April - Week 1
I took the first week of April off, as I was out of town staying fairly busy and knew I wouldn't really be able to keep up anyway. Better to accept that I won't do well and move on rather than beat myself up with unnecessarily high expectations.
Meditate 15 minutes
I upped my meditation up by 5 minutes this month. So far, I am very happy with going up a bit. I remember that my sweet spot was around 20 minutes or a little more, so am curious if I'll feel it when I get there. I missed a couple days this week because I was being a bit perfectionist about the whole thing. Need to do at least a little to keep the groove greased.
Journal at least one page
Same as above regarding perfectionism, but still good. I've started reflecting a bit every day on how perfectionism has shown up for me the previous day. It's been really good for helping me notice where it is holding me back from being my natural self.
Exercise (do literally any exercise)
I'm using this to try and maintain a morning routine of exercise. I generally get enough exercise throughout the week these days, so this is not so necessary. But I want to establish this as a habit so it will be good when I don't have so many active things in my life, I can have a space to use my body intentionally for a bit.
Move in to house by end of month
Made huge progress this week! I have about 86% of the walls done at this point, so just need to do the last bits and then can get started on doors and "finishing" bits (light in the fixture, outlet covers, etc.). Not doing any mudding or trim or anything at this point. We're going to wait until we have a critical mass of work done in the whole house to justify paying someone or getting what we need to do it ourselves.
I'm very hopeful I can meet this goal, and it feels really like we're on track.
Spend intentional time with friends once a week
I never developed a good way of maintaining friendships outside of my previous work, so I want to be more intenional about that. I spent time with friends nearly every day, which was awesome. But in terms of this goal, I set some time to get a bunch together and hang out. Only one showed up because everyone else was busy, but it was good to exercise that muscle.
Eat wild food once a week
I've been getting into foraging for a while. It's right in line with my desire for self sufficiency, minimal waste, etc. But I kept missing the time for harvesting over the last couple years.
This week, I picked a ton of dead nettle and used it in a curried vegetable stir fry/stew. It was really good! I have yet to try that particular plant in a salad, but it would probably taste great with a bunch of other greens mixed in.
Volunteer one hour per week
Only got 15 minutes in this week but also wasn't really trying too hard, and I noticed that as I was going through the week. I wasn't really giving it my full attention and intention.
Spend 30 minutes per week on searching for new volunteer opportunities
I talked a bit at the end of last month's review about how I didn't have a lot of volunteer opportunities that really ticked all my boxes. I want to put some time into this to try and find new opportunities and hubs for volunteers. This feeds into the next goal, as well.
Volunteer at somwhere new or doing something new once this month
To try and break out of the same old stuff, I want to keep digging for opportunities that really get me going. I had a real easy time this week knocking this one down. I went and got an articulated grabber from the hardware store and have used it on my way to work to pick up trash I see. This is such an easy way to help my community, since I walk to work a few times a week. Easy win.
Audit all subscriptions
I notice I am totally overwhelmed with emails all the time. It is annoying. I pretty much just blast through it once a week, but I'd rather just have less. So I'm putting a little bit of time to be really intentional about if I really want to be subscribed to all this dumb shit. The next step is just using Unroll.me to get a layout of all the sites I am subscribed to and unsubscribing from the most egregious.
That was how this started but it also got me thinking about subscriptions on my financial side. I have a few I can probably knock out. I'm pretty good about this already, but can't hurt to go through them all.
Recognize and reduce perfectionism
In chess, when you don't know what to do, one good idea is to find your worst placed piece and improve it. For me right now, my "worst piece" is handling perfectionism. It is insidious and shows up in a bunch of different ways. I'm hoping to really shine a light on it this month and see what comes up.
I have noticed how it drives and probably burns out my passions and hobbies, how it causes me to distrust my own emotions, and how it gets in the way of trying to reach goals. None of this is really new, but it's all about noticing it as close to the moment it happens as possible to try and mitigate it. The goal is to notice!
Watch Youtube less than one hour a day
Not a great week for this. Ended up watching a bunch at the very end of the day right before bed, sometimes falling asleep in bed to some random video. Ack. Doesn't feel good and doesn't lead to good sleep. Overall, I am watching less of it than I was a couple months ago, so I want to keep that in perspective. But I can definitely do better. It really is about the end of the day. I think I need to load up fun fiction books on my Kindle so I have a very easy pivot.
No screens from 8pm to 8am
Same as above, did not do great on this this week. Definitely room to improve! Mornings have been good, as usual.