Hi, friends! Thanks for all of your sweet words about launching our podcast into the world. I promise this blog is going to stay the same as ever, but maybe with some podcasting news sprinkled in from time to time. 🙂

My July goals did not go great (4.5 out of 10 complete), but it’s all good. I’m not much of a perfectionist when it comes to the monthly goals I set. A lot of the goals I set are just for fun and if I don’t complete them this month, they can roll over to next month, and it will all be okay. There are much bigger things to fret over than my monthly goals.

July Goals

1) 31 Peloton workouts in 31 days. (16/31) Oof, I did not meet my goal here, not even close! However, I am now at 60 Peloton workouts for the year (of 20 minutes or more), which puts me right on target for my goal of doing 100 Peloton workouts this year. I’ve been falling behind on this goal every month, so it feels good to be back on track.

2) Finish categorizing 2021 blog posts + figure out the 10 categories I want to use when recategorizing my blog posts. Well, I finally finished my categorization project! Now it’s time to figure out the 10 categories and to start the process of recategorizing and retagging blog posts. I’m also going to need to update the images on some older blog posts, so I think this is going to be a loooong process.

3) Fill up my water bottle every morning. You guys, I am so proud of myself for figuring out how to meet this goal! While I wasn’t perfect at this goal, I did achieve it more days of the month than I didn’t, and that’s a major success for me! What changed? The timing. Instead of filling up my water bottle every morning, I have made it part of my nighttime routine. As I’m winding down for the night, doing my skincare routine and picking up around my apartment, I also make sure to fill up my water bottle and stick it in the fridge. Easy as that! I’ve been drinking so much more water with this simple change!

4) Finish updating all of my blog pages. Complete! The last thing I want to do is update my blog photo, but that will happen in August.

5) Work on our podcast cover art + social media posts. Complete-ish. I started working on some social media posts but then… they disappeared from my drafts on Instagram for some reason. Not cool, Instagram! I’m nervous to draft anything else in case it happens again. In any event, I did complete our podcast cover art (and I love it so much!) and draft our intro Instagram post.

6) Be in bed, lights out, at 10:45pm every night. Ugh, I struggled with this goal so much in July! Not complete.

7) Organize my iPhone photos from 2017-2019. I didn’t quite make it through 2019 pictures, so this goal is not complete.

8) Clear out my junk bin. Not complete. I just didn’t make time for this in July.

9) Go for at least two 5K walks. Not complete. I think we’re just going to go ahead and call time of death on this goal of walking a 5K every month.

10) Buy some new bras. Complete! I purchased two really nice bras from Torrid and I’m really happy with them. They were having a sale, too, so the price of two bras was less than the price of one Thirdlove bra, haha.

August Goals

1) Make my bed every morning. I’ve never been someone who makes my bed because what’s the point when I live alone? But there is just something about putting in the effort to make my bed every morning that helps me feel a little more ready to tackle my day. I want to get into the habit of doing so!

2) Figure out the 10 categories I want to use when recategorizing my blog posts and update all of my blog posts from 2009. Here we go! It’s time to start step 2 of this big blog recategorization project.

3) Fill up my water bottle nightly. Now that I’ve sort of made this a habit, I want to continue doing it until it becomes a regular part of my nighttime routine.

4) Start time blocking. One of my biggest productivity struggles is transitioning from one task to another in a timely manner. It’s not so much an issue in my work life, but it’s a big issue in my personal life. For example, if I’ve been reading on the couch for 20 minutes and I know I need to get up and start dinner, I’ll usually start scrolling through my phone before making that activity transition. Then, before I know it, it’s 7:00 and I haven’t even thought about dinner. So I’ve come up with the idea of time blocking my day: I got a new planner that has a daily spread where I can list out my work priorities and goals for the day, as well as schedule how I want to spend every hour of the day. For example, this is what today looks like:

I’ve been doing this time blocking exercise for a few days now and I am really, really enjoying it! It helps me to understand when I need to be doing every task that’s on my to-do list for the day and make sure I’m transitioning to the next task when I need to. I’m going to experiment with time blocking in August and if it’s working for me, I’ll keep doing it!

5) Post regularly on our podcast Instagram. My goal is 2-3 posts per week so we can start gaining a little traction in the podcasting world. We’re not trying to become famous podcasters or anything like that and this is a zero-pressure type of creative project, but I want to at least try to have some sort of presence on social media, especially in the early stages.

