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Not Sure How I Did With My Last Monthly Challenge (or Another Attempt At NaNoWriMo)

Posted on November 1, 2019 | Comments Off on Not Sure How I Did With My Last Monthly Challenge (or Another Attempt At NaNoWriMo)

When I set my monthly challenge for October to be working more on my acting career, I was so excited about the things I had in mind. I had some things in mind that were bigger plans that I knew would be things I would need to save up for, but there were several things I knew I could work on. And honestly, I don’t really know how much I succeeded or failed at my challenge.

I knew that I would have the convention and that would be a big acting related event. And it did help my career in many ways, but my plan was to try to do more than just that. I wanted to do some research into classes, work on organizing things to be ready when I have auditions, and schedule and hopefully take new headshots. And I did a little bit of research work (part of that includes my tv research), but I didn’t do a majority of what I wanted to.

I don’t want to make excuses for myself, but I know why this didn’t happen. First, I was dealing with money issues and that made me hesitant to plan for anything that would require money. I also didn’t expect to be as tired after the convention as I was and that took a lot out of me. Part of being tired (and another reason why I didn’t do much for my career) had to do with my grandma passing away. I’m grieving this loss very differently than I expected and I think part of that has been that it hasn’t fully hit me yet. When my grandpa passed away, I was with my family a few days later. When I have had friends pass away, it felt more real because of how I had been staying in touch with them. This time, I don’t know if it will fully hit me until Thanksgiving. But for the past few weeks, I’ve been just having this weird feeling that is almost like I have a bit of grief and sadness affecting other things. I’m ok and nobody needs to worry about me about being depressed or anything. This is just how I am processing it and it wasn’t what I thought it would be.

Obviously, working on my acting career is a challenge that isn’t going to stop just because it’s a new month. I need to work on this and keep working on this. I still want to accomplish the things I had in mind for last month, so I will keep making plans and trying to get them done. I do still have the same financial restrictions for now, but planning can be done without spending money. And for the things that will require money, I can take steps towards those too.

And for my monthly challenge this month, I’ll be repeating one I’ve done in November before. I’ll be working on writing a book. I’ve stopped working on the book about online dating that I was working on in the past because I didn’t like how it was coming together. And a few months ago, I had the idea to change the book to be more about life lessons I’ve been learning from online dating. I’ve been working on notes and organizing ideas for what these lessons are so that I could be ready to start working on the new book. And I’m planning on working on it this month.

I still do not think I will have a finished first draft for the book after the month is done because I don’t know if the book is done yet. I know that I will have more stories from online dating that haven’t happened yet, so I will want to add those as they do happen. But I want to get each section that I’ve got notes on right now written during the month. I don’t know if I want to work on one lesson/chapter each day that I write or just try to work a bit every day. I’m allowing myself to be flexible and see how it works best for me.

I feel much better about working on the book this time because I do have notes that help me see the flow of how the book can go. I have shifted lessons around so that it makes more narrative sense to me. And I’m excited to be able to write down some of the crazier stories that weren’t going to be in other versions of the book because they weren’t substantial enough. But now, I can’t put a bunch of stories together in one lesson if they work that way. I can’t wait to see what happens as I write and what I might be inspired to edit and change as I work on it.

I do also have an idea for a fiction book about dating that I have notes on, but I don’t have the same pull to work on it as I do with my life lessons book. I also think reflecting on the lessons I’ve learned will be a good thing for me and will remind me that even though dating hasn’t been going the way I wanted it to that I am getting some good things out of it.

Hopefully, when I do my update after the month is done I will have some great things to share about how the writing went. I have high expectations for myself since this is not the first time I have tried working on this. I know how I didn’t succeed before and want to make sure I don’t repeat those mistakes. And even though this book will still be a work in progress after the month is over, I want to feel like I’ve gotten a lot of work on it done and that it’s more of a book than a bunch of ideas.

Good luck to anyone else doing NaNoWriMo this month! I hope you get everything out of it that you are hoping for!

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Posted in Dating, Fun Stuff

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Posted in Acting, Fun Stuff, Health

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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A Birthday Month Challenge (or Education And Celebration)

Posted on August 1, 2019 | Comments Off on A Birthday Month Challenge (or Education And Celebration)

While every month is exciting for me now because it’s the start of a new monthly challenge for me, this month is extra exciting because it’s the start of my birthday month! I don’t have any grand plans for my birthday this year, but that actually fits with what my monthly challenge is this month. But first, a quick recap of my monthly challenge from last month.

