June 2019 : I have more plans

Good evening! I’m already breaking one of my June rules/not meeting a goal, by writing this post well after 8:30pm but I tried to sit down and get this list done over the weekend and I kept getting de-railed by other responsibilities.

I’m making it my priority now, because this goal planning business is a priority for me and it swims around in my brain several times a day, demanding to be made actionable. So, here we are, creating actionable goals!

You may have seen my April planning post and its sequel. And if you saw those, then you might know that I did not such a great job at sticking to my plans. Even the unspoken plans, like overhauling the look of the blog, went untouched. However, each time I circled back to that post, I felt kind of accomplished. I set goals, and I even reached some of them. And that’s pretty badass if you ask me.

You may have also seen that I believe that not every goal needs to be reached. It’s okay to encounter obstacles, I encounter them all the time, it’s how you react that matters most. I’ll be going back to some of my goals for April and reworking them, taking obstacles into account, and some goals will be thrown out completely and replaced with other goals… Okay, enough chit chat. Here are my 10 goals for the month of June and my plans for how to reach them:

1. Four blog posts in June – That’s one post per week.
   • In April, I set a completely unrealistic goal of posting every other day. When I failed, I got upset… But that’s completely unreasonable. I just don’t have the motivation, energy, whatever it takes, to post every other day. I do absolutely have the heart to post at least once a week! And if I can do that, then I can increase it gradually and eventually, maybe, I’ll get to a point of posting three or four times in a week. Until then, we’ll see if this can work.
2. Get out of the house at least twice a week.
   • My doctor said that I can start doing more core based exercises and when I brought up the topic of going to the gym, he agreed that it should be fine… If I stick to 20 minutes or less… Ugh. I’m one of those ‘one hour of cardio and thirty minutes of strength training’ kind of people. Since I haven’t been to the gym in over a month, I hardly ever leave the house. We go grocery shopping and might go to the mall or something, but it’s not much. This month, I’m challenging myself to get out of the house at least twice a week for more than work.
   • I’m not setting a distance or anything. This could literally mean going to sit in the backyard for half an hour with the dogs, or going out front and washing the car, or something.
3. No screens after 8:30pm.
   • Like I said, I’m already breaking this rule so I’m adding another part to it. No screens after 8:30pm for at least 50% of the days in June. This means TV, phone, iPad, Kindle, Apple Watch, computer, etc.
   • If I can do this, meet this goal, then I can increase the number of days until turning off my devices at 8:30pm is complete habit and I don’t have to count the days.
   • There are plenty of research studies that explain how screens mess with your regular sleep cycle and how we as a collective society need to turn our devices off more often, and I’m going to try to embrace that, for at least half of the month.
4. Complete a nighttime routine (at least 50% of the days in June).
   • 3 and 4 kind of go together. My nighttime routine now starts at 8:15pm when I boil water for my cup of tea. By 8:30, I should be upstairs, turning on my nighttime playlist, and shutting off any screens that I might encounter. Then I spend half an hour showering, washing my face, changing into pajamas, and getting comfortable. From 9:00pm to about 9:30ish, I’m going to relax. This could be by coloring, crocheting, journaling, anything that I feel compelled to do. By 10:00pm, I should be in bed and if I’m not asleep already, I better be mostly there.
   • I’m doing this because I have problems falling asleep and staying asleep. I’m hoping that if I set an intentional pattern of behavior, it will lead to more restful sleep. Setting a routine is something that I commonly found in my research on insomnia (for a book character, I’m not convinced I suffer from insomnia myself) and I think this will help me in other ways as well. Journaling tends to help me clear up my brain, identify patterns in my thoughts and behavior, etc. Drinking a cup of tea should help curb snack cravings. Going to bed earlier means waking up earlier, and that’s the ultimate goal.
5. Track food.
   • Please, please, please, don’t read this as something it’s not. No calorie counting. No restrictions or rules. I want to do this purely with the intention of tracking the kinds of foods I’m eating and my mental state. I track plenty of my regular functions (water intake, sleep, days I eat vs don’t eat breakfast, etc) and I can sometimes find patterns in how I feel. I want to see if I can find a discernible correlation between the kinds of foods I’m eating and where I land on my own emotional scale.
6. Write every day.
   • This could be a blog post, or in a manuscript, either way. I need to write. I love writing. It brings me so much joy and peace. However, I tend to do this thing where I’ll finish a stage in the process (like grinding out a 10,000 word draft) and then I’ll ignore writing for ages. That’s not how it should happen. I need to be more intentional about writing, especially if I ever want to become a writer professionally. I’m not putting any kind of word count, page count, or anything, on this goal so I’m not intimidated by a number that is kind of meaningless to me right now.
7. Complete one baby blanket.
   • This is a bit of a dumb goal. I’m practically done with the blanket but there’s that last little bit I need to complete. That’s what this goal is for, to remind me that I can’t just set it aside and forget about it.
   • The next part of this goal would be to start another blanket but I’m not counting on that. In April I literally wrote, oh if I just crochet for an hour and a half every day, I should be able to get this stuff done, but that’s not realistic.
8. Complete one podcast episode.
   • If we get to the end of June and this doesn’t become a reality, I’m giving up on my podcast. I hope it happens, we’ve tried already once this month to sit down and record, but something always seems to get in the way. I don’t want to have the episode edited or posted or anything like that, I just want to have it recorded. Hopefully we pull it together, if not, it’s time for me to admit that it wasn’t meant to be and focus my energy elsewhere.
9. Complete one sticker kit.
   • I love my Erin Condren Life Planner (I should make a post about it!) and part of the reason I love it so much is because of all the stickers that exist made specially for this planner. I buy almost all of my stickers off Etsy and only from a few shops really, but I’ve always wanted to make my own.
   • I have the graphics already made but I just haven’t put them together into a sticker kit. I don’t intend to sell my kits or anything, I really just want to use them in my own planner and not have to purchase as many stickers.
10. Modified morning pages, every day.
    • Amy Landino is the person who inspired me to look into morning pages. From what I’ve gathered (because I haven’t read the book about it) you’re supposed to write three pages, complete stream of consciousness, first thing in the morning. You aren’t supposed to think too hard about it or let it cause anxiety or anything, just sit and let the words come out onto the paper, even if all you write it, ‘I don’t know what to write.’
    • I say modified because I’m not sure how I’ll be able to work morning pages into my routine but I really want to try. If it works out that I can only get in two pages a day, then I’ll have to take that into consideration, evaluate my morning routine, and go from there.

Alright, I was going to do a couple more goals, but I feel like ten is a nice, round number and I’m going to leave it here. Like April, I’ll have a follow up post (hopefully it’s at the end of June, not July) and we’ll see how everything goes.

What are some of your goals this month? Or habits you’re tracking? Let me know in the comments below!

Until next time – Xx