Opening Scene: 2013

As I usually do during the latter half of December, I pondered all the wishful goals my little heart could ponder. The list never changed. Ideals and desires flipped by in my mind's eye like a spinning Rolodex.

Mostly, I reminisced about the excitement I felt at the beginning of last year. I had just been through tragedy, then an adventure. It was like the archetypal hero's quest with the journey (or two) across the mysterious body of water to a place of sacredness. Joseph Campbell, be proud.

And then my perfectly arranged executables dissolved like sugar cubes in hot water. A project at work came to a head earlier than expected, and so we hit the road sprinting and half-cocked. When the first phase closed, the second phase launched, nearly colliding and overlapping each other if it wasn't for our numerous protests begging for sanity.

From February through to early September, I spent most of my days on the road, working irregular hours, and staying up much later than I should. Though it was exhausting and unpredictable, I enjoyed the experience. I visited places I wouldn't have seen otherwise and treated to working with people who I technically work for every day, getting to know them, and being enriched because of it. And, despite the tediously long hours, we had a lot of laughs along the way. Most importantly, I loved being out of a cubicle and teaching others, empowering them as much as I was able and as much as they were willing to open their minds.

But when I started, I had no idea how long I would be on the road. It was months into it before I thought to create positive habits inline with my various goals. In fact, I lost all semblance of control, of will, flung around by the whims of what was thrown at me. I made little effort to even try, I had completely given up, lost sight of my dreams.

The malady of inertia possessed me for a long while. I didn't even know what I wanted from life as all my goals seemed to contradict each other, even though they had scarcely changed. I had changed. I wanted things I told myself could not be achieved. I tortured myself, convinced there was little, if anything, I could really do nothing to touch my dreams. For months.

Last week, I decided I had enough of myself. If I wasn't happy with myself, I decided I would change.

And so, I'm going to start an experiment. For the remainder of the year, I'm going to explore different themes each month, every week a new topic pertaining to that theme. I hope to encourage others to play along in transforming their lives into something more meaningful (to them, at least) and happier.

January is dedicated to the self, from inside to out, personality to style. I'll be offering questions for self-reflection, ideas for task-setting, and review of the results of previous week's experiments. You can expect posts related to this experiment every Wednesday, excepting the first Wednesday in January and July.

Each month will be independent of the next, so anyone can jump in at any time. If you decide to participate, I hope you share your thoughts and experiences in the comments, or I invite you to email me by clicking on "View My Complete Profile" to the right, then click "Contact Me".

Until next time, I wish everyone a happy and successful New Year!

A Review of 2011

It's that time of year when everyone stops among the holiday bustle and shopping trips and thinks about where they are headed for the future.  We begin to think about the dreaded and hopeless New Year's resolution lists and that gym membership we promised ourselves.

Last year, I made a long list of goals that I hoped to accomplish throughout 2011, but I didn't really finalize them until March or April.  I also broke them down into categories: Physical, Spiritual, Career/Education, Fun, and Other.  I spent a great deal of time thinking about them and setting them up.  It didn't take long before I forgot about the list completely!

It was a blogosphere meme that reminded me to go back and look over my beautiful list of lovely aspirations.  At first glance, I assumed it was just a list of failures, a reflection of my inability to see anything through.  But as I stared at it, I realized that I actually did accomplish some things towards my goals.  In fact, I think there were only two items that I actually completely failed at.

My biggest failing, other than completely forgetting about the list, was making the goals too abstract (even though I really knew better).  And whereas I was good about listing my goals at the start of every month, January 2011 was the last time I did that.

A lot of my goals for 2011 will be carried over into 2012.  However, I'll be more specific and assign several mini actions to each so I have a way to gradually build up to whatever the goal is and ways of measuring my failures and successes.  They'll also be more relevant to each other and that helps make everything a little more successful.

I'll be detailing more about this over the next two weeks.  You'll probably want to stab me or something before 2012 even gets here.

Challenge Update: Week 4

This week was sort of blah.  I started really strong and just kind of fell of it through the course of this challenge.

Really, I shouldn't beat myself up too much.  I lost about 10 pounds in the last month.  I busted my ass through fibromyalgia flare-ups, mother nature, and a serious repetitive stress injury.  Huzzah!

To boot, I've been eating pretty well.  Snacking maybe a little more than I should, but I've found myself addicted to Green Giant Steamers (broccoli and potato) and being super filling they've been helping me stay on track.  Having said all that, I've been inconsistent about tracking my actual food intake most days.