I did a bit of a cheat last month and used the monthly challenge to work on something I had already started but wasn’t focusing on the way I had hoped. I wanted to spend the month working on the Brain Over Binge course and following the schedule the way it was set. While I had been doing all of the lessons, listening to all the different lectures, and filling out the worksheets; I wasn’t doing them throughout the week. I had been doing them in one or two days and just fitting all the lessons back to back. My challenge was to try to spread them out the way they were intended to be done.

Well, that didn’t quite work out for me. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to do that, but my schedule just isn’t in a place right now to let me do that. I think I underestimated how much time my union election work would take and there were plenty of days where I wouldn’t have time to even watch tv to try to decompress a bit. I started to stress myself out a bit that I wasn’t able to follow the schedule and then I realized that doing the lessons in one day isn’t the worst thing. The most important thing is that I’m doing them. And since I am downloading all the work, I can do it again with the spread-out schedule when my time isn’t as crazy.

Since I know this month is going to be just as crazy with union election work, I didn’t want to set myself up for failure with a big monthly challenge. But I still wanted something fun for my birthday month. And when I was listening to a podcast last week, I was inspired by something the hosts were saying about why they didn’t like the idea of having fancy dishes that you never used. Every day should feel like a celebration and you shouldn’t fear using nice things because it doesn’t feel like a special enough day.

So for my birthday month, I want to celebrate every single day. Every day is special and deserves to be recognized. I don’t know exactly how I will celebrate every day, but I will not let myself think that I shouldn’t do something because it is not a special enough day. If someone wants to go out for a fun dinner, I won’t say no because it’s a Tuesday or that I don’t feel fancy. I’ll celebrate that we are going out. I want to be in a celebratory mindset for this month and hopefully for beyond that.

I know this isn’t the biggest challenge and it really doesn’t require much for me to accomplish it, but it seems very fitting for my birthday month and it seems like something that would be a good thing to have as a part of my life. I shouldn’t be putting things on hold or hoping for the right time to do something. If I want to do something and have the ability to do so, I should do it. And that’s what I plan on doing this month.

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I’ve Been Slacking (or I Need An Easy Challenge This Month)

Posted on July 2, 2019 | Comments Off on I’ve Been Slacking (or I Need An Easy Challenge This Month)

I think it’s clear that I’m not exactly as enthusiastic about my monthly challenges as I was when I started. It’s been harder to find challenges to do and I’ve been failing at them more often. I think it’s because I have done so many of these, but I should be able to find something that motivates me again. But right now, that’s not happening.

Last month, I wanted to work on digital organizing to maximize what I could do with my various tech devices. I picked this challenge because it seemed easy enough and it was something that I’ve been wanting to do for a while. I know that I don’t use my phone or iPad as much as I could and I wanted to see what new things I could do that would make my life so much better. I was excited to see what would happen.

And then I didn’t really do it at all. I did a little bit of organizing when I downloaded a few new apps. I made sure I put them in the folders I wanted them in and when I was looking in those folders I did delete some old apps. But the goal was to do so much more than that and I just didn’t do it.

I did have some things last month that made it tough on me. I had a lot of work I had to do and it took more time than expected. When I thought I might be able to do some of the organizing between customers at work, I had to use that time for other work. I’m not upset about that because work does take priority. But I guess I just thought I would have the time and when I didn’t I wondered what happened. The days were flying by and I couldn’t believe how little free time I had.

But even though I didn’t do the organizing that I was planning on doing, I did use my iPad more than I have in the recent past. I have been trying to use it more often to do some work-related things when I don’t have to be sitting at my computer. And that is more often than I thought in the past.

Because of my lack of enthusiasm for these challenges and how lost I have felt a bit with getting them done, I wanted to make things easier on me by using a challenge that I technically already have been doing.

For July, I wanted to make sure I am following the Brain Over Binge online course every day. I’m in the 3rd week of the course and I have struggled to keep up a bit because of the time issues I’ve been having. But I want to devote this month to catching up on what I missed and making sure I do the lessons every day as they come out. I want to also work on some of the extra work that can be done with the course that I haven’t been doing.

I know that this is a bit of a cheat for my monthly challenge, but because I have already fallen a bit behind I don’t want to add something else to my plate. I want to give myself the ability to focus on this because it is important to me. I don’t know if it will work to help get me into recovery, but I won’t know if it will unless I try and follow the class. So that’s exactly what I plan to do this month.

The class does go until August, so I will be doing this challenge beyond July. But I want to have the good habits built up this month so the last 2 weeks of the class are easy to complete. I know that if I put my focus on this, I will be able to catch up and get all the work done. And being able to accomplish that will mean so much to me so I want to put a lot of effort into it.