6) Be in bed, lights out, at 10:45pm every night. Let’s try this for a third time. Hopefully, my time blocking exercise will help me adhere to a more reasonable bedtime.

7) Organize my iPhone photos from 2019-2021. More photo organizing to do this month! I always forget that I have this as a goal, even though it’s not really that hard to organize my photos. It just takes time.

8) Clear out my junk bin. Rollover goal.

9) Brush the cats once a week. I am terrible about brushing the cats, even though Lila really needs frequent brushing with her fluffy coat. But she is not great about letting me brush her and acts like I’m coming at her with a pitchfork when I get out the brush. (But then, if I’m able to get a few brushes in, she realizes she really likes being brushed and acquiesces.) Eloise, on the other hand, thinks being brushed is heaven on earth. So at least one cat will enjoy this goal!

10) Bring my bank savings account back up to $500. I have a CapitalOne savings account and then I have my bank savings account. The one in my banking account is used as a fail-safe if I need to quickly transfer money into my checking account to avoid overdrafting. I like to keep $500 in there, and for the longest time, I didn’t touch that money. But lately, I’ve had to dip into it more than I’d like so I want to prioritize bringing that savings account back up to $500. Having that money in there provides me with so much comfort!\

Do you have any goals for August? 

Well, my June goals did not go as planned. Not even a little bit. I guess I didn’t really factor in the fact that I would be away from everyday life for a full week, which means I felt very behind when I came back from my vacation in mid-June. And then I got Covid and decided: the goals can wait. Even so, let’s see how I did this month (spoiler alert: it ain’t pretty.)

June Goals

1) Move my body for 30 minutes every day. Not complete. I think I probably did good at the beginning of the month and fell off drastically in the second half of the month when I got Covid.

2) Review 2020 and 2021 blog posts and list out the posts, categories, and tags. Not complete. I am still categorizing the second half of 2021.

3) Fill up my water bottle every morning. Not complete. I mean, duh.

4) Update all of my blog pages. Not complete. I was able to finally update my About Me page, but I still need to update my travel page, sidebar photo, and sidebar verbiage.

5) Build a website for our podcast + work on social media posts. Not complete. I think I am going to wait until the podcast has launched to build a website (I was spending way too much time trying to build one on Squarespace, and I think there’s an easier option out there). But I do need to get cracking on the social media posts!

6) Be in bed, lights out, at 10:45pm every night. Not complete. I mean, probably wasn’t the best idea to have this goal when I was planning on being off work for two weeks. Ha.

7) Organize my iPhone photos from 2013-2016. Complete! Look at that, I did something this month. I have started the process of migrating, deleting, and organizing all of the many, many photos I have taken on my phone over the past decade. It is going to be a process for sure. I’m using Google Photos for my photo organization. I like that my photos automatically upload to their app and that I can delete photos from my phone but they will stay in the app. It would be awesome to someday have, like, 100 photos in my iPhone photos app because scrolling through thousands and thousands of photos to get to the one I want is something that annoys me so much.

8) Research digital recipe book options. Nope, nope, nope.

9) Go for three 5K walks. Nope, nope, nope.

10) Eat one serving of fruit every day. Umm, maybe a handful of times in June.

July Goals

1) 31 Peloton workouts in 31 days. I’m really excited about this goal. It doesn’t mean I have to work out every day (because, let’s face it, some days I just want to be lazy). It just means I need to record 31 Peloton workouts of 20 minutes or more in the month of July.

2) Finish categorizing 2021 blog posts + figure out the 10 categories I want to use when recategorizing my blog posts. A smaller goal for this month.

3) Fill up my water bottle every morning. Back on the list it goes.

4) Finish updating all of my blog pages. Third time’s the charm, right?

5) Work on our podcast cover art + social media posts. I really need to make this a priority in July since we’re hopefully launching our podcast in early August. Eeps!

6) Be in bed, lights out, at 10:45pm every night. Let’s see if I can get back to a better bedtime routine in July. Here’s hoping, at least!

7) Organize my iPhone photos from 2017-2019. This is such an easy goal for me because I can do it while listening to a podcast so it’s kinda soothing.

8) Clear out my junk bin. I have this basket in my closet that is my “I’ll deal with it later” bin. It includes papers that need to be filed, odds and ends that I either need to get rid of or figure out where to store, etc. If it’s something I don’t have the energy to deal with at the time, it goes into my junk bin. Whenever the bin starts to overflow, that’s when it’s time to sit down with it and clear it out. It’s that time.

