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I guess you can tell I took a little hiatus. Completely unintended, and I ruined my good streak of amazing changes for the better. I suspect the nature of May's goal, and wanting to keep it a secret from my family until the month was over, was my undoing. You see, my goal for May was to be more in touch with my wonderful family, and I sort of designed that goal with the knowledge that I would be going down to California at least two times that month in order to see them. It worked out, I talked to family at least once a week and saw them seven days out of the month (which is incredibly frequent for my current living arrangement), but I also intended to send letters or small gifts to one person each week, and at that, I failed. Keeping the goal a secret was a BAD IDEA, because that erased all of my accountability. I didn't even explain my goal to the Man, which should have signaled that I was doomed to fail.
Anyway, May was a semi-successful month, in that I accomplished most of my goal, or at least the spirit. But without the update/accountability, I slacked some on the goals set during earlier months. I continued running, but not three times a week, only two. At the end of May, I stopped. I slowly reincorporated soda into my diet (sneaky corn syrup!) and drink it again, even after all of that hard work (I was frustrated because I had actually gained weight during the no-soda month, but that's no excuse); I barely came in under budget in May (I think I made my goal by $1.00, and it was largely because our utility bills went down that month); and I obviously did not update the blog at all. Work writing suffered, too, and though I did write, I didn't write every day. Meanwhile, I continued to be buried under a pile of teaching tasks and the stress of trying to make good progress on the dissertation research at the same time.
June followed, and so did more traveling and some extra stress with the end of the term and finals preparation for the students in my class, not to mention the extra time to read and grade 30 term papers. Oof. No more TA assignments for me if I want to get out of this place! I also worked at getting my first manuscript ready for submission (although I don't think the material is especially publishable). On top of all of this, I came into the month feeling like a failure, heaping loads of guilt onto my own shoulders for failing at the personal goals I had made for myself. It's a bad feeling to know that you have let yourself down.
So June became sort of a relaxed month of self-forgiveness for me. I intentionally did not make a goal, nor did I update the blog. I did everything free-form to see what would stick. I had already stopped running, so I didn't pick that back up (a shame). I did stick to my money goals for normal purchases, which is good, but I did go over my monthly budget by just a little bit, which is related to travel to New Mexico (which I will get to in a future post). Luckily for me, I have been so good at sticking to the budget so far, I had that much extra to spare, so no real harm was done. At work, I wrote as much as I needed to to finish the submission version of the manuscript, and I actually did write a little something for fun. I spent a lot of my extra/down time working on Bessie the Bouncing Bullet (our Airstream) and doing some relaxing crafts: painting, sewing, embroidering, and knitting. So at least I didn't just waste my time...
A quick update of the goals as they stand:
January - Budgeting: Blew it (by a bit) in June, but am still on track overall, and recommitting to strict budgeting this month.
February - Running: Blew it at the end of May, but with the beautiful weather we are FINALLY having in Oregon this week, I will be glad to run tomorrow morning before work.
March - Writing: Blew it in May, but am restarting today. I've found this wonderful site, 750words.com, which will help me with consistency. I'll review the site in a future post.
April - Soda Habit: It lasted well into May, but I blew it there by the end. Reluctant to start again, so I will work down instead of go cold turkey, so that I am down to 1/wk by the end of this month. I will begin with a limit of 4/wk, starting today. Next month (August) I will be at 1/2wk and probably stick to that or 1/month. I am still drinking far more water than I used to, so at least that habit was firmly instilled during April and May...
May - Family contact: Half and half success, and I have continued talking to at least one family member at least once a week. I will do the letters on the weekends when I am supposed to write on 750words. I have also been sending little gifts this month (mainly from New Mexico and craft time).
June - Self-forgiveness: This probably sounds like a wishy-washy goal. But I think the value of self-forgiveness should not be underestimated. It's a skill that must be cultivated, and important, especially for a person as self-critical as I am, to consciously forgive herself for slip-ups. Failure is an inevitable part of life, and it is important to let go and continue on with positive thoughts and make progress, rather than beat oneself up, call oneself a failure, and just throw in the towel. I think I accomplished a good degree of self-forgiveness without letting myself completely off the hook for the long run. July will be evidence of my ability to let go of mistakes and carry on with forward progress. I think June's goal was a success, if only it means I am able to carry on with this year-long experiment.
July's goal is up in the next post (I know, it's a couple of days late...), so stay tuned!
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