Tag Archives: scheduling

Feeling Understood (or The Relief Of Shared Problems)

Posted on April 5, 2019 | Comments Off on Feeling Understood (or The Relief Of Shared Problems)

There are a lot of problems I write about on here that I know other people struggle with. So many things can feel like you are the only one dealing with it, but when you talk about it with a friend you discover they have the same worries.  It’s always such an amazing feeling when you discover you aren’t alone and it makes you feel so much better about how you are handling it.

I’ve been very lucky that I have this blog because I have had so many people reach out to me after I write a post saying they have been experiencing the same thing. I don’t always write posts so that other people won’t feel alone, but I have noticed that I have been doing it from time to time. I have a platform to help someone discover that they are not the only person in the world experiencing something and I want to make sure I take advantage of that.

But even though I am open about a lot of problems on here, I’m not always as open when talking with my friends. This isn’t me trying to hide anything about me, I just don’t always think about talking about them. Many times getting them out in a blog post is enough for me and I don’t feel the same need to connect with someone else going through the same thing in person. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but it is how things are for me.

The problem is that I know that not all my friends read my blog, and that’s fine with me. I know not everyone reads blogs or they feel like they don’t need to read it. I don’t mind because I don’t expect people to feel like they need to read this. I’m still sometimes surprised that I get readers (although I am so insanely grateful for everyone who does read these posts)! But because some of my friends don’t read what I write, they don’t know some of the struggles I have and they might be battling the same thing and think they are alone.

And that’s exactly what happened earlier this week. I was talking to a friend and they were telling me how they were struggling with the balance of being social with taking time to recharge. This is a recurring battle for me too! I over-schedule myself and then when I take the time to focus on myself I feel like I’m neglecting my friendships and I crave social interaction. It’s a balance that I will probably always struggle to figure out and I wish that it was easier. Or I wish that being social was my way to recharge and get back to myself.

When my friend was telling me their struggles, I told them I battled the same thing. I could see the relief on their face that I understood what they were going through and it wasn’t a crazy issue. I wish I had better advice to give to them other than the few things I’ve been trying to figure out the balance. It’s such a personal thing to work through and what works for me is not necessarily going to work for anyone else. And I still don’t know what works for me so I’m even more useless with giving advice.

But even without advice to give, I think having shared problems was a big help for my friend. They felt like I understood what they were going through and that it’s ok to struggle with it. Sometimes all you need is to not feel alone to feel a bit better. And now that they know that I have the same problems maybe they will feel ok using me as a sounding board when they need to talk things out or just want to rant to someone who understands. Being there for a friend is something I want to do more often, but it’s not something I can necessarily control. I can control that they know they can come to me if they need help, but I can’t make someone do that.

And even though I have known for a while that I was not alone in the struggle of finding the balance of self-care/being selfish and being social, it was still a relief for me to know I have another friend going through the same thing. If I need someone to talk to, I have someone else to reach out to that will understand exactly what I’m experiencing. And having a friend who understands my problems is so powerful in helping me when I’m struggling.

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Default ThumbnailFeeling Weird About Blogging Other Stuff (or Posting Silly Posts Just Feels Wrong) Default ThumbnailCelebrating A Friend’s Birthday (or Not Letting Feeling Gross Stop Me From Being Social) Default ThumbnailFeeling The Pain With The Weather (or The Full Story About My Hip Problems) Default ThumbnailFeeling A Bit More Luck (or Hopefully This Was Just A Bad Phase) Default ThumbnailTrying To Avoid Holiday Burnout (or Staying Home For Self-Care) Default ThumbnailMore Hip Problems (or Thinking Out Of Order)

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Trying To Avoid Holiday Burnout (or Staying Home For Self-Care)

Posted on December 13, 2018 | 1 comment

I’ve written about laziness being self-care for me sometimes. I can be very obsessed with getting things done sometimes and I know that it can lead to burnout for me. And when that happens, it usually takes me a while to get back to normal and I’m in this endless cycle of making up for lost time with being busy and being lazy. Finding the balance is a struggle that many of us have and I know a lot of us have been working on it for years.