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My Monthly Challenge To Finish Out The First Half Of The Year (or Sleeping And More Organizing)

Posted on June 4, 2019 | 2 comments

It’s crazy to think that after this month the year will be half over! I’ve said it dozens of times (and will say it probably thousands more), but time is just going so fast! I do love that I have so many checkins with myself to not let time slip by. I have things that I do to check in every week and every month and it does help me stay more mindful as time goes by. And one of those checkins is my monthly challenge.

Last month, I had a challenge to work on my sleep a bit more. I have finally gotten to a place where I don’t struggle to get up in the morning. Even when I can sleep in on a Sunday, I still usually wake up at 7am since that is the time I get up every other day. But because I naturally get up early, if I stay up late it means I just won’t get the sleep I need. And I had been noticing that I was going to sleep later and later even on the nights I needed to be up early. So I wanted to work on my better bedtime routine so I could be closer to getting all the sleep I needed most nights.

There were still a few nights that I know I was up too late and I did suffer for it. But I am in a better place now with being used to going to bed a bit earlier now than I was before I started the challenge. I did think about it more when I wanted to watch another show before going to sleep and I would often decide it wasn’t worth staying up. I still have a lot of work to do so that I’m averaging enough sleep a night when I take tossing and turning into account, but I’m much closer to that.

One unexpected thing I did discover about myself while doing this challenge was what later bedtime would also work. While I don’t want to be getting under 5 hours of sleep a night, there is something about making sure you are in the best part of your sleep cycle when you do wake up. So if I’m up a bit too late, I now have a slightly better idea of how much later I should stay up so getting up doesn’t feel as hard. It’s weird to think that sometimes forcing myself to have less sleep will result in not being as tired, but it does work. But it’s not something I want to get into the habit of and I want to work on increasing my sleep.

My sleep challenge is going to continue over the next few months for sure, but I’m glad I did focus on it last month so I could get some of the better habits started and I have a better idea of what to work on. I knew I needed to fix things, but the specifics were a bit up in the air until I tested them out and I discovered new things that I hope will help me.

I wanted to shift to a bit more concrete challenge this month so my progress was easier to see. I had a few ideas of what I could do, but I ended up being inspired by a few different things that happened. First, my phone gave me an alert that I was running out of space. I am waiting to see if Apple will release another smaller iPhone because I don’t like the giant ones, so I have to do what I can to make my current phone work as long as possible. I also realized that I wasn’t using my iPad the same way I had been using it when I got it. I still use it and am so grateful to have it, but I was just getting frustrated with a few things that were’t working the same way my phone would do.

So I decided that for this month, I’m going to do some digital organizing. I have already been clearing things out of my phone to add more space, but I know there is so much more than I can do. And I know that a lot of my frustration with my iPad comes down to not finding my apps as easily because they aren’t organized the same way and I just grab my phone because it is easier.

I know this is really a first world problem, but I know that being more organized on my devices will help me be more productive. And that really is my goal with so many different aspects of my life. I don’t want to have to waste time trying to find where something is on a device and then waste time being frustrated after I can’t find it. I do have a bit of this issue on my computer as well with a few things on there that I don’t need or links in my bookmarks that are outdated, but I don’t notice it as much. Maybe that’s because I spend so much time on my computer with work so I don’t feel like I’m wasting as much time. But I want to try to work on that as well.

I’m sure in working through this organizing I’ll discover other things with my devices that I want to work on. Maybe I’ll find new systems to make my life easier. Or I’ll discover new apps that I will want to help with things that aren’t as simple as they can. Doing any sort of audit or organization really brings out new and interesting things. I’m excited to see what I will discover over this next month working on it.

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Failing And Succeeding In One Monthly Challenge (or Another Repeat Challenge This Month)

Posted on April 2, 2019 | Comments Off on Failing And Succeeding In One Monthly Challenge (or Another Repeat Challenge This Month)

Last month, I decided my monthly challenge would be all about skin care. While I have been good about taking care of the skin on my face, I knew I could be doing a lot more work with the skin on my body. The idea was to discover some new things that I could do to help my skin, but the main thing I wanted to do was to work on dry brushing.

Well, I totally failed at dry brushing. I did it a few times, but it just didn’t really work for me. So many times when I’m taking a shower it’s right after a workout. My skin is still damp with sweat and I don’t want to have to dry off the sweat before jumping into the shower. I tried to do it the times I shower when it’s not immediately after a workout, but I didn’t see a benefit from it. I’m not giving up on it, but I know that this part of my skincare plan was a total fail.

But I wouldn’t consider this past challenge a fail because I did discover a few amazing things that have been helping me a lot with skincare. And the new things I figured out have been things that I’ve been doing every day.