9) Go for at least two 5K walks. Man, it’s getting harder and harder to get these 5K walks done because it’s just so damn hot. (And I feel silly saying that when Jenny is out there, running double-digit miles in the heat. I don’t know how she does it!) I just need to commit to waking up early and getting the walk done before the heat is too intense.

10) Buy some new bras. Does anyone else hate buying new bras? I usually buy bras from ThirdLove and since they’re so expensive, I wait until they have literally fallen apart to replace them. Well, the underwire in one of my bras snapped in two this week, so it’s probably time to replace my bras. (Also, while I am happy with ThirdLove bras, I’m also interested to know if you have a bra you love that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg!)

Do you have any goals for July?

It’s a new month, and a month I’ve been very much looking forward to because I’m taking two weeks off work in June. Woohoo! I am looking forward to spending one week on vacation with my mom and one week on staycation with my kitties. A good month indeed.

Let’s dive into my progress report on my May goals and set some new intentions for June, shall we?

May Goals

1) Move my body for 30 minutes every day. (19/31) I’m still not moving my body every day (and I moved my body a little less in May than I did in April), but averaging four workouts a week is better than zero workouts a week, right?

2) Review 2018 and 2019 blog posts and list out the posts, categories, and tags. Complete! One more month of categorizing and then it’s time to get to revising posts, eeks.

3) Fill up my water bottle every morning. (9/31) Last month, I only did this 6 days out of the month and this month, I did it 9 days so look at that improvement!

4) Update all of my blog pages. Not complete. I decided to work on this during my time off in June.

5) Try to trim the girls’ claws. Not complete. I just didn’t feel like traumatizing the girls, and so many of you told me you don’t trim your cats’ claws so it made me feel better about not doing so.

6) Be in bed, lights out, at 11pm every night. Complete! I am proud of myself for making this goal a priority in May. I’m still not getting as much sleep as I need, but it’s progress toward the bigger goal.

7) Find three tattoo artists to call. Complete! While I didn’t select the three tattoo artists, I did find exactly where I want to get my next tattoo and that’s good enough for me.

8) Research digital recipe book options. Not complete. A project for June!

9) Go for three 5K walks. I only went for one 5K walk in June, womp womp.

10) Eat one serving of fruit every day. I did not do this every day. I did this maybe 1-2 times a week. But hey, that’s better than I did in previous months. Progress is progress!

June Goals

1) Move my body for 30 minutes every day. I really love striving for this goal! Hoping to hit that 30-day milestone in June.

2) Review 2020 and 2021 blog posts and list out the posts, categories, and tags. Last month of categorizing!

3) Fill up my water bottle every morning. One day, I’m going to laugh at myself for needing to make this a goal. Right???

4) Update all of my blog pages. This will be a wonderful goal to work on in June when I have a week off to myself.

5) Build a website for our podcast + work on social media posts. Our goal is to release our trailer episode the last week of June and to officially launch our podcast the first week of July. Eeks! It’s all happening!

6) Be in bed, lights out, at 10:45pm every night. Like I mentioned in my post yesterday, my goal is to slowly push forward my bedtime by small, 15-minute increments until I’m going to bed by 10:00 every night. So the goal for June is to strive for a 10:45 p.m. bedtime!

7) Organize my iPhone photos from 2013-2016. I really want to declutter the photos on my phone. I hate having thousands of photos on there and it can be so hard to find the photos I’m looking for, even though I love the search feature on iPhone Photos. I spend time every week deleting photos (I try to delete 100 photos a week; I take a ton of photos of the cats or Chip/Lucy in the same position because you have to take MANY photos to get that one perfect one). I’d like to remove all of the photos from my Photos app and just have them live in Google Photos, as long as I can easily grab the photos if I want them. I’m going to spend some time playing around and hopefully, I can archive all of my iPhone photos from 2013-2016 and put them in albums that I can easily search when I need them.

8) Research digital recipe book options. I didn’t do this in May, so it’s on the list for June!

9) Go for three 5K walks. I need to go on three 5K walks in June to make up for the two 5Ks I missed in March and April. Good thing I have lots of time off this month! (Although, I seem to keep adding things to do during my time off: updating my blog, putting together a website for the podcast, organizing my photos. Oof!)

10) Eat one serving of fruit every day. Back on the list for June. Here’s hoping I do better at this goal this month!