While I don’t think I have the balance figured out, I had a small victory for me in finding it. This is the season of holiday parties and it can be very overwhelming. If I went to all the parties that I was invited to, between last Saturday and this Sunday I would be at 12 different events. This is not me bragging that I’m invited to a lot of things because many of them are with a lot of the same people or just something casual. But because they aren’t big events, I feel like I should make more of an effort to attend them. When it’s not a big deal, I can feel like I don’t have as many excuses to stay home.

I was supposed to attend a holiday party for an organization I’m a part of earlier this week. I had been looking forward to it and it was on a night that I didn’t have anything else so I thought I’d have no reason not to go. Of course, life never goes the way I expect it to go and this week is the week that I have my worst nausea and pain. And while I know I can push through it and will be doing that other nights this week, I had to prioritize myself and realize that staying home would be the best thing for me.

While I don’t love missing out on an event because it’s always a great opportunity to meet new people (especially now when I really need to find a new job!), I also know that if I go and I’m not feeling my best that I won’t make the best impression either. There would have been a chance that I would have driven to the event and already feeling like I’m ready to go home. Then the entire time that I would be there, I would be watching the time and wondering when I had been there long enough to feel like I had been social so I could go home. And that’s just not what I want to have as the impression that people would have of me.

So I stayed home instead of going out to this event. I didn’t do much at home besides catching up on podcasts and job hunting, but it was exactly what I needed to do for myself. Sometimes being anti-social is more important than being social in order to take care of yourself. And I think I’m not feeling too guilty about staying home because I have so many other events happening this week and weekend. I did not stay home from the only event I had this week and the rest of the week I’ll be bored and wishing I had plans. I found a balance and had to pick which events were a bit more important for me to go to than others. And while I could have picked a different event to skip and gone to the one I missed, I also know that I should be feeling better as the week goes on and that played a factor in the decision too.

I know that holiday burnout is a real thing and I see it happening to so many friends as well as myself. There’s no need for me to put so much pressure on myself to do it all when I know that nobody is expecting me to do that. And with self-care being a very important thing for many people right now, I imagine that if anyone wondered where I was and asked me about it, they would understand if I said I needed to do some self-care and stay home. I’m working on self-care being more than just things I do for myself but also including doing nothing when I know that is the best thing for me at that time. 

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Default ThumbnailUnion Working Holiday Party (or Just Enjoying Being Around Good People) Default ThumbnailAnother Union Holiday Celebration (or Being Social And Working Social Media) Default ThumbnailSelf-Care Is So Important (or At-Home Beauty) Default ThumbnailCraving Social Interaction (or Staying Away And Staying Online) Default ThumbnailWeird Feelings About Reopening Things (or I Might Just Keep Staying Home) Default ThumbnailI Tried, I Still Hit Burnout (or Finding Some New Limits)

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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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Default ThumbnailWorking On Productivity (or Taking Advantage Of The Slow Season) Default ThumbnailJust A Normal Weekend For Me (or Lazy Days Are Surprisingly Busy) Default ThumbnailStaying Super Busy (or Another Job) Default ThumbnailEnjoying A Mini-Splurge (or Sometimes The Best Plans Are The Simplest Plans) Default ThumbnailBusy Busy Busy (or Triple Job Day) Default ThumbnailEnjoying More Food and Wine Festival (or Enjoying A Hot Day At Disneyland)

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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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Finding Time For Friends (or Busting Out Of My Routine)

Posted on June 22, 2018 | Comments Off on Finding Time For Friends (or Busting Out Of My Routine)

This is a problem I’ve mentioned before on here, but I know that I’ve been neglecting some of my friendships lately. It’s not really anyone’s fault, time is limited for a lot of us and we just don’t think about scheduling time for each other. I’ve also said how social media has given me a false sense of seeing my friends more recently than I really have. And it’s true that it does because sometimes I’ll look at my calendar and realize that almost a year has passed since seeing a friend when I feel like I am up to date on their life.

