Personal Goals Update

At the beginning of the year I made myself 5 personal goals.  I haven’t done any posts summarizing how those goals are going so far this year, so I think it is high time for me to do just that… So, here it goes…

Goal #1 was to visit with friends and family at least twice per month.  I started with this spread in my bullet journal:

Then I moved to my new bullet journal and I never copied that spread over… Well, until now… But I decided to go through my bullet journal and fill in where I did stuff with people that was recorded in my bullet journal (there were probably other things that weren’t recorded, but this is the best that I can do for now…)

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Random Decluttering

After the difficulty with keeping up with the mins game (and keeping records and tracking everything that I decluttered for that challenge) I sort of stopped keeping track of things that were leaving our house… But… That doesn’t mean things haven’t been leaving…

With all the kitchen and dining room stuff moving in to the basement, we had to finally pull a bunch of things out of the cupboards, and I have taken the opportunity to get rid of things that have just been taking up space.  Here’s an incomplete, but best estimate based on my memory, list of what has left our house in the last few weeks:

My Training Plan for July, August and September…

I am planning to run in a half marathon in October… The one that I didn’t run in last year because I was sick… And didn’t train…

So this year I am going to train… so at least I’ll be prepared and will hopefully be able to work through a bug or sickness if one comes at the wrong time again… (I say this every year, and never really follow through, but I keep trying, so that’s something, right?  Maybe this year will be the one I actually complete a training plan… )  This is part of the reason for my focus on fitness in June, that didn’t end up very successful…

I’m two weeks in to the training plan, and I’ve already fallen behind, but that’s okay.  I’m going to persevere and try to do better.  As with everything I do these days, I made a spread in my bullet journal to lay out the training plan.  Here it is:

June Focus on Fitness Results

I bet you are wondering how my “focus on fitness” went in June, right?  Okay, maybe you aren’t, but I’m going to share with you anyway… 

My Mins Game Conclusion

Today is June 8th, so it is well past the scheduled last day of my January MinsGame challenge.  As I mentioned in my personal goals post, I am picking a monthly challenge to complete each month this year (though I have definitely missed a few months – okay, I’ve missed more months than I’ve done… whatever…).  January’s challenge was to complete the Mins Game as defined by the Minimalists.  However, I didn’t actually complete the full 31 days of the challenge before the end of January.

I posted updates along the way… First was days 1 to 10, which saw 55+ items leave the house.  The second update was days 11 to 18, which brought the total up to 170+ items.  My third update was days 19 to 22 which brought my total up to 250+ items… And then there was blog silence…  I mentioned briefly that I was behind on the MinsGame, but all was not lost.  I slowly worked on the last 9 “days” of the challenge and can now say that I have completed it!  So, let’s quickly go over the end of my challenge…

June Focus: Fitness

In an effort to get back on track with the blog, and my life in general, I have decided to bring back the monthly focus that I had as a personal goal for 2017.

I have sort of successfully completed a focus for January (My Morning Routine) and for February (Realistic Expectations), but then I sort of fell off the monthly focus wagon… I don’t remember doing a focus for March, April or May… But that doesn’t mean I am going to give up completely on my goal.  I am going to jump in with a focus on fitness for June.

March Challenge: 5 Minutes a Day

After my somewhat successful challenge for February, and my incomplete challenge for January, I decided to go really simple for March… Something vague and non-committal that only takes 5 minutes a day… 

February’s Monthly Challenge Results

Before I get in to my challenge results, Melinda over at PurpleSlobInRecovery has nominated me for 2 blogging awards in the last little while… I had thought that I was sort of done with awards after my Sunshine Blogger Award, but it was so thoughtful of Melinda to nominate me twice, so I’ll do a bit of a response at the end of this post.  Anyway…

January’s Monthly Challenge (my Mins Game) was a little heavy on the time commitment, so I want to do something a little easier for February.  As I mentioned before, I really thought that the 7-minute workout challenge would be a simple one to complete.  But without the motivation and desire to do the exercises, it just didn’t happen… So I changed it up and decided to give myself an even easier challenge for the second half of February: read and relax, every day.

So, how did I do?

My Realistic Expectations for February

February was a good month… Other than “failing” at my original focus and monthly challenge.  But, I also did a bit of soul searching and adjusting of my expectations of myself.

I used to read this blog called “A Slob Comes Clean” and one thing that she always expressed was that when things started getting crazy around the house, she would return to the basics (or survival mode, as she puts it), the one thing that was the key to keeping things from tumbling down in to the depth of clutter and mess for her was to run her dishwasher every night.  And that idea stuck with me since then.

Partway through February, when I missed a few blog posts and was feeling overwhelmed, I decided I should enact my own type of survival mode.  I decided to not attempt to create any new habits or take on any new projects, but just try my best to keep up with the ones that I was already struggling with, or even let go of some of them until I felt better in control.

So, what did my survival mode look like?  What did I do?

January Focus Review: My Morning Routine

I had planned to have the conclusion of my Mins Game published today, but I’m still behind… So that will have to wait… Doesn’t really bode well for my year of monthly challenges… But we won’t think about that today… Anyway… Let’s discuss something else…

When I published my post on my updated morning routine, I had no idea what sort of response it would get, and I was definitely not prepared for the popularity of that post. It was a Pinterest sensation! Remember when I mentioned that I was getting near 10,000 views for all of 2016?  Yeah, with that morning routine post, I have already almost reached that in just a month. I even had a couple days with over 1000 views each!  Craziness!  (I realize that this might not be a lot for other bloggers, but it is a huge jump up for me!)

Anyway, the point is that it was obviously something that many people were interested in, so I figured that I should do a follow up to discuss how my January focus went, and what I learned from it.