I didn't get a chance to weigh in last Friday because I woke up late (after having not slept again) and rushed into the office for a time-sensitive issue I needed to resolve ASAP!  But my clothes fit better, I am much stronger (even Danny said, "Why did you get stronger than me, mommy?"), and I feel better.  It's just a matter of time.

I loved the results from Jillian Michael's 30 Day Shred, but I got bored.  I was hoping to do the next workout on the difficulty scale, but I don't want to fail due to bored.  I think I'm going to go the route I came up with months ago: 30 minutes of vigorous activity every day.  I'm going to strive for two to three days a week working the next level on the 30 Day Shred so I can have a structured work out, but other days I will supplement with bellydancing, running, swimming, and some much needed gardening.  All this supplemented with 30 to 60 minutes of yoga and meditation every day to keep me grounded and working towards my other goals.

This week I'm going to take a bit easy.  Last week was mentally trying, and I need to focus on recuperation and restoration.

How are your summer activities coming along?

Challenge Update: Week 3

So far, each week of this challenge I have been plagued with some pain or another.  It's incredibly frustrating, but, dammit, I have prevailed!

My week opened with a repetitive stress injury underneath my left shoulder blade.  Shame on me for hand-pulling all the mint out from the front of my house.  Yeah, that one I have to own.  Silly me.  Fortunately, it didn't keep me from working out, but it did force me to take extra care on form to make sure I didn't aggravate it further.

I did make my yoga goal, but I never did get out running.  I'm only a little disappointed about this because Jeff is wanting to go running with me, too, so hopefully this week we will get out once or twice and hammer the pavement!  I'm thrilled about getting back into running with him. (By they way, Jeff went to his first parkour class last week and loved it!)

I did pretty well on the yoga.  Last week I wasn't sure if I should challenge myself with Boat Pose or Dolphin Pose.  Considering the shoulder injury, I decided to go with Dolphin since it's great for improving upper body strength, especially shoulders and upper back.  This was my uber win for the week.  I've had this sort of stress injury before and it took years to heal.  A deep tissue massage from a friend and liberal use of Dolphin Pose when the mood struck me, something that would have taken weeks before being full functional with some discomfort is now pretty much fixed.  There's still a bit of tightness but that's functional.  I'm pretty pleased with myself!

Speaking of yoga, class was again amazing.  Although I had everyone turned around the wrong way for the standing poses so they couldn't see me.  I need to learn to give directions more like a fitness instructor (when they tell you to lead with your right foot and they mirror with their left foot).   This is about learning from mistakes, and I'm sure to make a few more for...pretty much the rest of my life!  Everyone seemed to have a good time despite my awkwardness, which makes me happy.

After yoga, some of us went out to lunch at California Wok before running over to check out the Forestiere Gardens.  You can see the pics over at Cyn's blog.  It was pretty beautiful and everyone sounded resolved to get to work on their own underground houses!  After the Gardens, we retreated back to my house for dinner and Sucker Punch.

Unfortunately, I think the heat got to me while we were running about earlier and I couldn't shake the crankies.  The crank monster followed me into Sunday even and I spent the day freaking out about money, life goals, work, and a host of other things.  Thank goodness for Jeff and his patience, let me tell you.

Sunday night through Monday night, I traveled with my boss to San Mateo for one of our sales campaign kick offs.  In the nine years I've worked in advertising, I had never been to a kick off.  It was an experience.  Half the time I didn't know whether to be embarrassed for everyone or to sit back and enjoy the show.  I guess I did a little bit of both, but it was fun.

So this week, I have the running thing and I think I'll leave it at that.  Oh!  And the four-week yoga class I am starting at Fig Garden Yoga.  As the second week of the month, this is my crazy week.  My schedule is packed and running and a yoga class seem like quite enough to keep me motivated without being overwhelmed.

Oh, how's my weight loss progress?  Non-existent.  I'm remaining stable at 188 but I'm completely bloated thanks to my double X chromosomes.  My weigh in this Friday should be much, much better.  I feel better and I can see from the pics Cyn took on Saturday that my face is thinning up a bit.

Getting Financially Fit

A couple weeks ago, I talked about how shocked I was about my restaurant spending.  The grand total for the month of April ended up being $239.22.  Still ridiculously high but a $46.61 improvement from March.

