Wow, I know the year as a whole will probably fly by, but did January seem like an extra long month to anyone else?
I’m here with my monthly goal recap to go over last month’s POWERSHEETS tending list and share this month’s. I had a few setbacks, but overall I’m really pleased with some of the initial progress this year.
Monthly Goals:
*Fit Test/Baseline Measurements: Well… this happened. I honestly had no set method on this, I just picked from a few things I saw listed online/on pinterest/recommended by one of my yoga teachers. I have it all set and recorded and I’m not sure if I’ll check back in quarterly or halfway through the year or just wait until December… but I have my baseline stats down now!
*Create Workout Playlists: Done and done. Thank you to everyone who helped me out with fun suggestions!
*Celebrate my daughter’s 1st birthday: YES. Took our time to make this special and loved it. You can read a little more about our celebration HERE.
*Look up Bulk Trash Dates: Done and done. All written out in my calendar and since the first pick up date was in January it motivated us to get some stuff out ASAP!
*Create Garden Plan for Spring: Not only did we create a plan, we have started several seeds and I’m looking forward to more gardening adventures over the next few months.
*Research Liturgical Living Ideas/Create tentative calendar for first half of the year: YES! thank you Pinterest and my Blessed is She planner. Those made this task so much easier. Excited to share some more about which days we set aside and celebrate in a more unique way this year.
Even Lin Manuel Miranda gets in on the Epiphany celebrations! Though in Puerto Rico I believe it is called Three Kings’ Day
*Celebrate Epiphany: This feels like forever ago and yes. I’m glad we kept our Christmas decor up and we made some fun crowns and coloring activities to celebrate!
Weekly Goals:
*Budget/Meal Plan/Family Meeting: Yes! January was a ROUGH month for us budget-wise and we went over on some things due to beginning of the year expenses, party plans, and unexpected costs, but this is such a helpful routine we’ve developed here. I think one more month on the tending list and it will be enough of a habit that I don’t have to write it down/check it off!
*Read a Play: Did this 4/5 of the weeks in January. Mostly it reminded me how different shows are up on their feet than on the page. Was especially thrilled to read some new works. This isn’t one of my set goals for next month but I wouldn’t be surprised if it resurfaced in future months this year so if you have play suggestions I’d love to hear them 🙂
*Self Care & Sabbath: Illness made this a little tricky but overall this happened. I think I can slow down Even more this next month.
*Write!: Did not happen as much as I wanted but I did get a good deal of blogging done so definite progress here.
Daily Goals:
*Yoga/Walk: This was thrown off a bit by an injury (more about this below) but definitely did it more days than I did not do it so- WIN. I also already wrote about how I pushed myself by trying new and more challenging classes HERE.
*Coffee & Jesus: For the most part this is happening consistently. Just playing around with the ratio of how I spend this time between Write the Word journals and Blessed is She Devotionals and other reflections I’ve found along the way.
*15 min speed clean: This was hit and miss but happened more than when I’ve tried it in the past so… progress!
*Gratitude Log: yes! keeping track of this in my calendar and really enjoying it. Will keep doing this next month but feels like a good routine/habit so may not appear on my tending list.
*Hydrate: Needed this with all the illness going around and for the most part I’ve been good about drinking water and tea, but I could still up my game throughout the day instead of just having a lot at meal times and later in the evening.
February Tending list: Lots of exciting stuff in February and a very full tending list so I’m going to give myself lots of room to accomplish whatever I can and leave the rest for next month or change focuses as my goals and situation changes. I highly recommend this strategy! So without further ado, here we go…
Monthly Goals:
*Prepare for Lent/reflect on Lenten goals: I’m not positive what I want to give up or add and keep tossing around different ideas of how to set aside this reflective time. I want to be intentional about my choices here.