I’m also a bit lazy with some of my friendships because other ones have hangouts that are pretty much built into my schedule. I see my friends who go to musicals with me once a month and those are in my calendar way in advance. Some of the musicals scheduled are over a year away but I know I’ll be seeing my friends then. It was also this way with my friends that I work out with, but that changed since my workout schedule changed. So some of my workout friends I haven’t seen in a long time.

I’ve tried to make conscious efforts in the past to fix this and I’m in a phase of life where I’m doing that again. I’ve got a pretty good routine going on with what I do from week to week. But I need to change that in order to see my friends. This week was a pretty decent one for me to do that because other things in my life weren’t taking up time. I’m even doing an afternoon workout today in order to see my workout friends again! And I went to a movie with another friend after work one afternoon this week. I usually don’t do that, but I wanted to see this friend and I wanted to see the movie so it was a perfect plan.

Since this is an ongoing problem for me, I was trying to think about why it was hitting me so hard right now. And then I realized that there was another routine of mine that was different too. It’s been a slow transition, but I’m not on social media as often as I used to. I used to see everything on Facebook. I would sort my posts in chronological order so I knew when I was caught up. But over the course of the past month or two, I haven’t had the time or desire to check out social medial as often. Now I just look at the top posts out-of-order and scroll for a bit before I move on.

Since I’m doing that, I’m not feeling as connected to my friends’ lives as I was before. I know I’m missing out on things online and that’s pushing me to feel like I want to see people in person. that’s a good thing since online relationships aren’t as strong as in person ones and I know I need to be better about seeing people in person. If this is the motivation that is getting me to see more people in person, then I guess it’s a good thing. I don’t see myself being on social media significantly more in the future just because of my life and how things are taking up time. So if I want this feeling to go away I have to make an effort to see people in person.

I think the other thing that has been making me feel this way is how much I’ve been relying on my friends lately. Life has taken a lot of weird turns lately and I have been asking more and more often for support from my friends. I usually try to be strong and don’t want to bother people asking for help. But I know now that it’s not a bother to ask and that it really is something that I need. And I’ve been asking for help and receiving it which has been amazing.

I’m sure things will ebb and flow with friendships just like with everything else in my life. When things get crazier and my schedule is more packed, I’ll end up neglecting some friendships again. And when I have the time to be reflective and think about what is happening, I’ll make more efforts to stay in touch with people. I’m just grateful that my friends have the same issues that I do and none of them hold it against me when it’s been months since I’ve seen them.

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I Guess I’ve Been Very Lazy (or I’m Sorry This Isn’t That Interesting)

Posted on June 15, 2018 | Comments Off on I Guess I’ve Been Very Lazy (or I’m Sorry This Isn’t That Interesting)

I’ve had times in the past where I’ve struggled with what to write on here. My life isn’t always super interesting and I do try to schedule stuff from time to time because I know they will make a good blog post. And I really felt like I had been doing things lately that were fun, but this week I’ve really struggled with topics to write about on here.

I don’t know what I’ve been doing with my time that feels like I’m busy but I’m really not. I’ve been doing a lot of work stuff lately and doing some random side projects for friends (I’ve recently been doing some graphic design work and am finding that I’m able to do more than I thought). I’ve had some dates recently, but nothing too crazy that it needs to be a blog post on here. And I think I’ve just been very focused on getting better and that has been tricking me into thinking I’m busy.

And I know I’ve spent a lot of time just being lazy. I want to use the excuse of trying to get better as the reason for my laziness, but I know that’s not really it. I’ve just been in a low spot physically and mentally and I think that being lazy is the way I’ve been recovering from it all. I do feel so much more like myself, but I still am having moments where things feel overwhelming and I need to take some time to decompress. But those moments are getting less frequent so I’m happy about that.

