Stephany Writes

Categories: Goals

Finances, Faith, and Health

A little more than 6 months ago, I sat down at my computer and came up with a list of resolutions for the New Year. I’ve never been big on setting resolutions since I know they’re scoffed at and never accomplished. By the third week of January, you fall back onto your old habits and forget what you even said you wanted to do.

The first year I ever really sat down, thought it through, and came up with a list of resolutions for the new year, was in 2009. I came up with the cute idea of “9 Resolutions for 2009”. Unfortunately, I didn’t achieve any of the resolutions I came up with. Last year was a pretty mediocre year for me and I really tried to focus on areas of my life that I felt the most out of control with, and what I needed to do to fix them.

Area #1: Finances
I have three credit card bills. Credit limits on them are: $300, $500, and $2,500. The credit card with the largest limit, we’ll call it PIMA, I haven’t paid for in a good 6 months. My minimum payment is through the roof, I owe more than $2,500, and it’s sitting in a collection agency. This is never a scenario I thought I would be in. Ever. My parents dealt with the same money problems and I always swore I would never be like them. For now, though, PIMA is a credit card I pretend I don’t have.

The other two are much more manageable. I’m working on paying off the lowest one first but I should probably tell you that this credit card is from Target. Meaning I can go into Target and be all, “I HAVE FREE MONEY! WOOHOO!” I mean, you all know how tough it is not to spend over $50 at Target when you don’t have a credit card…imagine having a credit card to be used solely at Target. Earlier this year, I had my balance about $100 away from being paid off. And then I used it. I have a little less than $200 until it’s paid off, but it probably won’t get paid off until September at the earliest. Once I do get this paid off, I’m cutting it up and getting rid of it for good. It’s really a useless credit card and charges an insane finance charge.

My middle credit card was the one I received from my bank when I opened at checking account in May 2006. Up until this past year, I’ve been good about using it and then paying off the balance the next month. And then things got a little crazy with me being out of work for 6 months in 2008 and I’m still hovering just about the maxed-out zone. I want to get this one back up to it’s $500 balance and this is the only credit card, once I pay off PIMA, that I want to keep. The balance is one where I can’t go crazy and rack up thousands of dollars, plus it has a lot more incentive to keep than do Target/PIMA. I’m hoping to have this one taken care of by the end of the year.

Area #2: Faith
I’ve had long and detailed blog posts, discussing this portion of my life. Suffice it to say, I’m a lazy Christian. I have faith, I know what I believe in, but I don’t put forth the effort in the relationship. I just meander along, attending church and reading my Bible once a month but that’s about it. I don’t pray (unless I have to), I don’t have a consistent Bible study life, and I don’t do anything to grow my faith.

I also think I’m suffering from the Perfect Christian Syndrome, where I want every area of my faith walk to be perfect. I want to be totally involved in the World, totally involved in church, and totally head-over-heels for God. I need to slow down, remind myself that I am human, and focus on the little things.

Area #3: Health
Here’s the part where I roll my eyes, bang my head against the desk, and whine that “fat is in.” While I have great weeks where the pounds seem to be flying off, my clothes feel amazing on my body, and I have no temptation whatever…lately it seems to be one temptation after the other. I’ve gained about 4 pounds in the past 2 weeks. I’m giving myself headaches because I’m thinking so hard about not giving into the temptations to where I just say “Screw it” and eat the junk.

I’ve come to realize how dependent I am upon Weight Watchers. The weeks where there’s no meeting scheduled due to holidays, I fall apart. I try to be good, but then I realize there’s no weigh-in so it’s a free-for-all. (And by the way, be good? Why do I call it being good? Shouldn’t being good be normal for me?!) I was thinking of stopping WW and trying to do it on my own and be motivated by my own accomplishments, not because Phil’s going to weigh me in on Sunday morning and I do not want to hear, “You’re up a little this week,” one more time. But after a pretty bad day of eating junk, I know I need WW. If it keeps me healthy, then it’s worth it.

I realize my blog seems to be turning into some sort of goal journal where I just write down what I want to accomplish in the next 30 days or whatever time frame I give it. I was hesitant to write this post because it seems to be repetitive of the last few weeks. But I did it because I’m done with setting goals I have no intention of achieving. I need to focus on these three areas first, making small changes that lead to bigger ones, before I can figure out other parts of my life.

So here we go: I’m going to write down 3 goals, each relating to the 3 areas, with no time frame giving for completing them. I’m just going to keep these goals in mind and I won’t set a new one until I have either achieved the goal or feel as if I did.

Area #1: Finance
I want to pay off my Target credit card. When this is paid off, I will focus on setting a new goal in this area. For now, my only focus is Target.