*Prioritize Sleep: Whenever I think about self care and the next step in physically and mentally taking care of myself sleep comes up again and again. This is an overall priority this month, especially because there is more on the calendar than there has been in a while. But I also have some other goals this month that will hopefully help with this, including…
*Transition my daughter to her crib: I’ve learned it is really hard to set goals that involve other people unless they are actively agreeing with and willing to work toward that goal too. So… rather than make the goal get my kids to sleep a normal amount, I at least have control over where we decide to put my daughter down to sleep and the time is past due for her to be out of the pack and play in our room and into the crib in the room she will share with her brother. Biggest obstacles to this goal: the shared room aspect- will they just keep each other up, magnifying the sleep problem? Will her brother understand that sleep time is not bonus playtime with sister? Also a somewhat embarrassing confession: the crib is currently used at a catch all for things like laundry and other miscellaneous stuff so… cleaning that out and keeping it clear is a necessary first step…
*Celebrate St. Brigid’s Day: More on this in a post to come, but this is one we are focusing on because Brigid is my confirmation saint. She’s like the female counterpart to St. Patrick so it should be fun to celebrate her day!
*Simplify/Continue Decluttering: Pretty self explanatory. We have a long way to go but piece by piece this is going to add up throughout the year!
*Finish Planting Spring Garden: Mid-february means warm enough temperatures for even my most heat loving flowers so late february means more planting!
*Progress on work goals: The continual moving target of balance and exploring opportunities with theatre, tutoring, and my crafting pieces.
*Taxes Filed: It needs to happen and we have plans for using the return to make progress on our goals
Weekly Goals:
*TV free evenings x2: It’s so easy to get sucked into Netflix after the kids go down. So we’re starting with baby steps… two times a week. Let’s do this. Full disclosure- I might replace those TV times with yoga or a bath… eventually it will make space for other productive endeavors… or more straight up sleep…
*Write: Blogging and otherwise
*Budget/Family Meeting: Like I said above, hopefully this will be the last month this needs to stay on the tending list because we are getting in the groove with this goal.
*Donations Run: To clear out all that decluttering instead of having it sit around in our garage or car or somewhere in the house while I delusionally think I have time to post our used stuff for sale all over the internet (I don’t… it just sits there…)
*Work on PL/baby book/photo goals: I was hoping to be close to caught up on my daughter’s baby book by the time her birthday rolled around but I am still WAYYYY behind. Luckily my project life family album just needs to be printed to be completed for last year and I’m looking forward to incorporating a system of clearing my phone of all but a few favorite photos and backing up photos/completed 2018 pages on a weekly work flow basis instead of randomly backing up months worth of stuff whenever my phone runs out of space and wondering if I’ve missed something.
*Call or write a congressperson: Last year I had a lot of ups and downs about how to engage with our political system that seems so deeply cynical and divided. I still have a lot of those ups and downs, but I’ve learned that remaining silent didn’t help anything so I’m choosing one thing or one representative or senator to reach out to each week. I’m hoping this will also drive me to become more educated about local political issues because I think the number of times I’ve written to a representative for my state government is a total of once and that was before my adult life so… goals….
*Self Care and Sabbath: I still really want to make sundays about recharging and building community.
Daily Goals:
*Abs/Ice Leg: So… I mentioned above that I had an injury this month. The injury was to my tendons in my legs- far more to my left tendon than my right. While the injury did not happen in or from yoga, I had to miss several yoga classes and there are still poses I have to sit out. I’ve been making sure to take care of this and I’m told the best thing I can do is ice and resting that tendon which means a lot of my getting stronger goals need to focus on my arms or my abs and core and the core work is just easier to do at home or built into my yoga classes I can still attend.
*Morning Routine: I know I know, this keeps coming up but I still think it’s important and I’m going to keep trying new things until it clicks!!
*”Screen Curfew” : I used to be in a really good habit of no screen time and hour before I went to sleep. I need to get close to getting back to that, but I think this works best if the curfew is flexible each night as long as it is set and planned in advance.
*Hydrate: It’s still not habit so it’s still on this list.
*Read: My reading took a nose dive last month and I missed that time so I’m making it a priority this month. Even if it is just a little bit each day.
*Log/Track Steps: I inherited a fitbit for Christmas but 2/3 of the time I forget to put it on so… maybe if it’s on my tending list I’ll do a little better at remembering. That’s step one. If that goes well maybe I’ll aim for a certain step count next month…
How are you all doing on your goals? What progress are you celebrating and which little step this next month are you most excited about? Let me know!
Alphabet Resolutions 