It’s also been getting hotter in LA lately. I was hoping we’d still have more June Gloom to help keep the temperatures down. But it’s been getting hotter and that means it’s been hotter inside my house all day while I’m working. I’m so grateful that I have my A/C so I can keep it cooler. I would love to use the A/C as little as possible, but it’s very tough for my house to cool down even when I open up all the windows. For example, as I’m writing this it is 71 outside and 84 inside after running my A/C. And if I opened up the windows, I know that it wouldn’t be getting much cooler inside by the time I go to bed. I know that because I dealt with that for so many years. It’s just the way that my house was build and how the insulation works.

The heat adds to my laziness, but I can’t completely blame it for how I’ve been feeling lately. But because of everything that I’ve been dealing with lately, I’m just trying to be extra gentle with myself and not trying to feel guilty for being lazy. I do have some things planned coming up that will be fun, but I’m not going to push myself to schedule more just so I could have better blog posts. I’ve said it before, but showing how boring life can be sometimes is an important part of this blog. I don’t love having to admit it, but I also don’t want to be only posting the best parts of my life and having a fake online persona. This is the real me and this is really what I’m dealing with.

I do feel bad when my posts on here aren’t as interesting because I know that you all reading these don’t necessarily find them interesting either. But I did make a commitment to myself that I was going to blog every weekday and I’ve been doing that for so many years now. I’m not going to let a lag in my social life ruin that streak I’ve been having.

At least the weekend is almost here and I know I’ve got some fun things next week happening. That doesn’t mean I won’t necessarily have some boring days, but I am looking forward to having something fun to write on here!

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Food Scheduling (or Trying Out New Things)

Posted on May 31, 2018 | Comments Off on Food Scheduling (or Trying Out New Things)

I’ve written about it so many times on here, but food issues are my biggest ones. It’s been a lifelong struggle and I’m guessing that it will be something I struggle with the rest of my life. I do hope that it will get easier for me one day, but I’m realistic in the idea that this will never go away completely.

I’ve struggled with what to eat, how much to eat, and when to eat. And when I started taking Vyvnase, the struggle of when to eat became bigger than ever. When I started taking it, I could go a very long time without remembering to eat and then it would backfire. I would realize that it was already dinnertime and I was starving. Forgetting to eat was a new issue for me and I really didn’t expect it to happen. So planning to remember to eat became very important to me.

For the past year or so, I’ve had an alarm to go off to remind me to eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And it’s been very useful, especially to remember to eat lunch when I’m working. I don’t always eat full meals (especially for breakfast or lunch), but at least getting something into my stomach helps me not feel famished when I do remember to eat.

But when I was sick recently, I was barely eating. For most people, when they are sick and not eating they lose weight. For me, somehow I gain weight. I’ve never been able to explain it, but that’s how my body works. But because of this, I’ve always been fearful of not eating enough in a normal day and causing a weight gain. I know it’s crazy because I’ve done a super low calorie diet before and lost weight, but it’s still a fear in the back of my head.

When I was better, I assumed that I would want to get back to my normal eating schedule. But I was having issues with it. The biggest issue was eating a small breakfast before my morning workouts. I’ve always had a half of a banana or some peanut butter before a workout because I felt like I needed it to keep me from feeling nauseous. Lately even that much food was too much so I had some chocolate milk before a workout and that seemed to be fine. But now even doing that doesn’t feel right to me. So I’ve been doing my morning workouts on an empty stomach.

I know there is a lot of debate on if you should work out on an empty stomach or not. I’m not too worried about the studies because I need to do what is right for me. Some people say they can’t work out as hard if they don’t eat something first, but I’m still working my way back and rebuilding my endurance so there is really no way for me to know if it is affecting me or not. All I know is that I’m not feeling worse without eating right now.