Do you have any goals for June?

It’s my favorite time of the month! It’s time to assess how I did on my April goals and set some new intentions for May. Let’s do this!

April Goals

1) Have a no-spend month. Somewhat complete. I didn’t spend money on any purchases, but I did use Ubereats a few times, womp. However, I used it much less often (in Q1, I averaged $142 a month in Ubereats orders and in April, I spent just under $80!) so that’s a win for me.

2) Reorganize my Google Drive. Complete! It is so nice to have all of my documents organized into their folders and to not have dozens and dozens of untitled documents and spreadsheets floating around.

3) Move my body for 30 minutes every day. (25/30) Well, I didn’t move my body every day but I did move it more days than I didn’t, and I’m considering that a win. This month, I did 11 long walks, 10 spin classes, and 4 strength workouts.

4) Review 2016 and 2017 blog posts and list out the posts, categories, and tags. Complete!

5) Take the dogs to Salty Paws in Dunedin. Complete! The dogs couldn’t eat their ice cream fast enough. We’ll be back!

6) Fill up my water bottle every morning. I did this 6 days out of 30. Maybe in May, I can get to 10 days?

7) Make a doctor’s appointment. Not complete. I really hate being on an HMO insurance plan, bleh. I had to pay $225 out of pocket for my mole removal and another $150 for my emergency dental cleaning in April, and I know a regular doctor’s visit is at least $100 out of pocket (and who knows how much more things would be if I needed to see a PT for my leg pain). So I decided to put off the doctor’s visit for now. My HSA took a beating in April!

8) Eliminate red meat. Ugh, no. I eliminated it from my homemade nachos, switching to ground turkey. But giving up pepperoni pizza is going to be the hardest thing for me to do. 🙁

9) Decide on my tattoo design. Complete! While I haven’t sketched out the design (I have no artistic ability when it comes to drawing and there’s no way I could sketch out something like this, lol), I do have a few photos to show the tattoo artist when the time comes and I’m confident they’ll be able to turn my vision into reality.

10) Make an extra car payment. Complete! I am so proud of myself for making this happen. Financial goals are so, so hard for me.

May Goals

1) Move my body for 30 minutes every day. I really like this goal, even if there are some days when the last thing I want to do is work out or even go for a walk outside. I’m not someone naturally inclined toward exercise, so I need strict goals like these.

2) Review 2018 and 2019 blog posts and list out the posts, categories, and tags. Another month, another blog categorization goal. I’m nearing the finish line of the first part of this massive goal!

3) Fill up my water bottle every morning. Still not a habit, still on the list.

4) Update all of my blog pages. I recently noticed that a lot of my blog pages are out of date. I don’t even have my last cruise (from 2019!) on my Cruising page and the “about me” widget on my sidebar says I’m 32 still. Oops. Time for a refresh!

5) Try to trim the girls’ claws. Eloise will usually let me trim her claws but the last time I tried to corral Lila for a trim, it was a traumatic experience for the both of us so I haven’t attempted it again. They both use the numerous scratching pads around the apartment and their claws don’t grow long enough to irritate their footpad, but I would like to get into a monthly cadence of trimming their claws. So here we go, I’m going to attempt this sometime in May and see what happens.

6) Be in bed, lights out, at 11pm every night. My ideal bedtime is between 9:30-10:00, but since I am regularly going to bed at midnight on weeknights, I know I need to start with an incremental change. In May, I want to turn the lights out by 11pm. That means if I don’t get into bed until 11, I don’t get to read and play on my phone until midnight. It means I go directly to bed.

7) Find three tattoo artists to call. Breaking up a big goal like “get a new tattoo” is much easier when I break down each step into smaller goals. So my next goal is to find three tattoo artists I like. Bonus points if I call them for a consultation!

8) Research digital recipe book options. One of my goals this year is to put together a recipe book so that I can have an easy place to find the recipes I love. Right now, I don’t have any sort of system so I often make a recipe, love it, and promptly forget about it. I don’t think a physical recipe book would work for me so I’m hoping there are some digital options available.

9) Go for three 5K walks. I am wayyy behind on my goal of walking one 5K every month. I missed doing a 5K in both March and April, so now I need to triple up in May. Thankfully, my weekends won’t be too busy this month so I think I can get all of these walks in, as long as I prioritize them.

10) Eat one serving of fruit every day. A small, simple change. I think I can handle this!