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Monday, June 29, 2015

2015 Goals - 6 Month Review

Me and my boy playing in the waves.

It's the end of June already. Can you believe we are already half-way through 2015?

I thought it would be a good time to review the goals I posted here back on January 1st, and check on my progress. Not that I think any of you really care whether I'm meeting these personal goals or not, this is more of a selfish exercise on my part to keep myself accountable and refresh my memory on what I want to be doing and working on. So anyway, here's my little progress report on my 2015 resolutions.

1. Eat Healthier and Cut Sugar - So, I actually managed to cut my sugar intake way down during the month of January... and then I started to lose weight, which as I mentioned was NOT my goal. Because I'm already well underweight, and because I am nursing, I just couldn't make up the calories in my diet that sugar provided, so I stopped trying to cut sugar. I'm still trying to figure out what "eat healthier" means for me. Right now it doesn't mean cutting things out, but I am trying to add more of the fruits and veggies. I should probably do some sort of food journal or monitoring to make sure I'm eating enough fruits and veggies everyday.

2. Get Enough Sleep - Ugh, never make this goal when you have a baby. And you're a grad student. My baby actually is a very good sleeper and consistently sleeps through the night. However, he has not been very consistent about when he wakes up. I'm never sure if he's going to be up at 5, or up at 7:30. I'll admit that I haven't been the most dedicated to my 10:30 bedtime (especially not when I was in school), but it feels like any time I go to bed early, that will be the night he wakes up at some insanely early hour. Anyway, this one is still a work in progress. I'm doing some time monitoring right now to get data on just how much sleep I'm actually averaging, because it does not feel like enough. I really want to work on getting that 10:30 bedtime to be a more consistent habit.

3. Research and Invest in Essential Oils - This was honestly the most likely goal for me to completely ignore, but then a random new friend started a random new job for some health company that was giving away free samples of their essential oil starter kits, so it kind of fell into my lap. I'm having fun playing around with the different oils in the kit (I really, really love me some lavender), but I'm not sure these are actually benefiting my health in any measurable kind of way. They certainly smell nice, but I'm not really a convert (yet). We shall see.

4. Read 25 Books for Pleasure - Goodreads tells me I've already read 20 books this year, so I'm well on my way to hitting this one out of the park. However, I know some of those books were school assigned novels, and I'm not sure I should count those as books for pleasure...

5. Schedule a Regular Time to Write for Pleasure - This one is still a work in progress. I've been playing around with what time of day and day of the week works best, and I'm not sure I've found the perfect time that I want to commit to this goal (especially since it doesn't feel feasible when I'm in school), but this is another area I'm trouble shooting with my time monitoring.

6. Redecorate My House - Also a work in progress, but one that I'm actually working on (see here). I've got big plans for this summer (actually they are kind of small plans, but it will be a big deal if I can accomplish them), and hopefully more things come together. I will post more on this later.

7. Early Morning Scripture Study - See #2 for a guess on how this one is going. I love the days when I make this happen, but with my baby's inconsistent sleep pattern and my own inconsistent bed-time, this has not become the habit I want it to be again. Still committed to it, still working on it.

8. Declutter - Ha! Resounding success, thanks to the serendipitous entrance of Marie Kondo into my life. Not finished with the process yet, but I'm definitely in a MUCH better place clutter-wise than I was six months ago.

9. Develop and Stick to a Budget - This one's been interesting. The biggest change I've made is developing the habit of monitoring our expenses, which, just like monitoring my time, is proving to be a most effective route for managing our finances. Every month I sit down and track every single expense in a nice little spreadsheet, highlight where we overspent and where we under-spent and whether we're coming out even while still saving enough. I go over all the numbers with my husband so we are both on the same page, and this simple act of monitoring has done more to help curb my financial anxiety than anything else. There have been a few months where we overspent and a few months where we under-spent, but here at the six month mark we are looking pretty okay for the year. I still think there are areas where we could improve and save or spend more wisely, but I'm feeling in control, which is the point of this goal.

10. Solidify Family Routine - At six months I'm feeling very good about our family routine right now. We've got all of my most important daily and weekly routines firmly in place (family dinners, family scripture study, family home evening, etc.). Our couple routines (date night, scripture study, etc.) are also becoming a lot more consistent, so we are making good progress. Of course, I recognize that a lot of this is because the baby is getting older, and everything will be disrupted again whenever the next baby comes, but for now I'm liking our groove.

This review was actually more positive than I thought is was going to be. I kind of thought I was failing miserably at all my goals because I keep kicking myself for failing at my sleep goal (which affects my early morning scripture study goal). But really, I'm making more progress on most of these goals than I thought. That's a nice discovery.

Did you make New Year's Resolutions? How are your goals coming at this half-way mark?

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