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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