I do try to eat something as soon as I get home from a workout, but I’ll admit that I don’t always do that. But even if I do, I’m basically eating 2 meals a day right now (there have been a few days where it was 1 meal, but I know that I ate too much). I’ve never thought that eating less would be ok with me and not trigger something, but at whatever phase this is of my life it does seem to not cause any issues.

I have friends who do intermittent fasting and love it. I don’t want to commit and say that this is what I’m doing, but I do know that most of my eating is taking place in a 6-8 hour period which does fit into the intermittent fasting plan. I’m starting to do a bit more research on it and how it works with eating disorders because the last thing I want to do is have this backfire soon and make things worse for me than what they were before. If it looks like this will be trouble, then I will go back to making myself eat the 3 meals a day. But I really hate to make myself eat something when I’m not hungry just because of what time it is.

There is a very good chance that this is just a short phase, like all my other food things have been. But I do just have to keep on trying what seems to be more natural and simple for me and hopefully something will work and stick soon. But I think the biggest lesson I’ve learned from all the different things I’ve tried is to not feel like I need to stick 100% to any plan or to feel like I’m stuck doing something. I have to allow myself to be flexible because that is the only way to figure out what I will be able to do and maintain.

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Posted in Food, Fun Stuff, Health, Tough Stuff, Weight Loss

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Remembering To Do What I Like (or Weird Disappearing Time)

Posted on March 28, 2018 | Comments Off on Remembering To Do What I Like (or Weird Disappearing Time)

I’ve written about being over-scheduled in the past, and this is kind of the same idea. But at the same time it’s different and it’s weird. But somehow it feels like my time is disappearing from me. And with that disappearing time, I also feel like I’m not doing as many of the things that make me happy each day when I know there is time to do them.

I seem to be losing my Wednesday and Friday afternoons. Those used to be my workout times, but lately I’ve been working out in the mornings and those afternoons are free. But somehow that time it going by without me realizing it and I’m losing that time. I need to be a bit more intentional with how I schedule my time so that I don’t end up sitting at my computer going down a YouTube or Buzzfeed rabbit hole after work and wasting those hours. I’ve had weekend days like that as well when I get up at 7am and then all of a sudden it’s 7pm and I have no clue how I spent my day.

And part of the disappearing time is realizing now that my routine is a bit different that I don’t have the same time to kill that I did before. When I was driving to the Brentwood Orangetheory location after work twice a week, I had so much time in my car. I spent about 30 minutes in my car driving there and driving home would take between 1-2 hours (I know that sounds crazy, but since I work from home I figured this was my commute). During that time in the car, I would listen to podcasts. I usually would get through at least 1 podcast each time I drove to my workout.

But now that I’m not going to that location when the drive would take that long (going on Mondays is a pretty fast drive), I don’t have that time that I’m listening to my podcasts. And that wouldn’t be a problem for that many people, but since I listen to over 50 podcasts they were starting to pile up! I’m not using those afternoons to listen to podcasts while I’m home, so that time to listen has gone away. So I’ve had to make more of an effort to listen to podcasts since the time that I used to listen to them wasn’t really there anymore. So now I’m trying to spend my time during work between customers listening to the backlog and I’m finally starting to get close to being up to date on them again.

I know that everyone has this problem and seems to lose track of time, but because I’m really trying to be more mindful of so much in my life I want to work on making this not happen as often. There will always been random days every so often where the day will be wasted watching lots of random things on Netflix. But I want those to be rare and not happening as often as they have been recently. The example of losing my afternoons and then also losing podcast listening time shows exactly what is happening. I’m losing that time, but I’m also losing the time that I used to spend doing something that makes me happy.

I love listening to my podcasts and I need to dedicate time to listen to them. In the same sense, I need to make sure I dedicate time to doing other things I enjoy. I do read pretty much every evening before going to bed, but I should make an effort to read more often. Reading before bed is only for a little bit of time because then I fall asleep. But I get so much pleasure out of reading and I should be doing it more throughout the day.

