemployed Affected Me) Default ThumbnailScheduling Life (or Trying To Remember What Day Of The Week It Is) Default ThumbnailTrying To Not Let My Stress Get To Me (or Continuing To Find Ways To Cope With Isolation) Default ThumbnailRemembering To See My Friends (or Actually Scheduling Hangouts) Default ThumbnailDoing The Opposite Of My Monthly Challenge (or Continuing To Focus On The Good) Default ThumbnailScheduling Without A Schedule (or Hoping To Make The Most of My Unemployment)

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Back To More Scheduling (or Seeing How Much My Time Unemployed Affected Me)

Posted on February 2, 2021 | Comments Off on Back To More Scheduling (or Seeing How Much My Time Unemployed Affected Me)

I feel like so many of my monthly challenges are going to be all about getting things back to feeling normal. Or at least, I know my challenge last month and this month will be.

Last month, I challenged myself to have some social time every single day. I knew I was isolating myself too much and I wanted to fix that. I had a goal to always talk to a friend or family member. And I’m happy to say that I did accomplish that.

I did want to try to do more video calls, but I didn’t get that many of them done. But I did have more phone calls than I normally do and didn’t have to rely just on text messages for a majority of the days. I do feel a bit better and less isolated, but I also know that until I can start doing more in-person things that it will be a struggle. But I also know I have the tools to feel better and I need to remember them more often when I’m feeling alone.

And now onto my challenge for this month.

Working on my personal schedule has been an on-going battle for me. It’s usually tough for me to balance work, fun, and time to recover at home. But before the pandemic, I had a pretty decent schedule happening with so much being a weekly or monthly thing and I felt like I was finally getting things balanced. Of course, as soon as I feel good about something, things change and I have to start over.

I spent a good amount of last year without a regular work schedule. Even when I still was working a little, working an hour a day is really nothing. And I didn’t have much to schedule into my life since I wasn’t doing anything. And when I wasn’t working any regular hours at all, I know my schedule got really bad and I wasn’t doing any sort of planning.

Once I started my new job, I had to get things back onto a regular schedule again. I still have significantly less to schedule than I did before the pandemic, but I noticed how not scheduling out my days has started to affect me. I’m feeling a mix of having too much to do and having nothing to do. I stress to get things done only to have hours to do nothing later. I feel like I’m still in a bit of a mindset that I want to be done with all work by a certain time so my afternoons and evenings are free. But they don’t really have to be.

So this month, I have a challenge to actually start scheduling out my days. I want to write more than I have to on a schedule because I know that I need to overdo things a bit so I can see how much I really need. I want to include things like my workout times and when I do my morning and evening routines. In a perfect world, I’d love to have when I’m going to eat on my schedule, but I know that can change a bit. I want to put all my work time in there and the time that I plan on relaxing and watching tv.

I’m hoping that by doing this I can find where I’m pushing myself too hard in my schedule and where I need to add more things. And it should be a bit easier than other times I’ve tried doing this because the things I can have on my schedule will be limited. And hopefully, by doing this I will also get my sleep schedule back under control. I’m doing better with my sleep than I was a month ago, but I’m still staying up too late. And if I can figure out when I can do the things that keep me up late at other times of the day, then I can go to sleep when I want.

I know that scheduling myself won’t be a perfect challenge and I will have mistakes and errors. But my goal is not perfection. I just want to see some progress in how I schedule my life so that I can continue to plan to add more things back into my life as things become safer.

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Default ThumbnailScheduling Life (or Trying To Remember What Day Of The Week It Is) Default ThumbnailUnemployed Again (or Trying To Not Make It Feel Like Summer Break) Default ThumbnailFinding A Work/Life Balance (or Preparing to Not Be Unemployed) Default ThumbnailTaking A Month To Reset (or This Doesn’t Really Feel Like A Monthly Challenge) Default ThumbnailGetting Myself Back On Schedule (or At Least This Is A Slow Transition) Default ThumbnailScheduling Without A Schedule (or Hoping To Make The Most of My Unemployment)

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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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