First, I stopped using a regular loofah. I’ve been using a loofah poof for as long as I can remember for my body wash. I don’t like using a washcloth or my hands for body soap. A loofah was the best option I knew of. But then when I was in Catalina, my aunt was telling me about exfoliating bath sheets. I had never heard of these before but they seemed like a great upgrade. First, they dry so much faster than a loofah poof which helps to make them not as gross. But you can also scrub your back much easier since it’s a long rectangle. As soon as I got home I got one and I’ve been using it ever since! I feel like I’m getting my skin so much cleaner.

Another thing I discovered was wet skin lotion. I’ve tried in-shower lotions before, but I never liked them. You washed them off your skin so I felt like they were just being wasted. And they always made my shower or tub so slippery. But wet skin lotions are different. You do put them on while in the shower, but after the water is turned off. You apply it just like regular lotion but your skin doesn’t have to be dry. I have found this makes my skin feel much more moisturized and I dry off so much faster! I still use my regular lotion other times during the day, but I know putting this one on right after my shower is the best option for keeping my skin feeling soft.

So while I didn’t succeed at what I planned to do with my skincare, I still succeeded. And I want to take the idea into this month’s challenge. This month, I am challenging myself to be much more accurate in tracking various things in my life. And all of those things are things I’ve had as previous monthly challenges.

This is a combination of a few things. As I mentioned recently, I restarted my budget and I’m working on getting everything set up. It’s pretty much there, but I have to get back into my habit of tracking my money the way I used to. I was getting lazy before and I need to be accurate again in order to make budgeting work. I also have been slacking on tracking my weight and food intake. Both of these things can be an act of defiance, but I see them as more avoiding things. And I’m not always avoiding bad things. I wasn’t tracking my weight when I knew it was going down because I was scared how I would react if I lost more or less than I expected. And with food intake, when I have a very low calorie day for whatever reason, I don’t want to see that and get scared that either I need to force myself to eat or that this is going to cause me to binge later.

I’m not as worried about tracking my money because I feel much less emotion with that. But tracking my weight and food intake will be tough challenges for me to do. I already know I failed at being perfect because yesterday I wasn’t accurate (I was having a horrible nausea day and food was more about trying to see what would make me feel better and not thinking about what I’m eating).

But as I learned last month, just because I started as a fail doesn’t mean I can’t end as a success.

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

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Bringing More Good Things To Me And Others (or Happiness and Self-Care)

Posted on March 1, 2019 | Comments Off on Bringing More Good Things To Me And Others (or Happiness and Self-Care)

I have had some very good monthly challenges in the past, but I’ve been feeling really good about the ones I’ve been working on for this year. I still may change things up as the year goes on, but I’ve been really focused on finding things that I think will really be beneficial. I don’t want them to just be something I can easily do or not think about. And I want the thoughts about them to all be good things and not annoyed that I need to do them.

My challenge for February was to put more positive things on Twitter. I became aware of how much news related stuff I was posting online and most of the time the news I posted was negative or scary. I don’t want to hide from the realities of the world, but I also don’t want that to be my only focus. I know I have always enjoyed to see positive posts that other people share on social media, and I wanted to do the same.

This ended up being a very easy thing for me to accomplish. I set an alarm on my phone like I have for so many other things to remind me to do a positive tweet. I usually did it before the alarm went off, but it’s always good to have the reminder. I also created a Twitter list of accounts that post positive things so it was easy for me to find something to share every day. And I loved having that list because I did use it for more than just finding what I wanted to share online. When I was having a down moment, it was a great resource to have to cheer myself up. I did find this challenge benefitted me as well as other people who saw it on my Twitter feed. And I plan to keep this up indefinitely because I liked the results it had.

This month my challenge will be something that will only benefit me, but it’s ok to have a selfish challenge from time to time. And this one is related to self-care which is something I have been working on for quite a while. I’ve been getting better at finding regular acts of self-care that I can do, but I know there are so many more things I can do that will make me feel better about myself.

I’ve been pretty good about skincare when it comes to my face. I haven’t always been amazing, but lately I’ve been really on top of things. I know this had to do with having the stitches in my face and having to be so careful with washing my face and taking care of the incision. I also love using different products on my face when I find something that isn’t quite right. I have a few different masks depending on my skin’s condition at the time and I also have different spot treatment options when I need them.

I know that skincare for your face is usually what you think about when you hear the word skincare. And honestly, I’ve been like that too. But I’ve been ignoring the rest of my skin and I’ve noticed that it’s starting to show. Growing up, I know I wasn’t as good about putting lotion on my body as I was for my face. I don’t know why I just didn’t do it, but I didn’t think about doing it. I’m much better about it now, but I know that just using lotion isn’t enough for my skin.