Area #2: Faith
I want to have a consistent Bible study time. Even though I know there are other areas I need to work on, for now I want to just focus on getting in 15-20 minutes a day with God. Once I feel that this is a natural part of my day, I can focus on other goals.

Area #3: Health
I want to be a consistent exercise-r. Those weeks where I just completely fall off the wagon, I seem to find it easy to fall off the exercise wagon as well. I want to exercise 5 days a week for at least an hour, even on those weeks where I know I’m going to gain weight on the scale. This is a health journey, not a weight loss journey. I need to remember that.

Who knows when I’ll update again?! I promise to wait awhile before I talk about my goals again. I want to have at least accomplished one of these before I set new ones. The first goal will be easy to know when I accomplished it, but the other two will take a lot of self-awareness on my end to know when I feel I’ve formed these habits.

The bottom line is, these are the goals I’m setting for myself with no timeline in place. I think it will do wonders for my happiness and well-being if I can achieve them and form habits from them.

What are your thoughts on goals? Do you set them and tell the world (like I obviously do)? Do you keep them to yourself? Do you think goals are overrated?
Categories: Goals

July.

LOOKING BACK

Tracking – I think I did a lot better with tracking than usual. I was super serious and super strict for about 3 weeks, tracking down my meals, exercising 4-5 times a week, and not going above my extra points. But now I feel so burned out from it all. I think I’m getting to the point where I just want to give up. This has happened to me so many times before that I’m trying to just ride this out, but it’s hard.

A Mess of Emotions – This month has been an eventful one emotionally. My emotions have been all over the place, making me feel like a crazy person. One moment I’m happy and giddy, the next I just want to punch out a wall. I don’t know what’s up with that, but I’m hoping that making more time to achieve all the goals I set for myself and less time to be lazy, it helps.

Running – I’ve fallen back in love with running this month. (But shh! Don’t tell my mom!) As I mentioned before, I’m running around 6am on Saturday mornings and 5:30am on Sunday mornings. And I. Love. It. It feels so good to run that early in the morning and the heat isn’t nearly as suffocating. While I’m not running a mile yet, I enjoying the (extremely) short distances I can run right now.

Quiet Time – I’ve actually managed to have a few days of quiet, Bible study time this month. Not as much as I need to, and not as consistent as I’d like to be, but it’s better than usual. Now that I’ve set out a specific bedtime pattern, it’s much easier to fit this in.

THIS JULY, I WILL…

Take a mini-vacation – If all goes according to plan, my mom and I will be taking a little mini-vacation to Orlando at the end of the month. We have season passes to Sea World and are hoping to check out my mom’s race path while we’re there, as well as spending a day at Disney World. I haven’t been to Disney World in forever! And I know I have a special blog friend who lives in Orlando! Meet-up?!

Get to bed at 9:30 most nights – I’m shooting for 5 nights a week, mainly on the days I have to wake up at 4:30-5am. I really love going to bed at a decent hour and getting a good, solid 7 hours of sleep. I’m still ridiculously tired during the day and I don’t know if it’s just not getting enough sleep at night, or an iron deficiency. I’m just hoping that getting more sleep at night will help me feel more energetic during the day. We shall see.

Be creative – As I mentioned yesterday, I’m taking on Ashley’s Creativity Challenge where I’m going to challenge myself to get serious about my novel. I can’t even call it a work in progress because all it’s been doing is sitting in a file folder for over a year. I haven’t put any effort into working on it so I’m excited to get started and start outlining my book.

Make a budget – My mom and I have talked so many times about creating a budget. And we have. We’ve created a few budgets but we never stick to them. And while I would love to go through Financial Peace University, it’s just not in the budget right now. (Oh, yeah. Pun totally intended.) I want to take some of his tips and tricks that I heard through other people who have been through FPU to get ourselves on track. (Anybody have any tips for me? Anybody been through FPU and want to help a girl out?!)

Learn Spanish – I have some books and audio tapes to pick up from the library to help me learn this language. I did take 3 years of it in middle school and high school so I’m hoping it’ll start coming back to me more and more as I start hearing it and dedicating myself to learning it again.

Categories: Goals

Creativity Challenge

On Monday, Ashley posted a challenge where she invited bloggers to join her as she spends the month of July challenging herself creatively. She didn’t give any strict parameters or put any restrictions for the month. The challenge is broad and vague but holds one key theme: creativity. You can challenge yourself through any means: photography, scrapbooking, writing, videos, blogging, design…whatever you want!

I’m taking on this challenge with her and other bloggers. I’ve been struggling for the longest time to get started on my novel, to stop wasting time and just write it. I’ve been so busy bouncing around other potential story ideas that would take months and months of research to even begin to get started that I’ve let this story lay stagnant for over a year. Maybe because the story is not as exciting as my other ideas, maybe because it means digging deep into Christianity and myself, maybe because it’s the only idea I’ve had that holds real weight and means this could become The Story one day. The Story that gets me published. The Story that turns me into an author.