Scheduling fun things doesn’t necessarily sound like the most exciting thing, but I really do need to work on it. I think scheduling it helps me find the balance between being over-scheduled and under-scheduled and helps me plan where I have empty time in my schedule that I might want to fill with something else. While there is always time I want to use to watch TV, I don’t want to spend an entire day just watching junk. I’m working on only watching shows that I have recorded so that I limit how much TV I’m watching and I also can stop mid-way through a show if necessary (I do make an exception to this for news).

I’ve also realized lately that I haven’t been doing as many things from my happiness checklist as I was doing before. I’ve thought about maybe changing some of the things on the list, but all 10 of the things still are things that make me so happy when I do them. And I haven’t thought of something else that makes me just as happy or happier to replace them with. So instead of changing them (which is what I’ve done in the past), I am just trying to be more intentional and trying to make the effort to add them back into my schedule. I probably need to set some reminders on my phone or add them to my calendar so I don’t forget, but having reminders isn’t a bad thing.

Hopefully the combination of realizing I’m losing time to doing nothing and I’m not doing as many things that make me happy as I should that I can start planning better and that will just make me feel happier and not that I’m wasting time in lots of aspects of my life.

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Turning Myself Into A Morning Person (or Continuing On My Productivity Kick)

Posted on March 15, 2018 | Comments Off on Turning Myself Into A Morning Person (or Continuing On My Productivity Kick)

I don’t know what it is, but I’ve been so motivated to be productive lately. I’ve had my giant cleaning spree and I’ve been working on figuring out how to make my downtime at work more productive. And my motivation kick seems to be continuing which can only be a good thing for me.

I know there are some people who say that you are either a morning person or a night person and because that’s how you are it’s pretty difficult to change. And I used to believe that. I know that I naturally am a night person. I could easily stay up until 1 or 2am and then go to bed (I’m sure for some night people that still seems early, but for me that’s late). And when my work schedule was later, I would sleep in to make up for staying up late. But because I wasted my morning and my late nights weren’t super productive either, I always felt like I needed to work on catching up and I didn’t like that feeling.

I’ve tried to become a morning person several times and it’s never really stuck with me. But for a while, I’ve been working on regulating my sleep schedule and I think it’s finally helping me become a morning person. On my earliest work days with my day job, I need to wake up at 7am. So I’ve been working on getting up every day at 7am. And I know that 7am isn’t super early and there are plenty of people who get up at 4 or 5am, but for me it was early since there were days I would be sleeping in until 9:30am. And I know that I need about 7 hours of sleep so I have a goal of trying to go to bed by midnight. I don’t always accomplish that, but like with so many other aspects of my life just being aware of it is helpful.

It’s taken a long time and I’ve had lots of setbacks, but I’m finally starting to get more into my sleep routine and it’s becoming much easier for me. I’m starting to feel tired when it’s getting closer to midnight and I’m finding it much easier to get up at 7am. I’ve also been noticing on my Fitbit that I am not as restless while I’m sleeping so I’m getting more sleep in those 7 hours than I have in the past. Most of the time I still need an alarm to get up (or if I’m being honest, multiple alarms), but I’m not hitting snooze like I used to and there have been the rare occasional morning when I naturally wake up right before my alarm goes off. It does feel so great when I wake up naturally and I’m hoping that it happens more often.

And with getting up at 7am even on my later shift days, I’ve had a few hours in the morning to get things done. I’ve been doing a lot of errands like going to the grocery store or other things like that, but I’m looking at more ways to spend those few hours in the morning being productive. It’s also nice to feel like I’ve accomplished a lot before I get stuck sitting at my computer for several hours. If I’ve gotten a lot done in the morning, I don’t feel like I’m wasting my time when I’m home but can’t really do much.