I do use special soap on my skin and I’m lucky that it doesn’t dry my skin out. And I have some lotions that I like and they seem to help. But I still have skin issues that aren’t managed just by washing and moisturizing my skin. I have dry skin issues and uneven skin issues too. I haven’t really looked into what I could do to fix those things before, but I’m feeling motivated to do it now.

I’m not totally sure of all the skincare things I want to do for my body, but I want to get myself into a better skincare routine. I got a dry brush a long time ago as a swag bag item and I’ve never used it before. I don’t know if using it every day will be right for me, but I want to try using it regularly so I can figure out how often I should dry brush. I also want to look into the lotions that I use and see if there is a better option for me. I have tried in-shower lotions before and I love the idea of them. But they haven’t been right for me. But I’ve been hearing about new in-shower lotion options that might be better and I know that putting lotion on immediately after showering is best (and I definitely wait too long after showering to put on lotion).

I don’t think there are masks that I would be using on my body, but I want to research other things I can do. Maybe there are things that I’m not doing correctly or skipping out on that can make a big different in the appearance and feel of my skin. I know that I’m starting from having things seem pretty decent so far, so I’m not expecting a huge difference. But I also know having the ritual of different self-care practices can be a lot more for mental health than physical health.

This will be an interesting challenge to do this month because I’m actually starting the month out-of-town (more on that next week). I don’t know how many things I will be able to do when I’m not home, but that could be good time to do some research. And hopefully by the end of the month I will have a good skincare routine I can share with you all and I will feel like my skin is looking better.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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My First Challenge Of 2019 (or Planning And Education)

Posted on January 3, 2019 | Comments Off on My First Challenge Of 2019 (or Planning And Education)

Another post about the beginning of the year! This time, it’s about my monthly challenge for January so technically it’s not just about the beginning of the year. I’m in my 4th year of using the Volt Planner and the monthly challenges and I’m really excited to see what I’m able to get done this year!

My challenge for December was to plan for my challenges this year. I had some very abstract challenges in 2018 and it became easy to slack off on doing them because of that. Maybe I needed a bit of a break from my monthly challenges, but I wanted to get back at it in 2019. So I went easy on myself again in December and used that month to plan for the future. I have seen so many lists of ideas for monthly challenges and my plan was to check out a bunch of lists and pick out the ones that seemed good for the coming year.

While I did look at a ton of lists and see some amazing ideas, I wasn’t able to plan the way I hoped to. I think part of the monthly challenges is to see what inspires you and what you want to work on at that time. To plan out what I want my challenge to be several months from now just doesn’t work for me the way I was hoping it would. I found lots of challenges that I liked, but I didn’t decide what months they are going to be for. But I’m hopeful that by having a list of options available to me that it will be easier for me to pick challenges each month.

And for this month’s challenge, it was inspired by my circumstances and not exactly by the list I found. I mentioned this briefly in my 2019 goals post, but my challenge for this month is to take different free online classes. There are a bunch of different websites I have access to for free through the LA Public Library system, but I have decided to start with the classes I can find on lynda.com. I’ve heard good things about that site through other people who have used it and it seemed to have a good variety of classes I could take.

I spent a few days last week going through the site and seeing what options I have and I picked out a bunch of different ones. Some of them are related to making this blog better, some of them are job skills that I’d like to brush up on, and others are jobs skills that I don’t have but think could be good for me to know with my current jobs search. The plan is to work on a lesson for a bit every day and to get through whatever I can. I might be able to finish some in a day if they are fast, but I don’t want to have to set a rule for how quickly I need to get something done. If I’m learning a new skill, I want to allow myself time to figure it out and understand it before I move on.

I do feel like this goal has a couple of benefits for me. First, like I mentioned above, is that adding new skills to my job resume might help me in my job search. Things were slow with job hunting during the holidays but they are picking up again and I want to find a new job as soon as I can. I’m not happy being this stressed out about money and what will happen. I have had some interviews and second phases of applications, but I’m hoping now that the holidays are done that I will get more and maybe a job offer soon. And the second benefit I see this having for me is that it will help me be more productive during the downtime at my current job. I don’t want to waste my days doing things that won’t help me in the long run, and taking classes online is a great way to stay productive!

I’m pretty excited about this challenge and seeing what other classes I might want to add to my list as I go through them. It seems like there are a ton of options in so many subjects, plus I also have a few other online class sites I can use for free through the library that I can move to if I don’t find more through lynda.com. I’m also happy that I found something that is free since a few different educational things that I do are apps that have an annual cost. Anything I can find for free is good and I want to take advantage of them!

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