I spent the remaining week of April trying to automate my finances as much as possible.  I switched my mortgage payments from a monthly payment to a weekly payment.  I've also increased the amount of principle I pay, so at the end of the year  it's like having three extra payments but going directly to principle (so the value is actually greater than three months of principle, since at the beginning of the loan term a larger percentage is applied to interest).  I have to pay the bank $2 per processing transaction, but I learned last year I can't do it on my own because their lockbox system doesn't recognize the non-standard payment amount.  However, having it set up outside my control gives me less incentive to go through Bank of America's annoying phone system to get to a representative to change it every week to suit me.  The object here is to be accountable.

I also set up my student loans to be withdrawn automatically every month.  I'm on an extended graduated payment plan so I can have smaller payments now, but end up paying nearly as much in interest as the original value of my loans.  I did this so I can still set aside some savings every month, which will hopefully enable me to pay off large chunks of my student loans every year.  If I'm good, I can have my student loans paid off in five years and end up paying only half of the interest as I would have on the standard payment plan.

Once my student loans are paid off, I can transfer that money to my mortgage payments.  My mortgage, again if I'm good and diligent, can be paid off in 10 years.

That's right.  I can be debt free in 10 years.  On just my modest salary.  In a three person household.  I think that's kind of badass.

I took a page from Dave Ramsey and instead of depositing the rent money I received, I broke it up into two groups:

Piles of money! My monthly allowance for food and gas.

I paperclipped the food cash ($120) and the gas cash ($160) together a put a post-it note on top so I could document where the money goes.  The food pile can go towards groceries or eating out, but once it's gone, that's it.  Same thing with the gas money.  If I have no gas and not enough money to fill my tank, I have to take the bus (which at most would be $40 to commute every day to and from work for the month).  However, anything left over is for me to spend on whatever I want (for now that will be saving up to take a 6 week yoga class when my bellydancing class ends).

There's just one little problem:  Jeff's temp gig that he's been working for nearly six months is just about over.  We're both confident they'll find a permanent position for him there, but we don't know for sure yet.  If the worst happens, I'll have to take on more expenses (like Dan's preschool and daycare) until the issue is resolved.  I'm not worried though.  Reducing my inflated mortgage payment will more than pay for the extras and I can pick it up again at a later time with very little upset to the overall plan.

It's not without sacrifice though.  I can't buy things for the house when I need them (or more precisely, WANT them), I can't contribute as much to potlucks as I would probably like, and I can't fit in as many social activities as I might be inclined to do otherwise (although I can certainly invite friends and family over instead of dinners or coffees out).  Actually, I kind of anticipate this journey being relatively peaceful once I'm fully acclimated to it.

How's your financial health?

Manic Monday: March 14, 2011

First a recap on last week:

I about managed on average an hour of yarn time each day. I think I missed one or two days in the week, but more than made for the lack on other days.  I even managed to finish a very important personal project that has helped me bring some closure after a recent jarring event.  Now to focus on commissioned projects.  One is almost done, the other requires more focus than a few minutes here or there.

On the running front, I only managed to get out for one day.  So this week, I will continue working on the Week 1 program of the Couch to 5K program.  I felt amazing all day Thursday after running.  Friday and Saturday I was incredibly sore.  I either am not drinking enough water or not stretching enough.  Possibly and highly likely both.

So this week, I plan on continuing to find an hour to knit every day, drink 8 glasses of water every day AND at least 5 minutes of yoga everyday in the morning and evening (both of which I can track on SparkPeople).  The stretching isn't a lot of time, and I'll likely do more but I just want to start with something small to make it a habit...eventually.  Hopefully, this time it will stick, especially since my fibromyalgia has been flaring again and taking some time for yoga, even just a couple minutes, always helps improve the flare ups a little.

So, that's what I'll be doing this week.  How are you spending your week?

January Goals

I know!  I know!  It's kind of silly posting goals half-way through the month.  Things have been super, super crazy around here since Christmas and I haven't made blogging a very serious part of that.  I'm regretting that a bit now, but all I can do is try to be better moving forward.

First a recap on December: I totally failed!  No, seriously, I gained some weight and I was so over-stretched on last-minute holiday crafting that I didn't get to make any progress on my Etsy store.  I had hoped that after Christmas I'd get on the ball in overdrive or something, but it never happened.  I did finally post my first item today though and I'm super excited to see where I can go with it.

While I did not post my goals here, I had them written out before December was over.

Goal One: Get back into bellydancing.

I'm already half-way on this one.  I enrolled after the 1st of the year at California Arts Academy for tribal bellydancing lessons with Lydia of Tanjora.  My first class is this evening and I'm a little nervous.  It has been so many years since I've been in a bellydancing class.  I just hope I can keep up with the more spry girls.

Goal Two: Start eating better, goddammit!