There are still plenty of times that I know I will sleep in (or want to sleep in), but I really do want to try to make it the norm that I get up at the same time every morning. Having some consistency is helpful and I know that getting into more routines will help me stay calm and figure out when I can get other things done. I also have to take my medications in the morning and when I do oversleep I usually don’t end up taking them since they are stimulants and if I take them too late I won’t be able to sleep (and that puts me into a bad cycle of staying up too late). So if I’m getting up early every day that helps me stay consistent with medications and I can be a better judge on if they are working or not.

I have no idea what the next productivity thing that I’ll be motivated to do will be, but I’m seriously feeling so amazing about how I’ve had so many different productivity things in my life lately and I know this can only benefit me in the long run.

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Not Wanting To Wait Until The New Year (or Managing The Crazy Times)

Posted on December 21, 2017 | Comments Off on Not Wanting To Wait Until The New Year (or Managing The Crazy Times)

My schedule has been crazy for a while. Part of it is my fault with planning a lot to do, but I think that the holidays are always a crazy time. I keep saying that things will be normal again on this date or that date but then something else comes up that changes that entire plan.

For a long time, I said my schedule would be fine once the 300th episode party for the podcast would be done. But then I had more parties to go to (even if I didn’t end up going to all of them) and then family things to help with and that seemed to stress me out. I think also not having any extra time off for the holidays is throwing me off because it won’t feel like I have a break. I just have my regular work schedule happening and my next day off work for a holiday isn’t until the 4th of July (too many holidays happen on a Monday which is already my day off work). So it feels like I’m in something that just keeps going and going without a break to have a sense of having time to catch up. I still have 2 days off a week, but usually for holidays I get at least one extra day or one regular day becomes a half day. Not so much this year.

With all this craziness, I’m lucky that my fitness schedule isn’t too affected. Next week and the week after will be a bit weird, but I will still get in my workouts one way or another. I know that this is something to be proud of because for so long I would consider this craziness an excuse to take a break and not work out. But instead, I’m almost annoyed when I can’t get in as many workout as I want to because of holiday schedules. And while in the past my food plan might have gotten out of control too, it isn’t as bad as it has been in the past. It’s not great, but I know it could be so much worse. But since I know it could be better I want to work on that. And it’s just far too easy to say that I’ll work on it when I know things are normal again.

I don’t want to get into the mindset of waiting to fix things that aren’t going the way I want them to be. That’s the problem of waiting until Monday, next month, or next year. And with it being near the end of the year it is really easy to think that I’ll just fix it on January 1st. But I know if I wait to do that, it won’t happen. It’s far too easy to procrastinate and get myself deeper and deeper into whatever hold I’m digging myself into.

And if I keep telling myself that I’ll wait until it gets normal, I know that won’t ever happen either. There may be a small break of time where things seem very routine and easy for me, but I know that it’s not all the time and when it happens it is very brief. More often than not, my life is crazy with times of insane stress of too much stuff and then insane stress that I’m not doing enough. And I want to work on being better prepared for those times.

As much as I want to say that my life will be normal again after the holidays, I know that there’s no way that it will be true. I’ve got a trip planned with my mom and sister-in-law in February, I’ve got the busy season at my day job, it’s almost pilot season for acting and I’m hoping to have some more auditions, and I’m guessing that my dating life is going to continue to be crazy for a while. All of those things have a good chance of stressing me out and making it feel like my life isn’t normal.

Maybe I just have to think of all the craziness in my life as the normal times and when things are easy for me those are the crazy and weird times? I don’t know. But I do know that the more I’ve had to work through times like this (and it happens a lot because I know I blog about it a lot) the better I get at managing it. This is one of the first times that it’s really seemed much easier for me and I don’t feel like I’ve had a huge setback when dealing with the stress. I’ve had minor setbacks, but they are much smaller than they have been in the past. So I think they are also easier to bounce back from.

I know that each time I write about this I say how I should be happy that I’m seeing progress and acknowledging that I have to work on these things is major progress. It doesn’t always feel like that when you are in the crazy times, but I think that I’m finally starting to believe it.

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