It's really essential now.  Really, really essential.  I've written up some guidelines on this I'll save for a future blog post.

Goal Three: Post one item on my Etsy store front per week.

I know, I failed at two last month, why the heck am I adding a third?  Well, I know that the time it takes me to knit accessories is not so considerate that I cannot meet this goal.

Goal Four: Work up to include10 minutes of meditation and 10 minutes of yoga every day.

Wait, four goals this month?  Yeah, four goals.  Twenty minutes a day towards my well-being is not an unreasonable thing to ask of my time.  So that means 20 minutes less wasting my time watching television shows.  Big whoop.  While I haven't been consistent every day, I am up to five minutes of yoga most mornings and taking five minutes in the shower meditating.  It's relaxing and steamy and warm.  More importantly, the cats don't try to walk all over me when I have hot water pouring on me. I'm already experiencing tremendous benefits just doing that small amount of yoga everyday.  I hope in the next year I can resume formal classes (maybe after my bellydance classes are over in late May) or take a couple private lessons when I have the extra cash from my Etsy store so I can continue to be challenged.

No New Years Resolutions.  Frankly, I don't see the point.  This system of setting goals has been a mostly successful venture for me.  I know what I want to accomplish with my life right now.  I don't need a resolution to feel guilty about.  Plus I have lots of exciting things coming up, why feel derailed later?

December Goals

Recap: On November 1st I made two goals for the month: first to write more and second to stop using the dishwasher. Later in the month, I saw a few other bloggers ((never home)maker and RowdyKittens in particular) I follow make their own lists of goals.  Literally lists and lists of things.  It made me feel a little pathetic about only setting two things aside.

Two was enough for me.  Two goals seemed reasonable and provided a better chance of success.  Any more than that and I would overwhelm myself with my own lists.  I'm happy to report my assumption served to be true.  I posted more entries last month than in any other month and averages a single post per week.  Nothing to "ride home" about, but a reasonable accomplishment nonetheless.  I also successfully refrained from using the dishwasher for the whole month. I did use it to store dishes I didn't feel like cleaning before hosting a party, but after said party I did wash every dish by hand.  On the 24th, Jeff was already talking about ripping out the dishwasher so we could use the space for kitchen storage!  I asked him to wait until the month was up before we made any decisions, so I guess I'm going to have to start seriously thinking about that!

I started seriously thinking last week about what my goals for December should be.  I thought about copping out and picking something like "finish all hand made gifts by the holiday", but goals like that are superficial and don't help me work on bettering myself overall.  However, gift-making *can* be if I work on building up the side-business I keep fantasizing about.  I received my first commission request a few weeks ago from a coworker of my mom's to make a duplicate giraffe amigurumi (a giraffe is the hospital's mascot) and may be picking up a second commission (by trade) request in the next day or two.  I have an Etsy storefront I have yet to do anything with. Soooo....

Goal number one: post one knit item per week on my Etsy storefront.

It doesn't matter if they sell or not.  I'm not even worried (at this point) about how nice my storefront looks.  I simply need some kind of motivator to take the first step to see my fantasy become reality.  No expectations, no unrealistic demands.  Just one item per week.  And I'm totally passionate about crafting.  That makes this goal completely doable.  Fortunately, I have lots of time this month do accomplish this goal and make hand-crafted gifts for the holidays.

Hand-crafting gifts also takes me a bit further in my desire to live more simply.  On that note, my car battery died forcing a renewed interest in taking the bus for my daily commutes.  That means getting about three miles of walking time in every day which got me thinking about my overall health again.  I did really well over the Thanksgiving Day holiday and have kept up the momentum of physical activity and eating reasonably.

Goal number two: incorporate healthy eating habits and daily exercise.

I'll need to flesh out some rules for this a little better so I have some tangible guidelines to follow rather than depending on my decision-making skills (which only seem to work if I'm surrounded by other Libras).  At a time when money is tight and I'll need to be staying closer to home when I'm not at work, it's a good time to start taking my lifestyle habits more seriously.  Spending more time at home planning and cooking meals also feeds into my "live simply" ideal and affords me more time to spend interacting with my family.

I wanted to strive to plot three goals this month, but the two I've established lend themselves to a number of other ideas I had.  I'll also continue to build on last months goals through the new goals I have established.  I know it may seem silly, but I'm really excited about meeting my first two goals. Sometimes I aim to high or only focus on broader, more long-term goals.  Setting smaller bites aside make me feel more accomplished and give me more reasons to celebrate the little things in life, because they're worth it!

What are your goals for December?