For superstitious purposes, I don’t want to go into detail about what my story is about. For now, let me be vague: it centers around a girl, age 18, as she heads off to college, leaving the comforts of home for the very first time. The End. (Yep. That’s all I’m going to tell you about! Chew on that.)

My challenge is to begin the outlining process. While I read many writing blogs that give the pros and cons of outlining, I do believe I’m the type of writer who needs a strict outline. Whether or not my characters stick to the outline remains to be seen, but I do want to create an outline so I know what themes I want my story to be about, what struggles the character will face, and a basic overview of the plot.

Right now, all that’s sitting in my “College Girl” file on my desktop is a two-paragraph synopsis, a list of background information I need to write about, and some questions about the main character’s parents. (Are they high school sweethearts? Did they meet on a mission trip? Should I make her mother a different nationality than her father?) I really want to finish writing up all the background information and start outlining my novel. I don’t want to be too strict on myself and tell myself I have to have the entire process done, but I do want to at least have it started.

So there you have it. My Creativity Challenge for the month of July. Check out Ashley’s blog for more about the challenge and to join in. I’ll probably give weekly updates on my status and how the process is going. I hope you’ll join me!

Categories: Goals

June.

LOOKING BACK

Thirty-Day Shred: In May, I pledged to complete the 30-Day Shred challenge. And I did complete it, which is a miracle in itself. It wasn’t easy and it wasn’t fun most days. But I’m so proud that I committed to this and completed this challenge. Every, single day was a tough, intense workout and while I didn’t lose as much weight as I hoped to, it was great to have 30 days of continuous exercise.

Quiet Time: This was a total fail. While I did manage to have my quiet time during my media fast, it didn’t happen at all in May and last week was a total fail as well. But one of these days, it’s going to sink in. Until then, this is my goal.

Cut down on little expenses: Uh. Well. Fail? During my media fast, I sat down and went through both my mom’s and my bank statements for the last 6 weeks. I separated everything into categories to see how much we were spending. And it was a little sickening. Since money issues are still a problem for us, I plan on blogging about them more regularly. We have to become more in control of our finances, because the fact that we’re struggling is just utterly ridiculous.

THIS JUNE, I WILL…

Become a better tracker. I have noticed that those weeks when I track my food effectively and set out an exercise plan, I do better. I feel better. Yet I’ve been lax on these two areas for the past two weeks. (Although I’ve still managed to lose weight, interestingly enough.) I bought a notebook to write down my goals for the week, track my food and exercise, and talk about how I’m feeling overall. I’m hoping by being more anal about what I am eating and the way I feel when I exercise, I can learn better eating habits and find this healthy lifestyle a little easier to handle.

Get our grocery bill under control. When I figured out where we were spending our money, this is what was the most out of control. Mom and I fell into the bad pattern of going to the store of a few times a week and buying things for a few days. You definitely spend twice as much this way. I want to start shopping smarter, only going to the grocery store once a week, and using coupons more effectively.

Commit to quiet time. I am determined to find time every day to be with God. I know I say this every month but after my media fast, I realized just how much I need and crave this time. I need to read my Bible more, pray more, and journal more. I’m going to find time to do this every day.

*Inspired by Kyla.

Categories: Goals

May Challenge

I’m keeping with my resolution theme again this month and also talking about how I did with my April challenges.

Resolution #1: Become a healthier person.
Last month, I challenged myself to go 30 days without drinking soda. I made it 46 hours. Truthfully, while going cold turkey sounds like a good idea, it’s not. Especially when you’re addicted to it as much as I am. I did fine on my first day but by the second day, it got a little crazy.

I’ve decided to stop taking things away from my diet because I don’t like deprivation. It doesn’t work for me. (Does it work for anyone?!) So I’m taking on The 30-Day Shred challenge. I am going to do Jillian’s kick-butt routine every day for 30 days. I won’t say I’m excited about this and I cringe thinking about how sore I’m going to be. But I want to show myself I can do this. And I think it’ll go a long way in helping me with my weight loss effort. As long as I stick to eating right.

Resolution #2: Become a godlier woman.
Since I knew how hectic my schedule would be in April, I charged myself with only conversating with God in April. I didn’t do this as much as I wanted to and sometimes it felt more like an afterthought than anything. I think it’s because I wasn’t really involved with God. He’s been a big afterthought for a while.

So my challenge for this month is to have quiet time with God five times a week. Luckily, my life will be a lot less hectic and busy and it will be much easier to find time to have this quiet time with God. And I hope to make an easy, everyday part of my life that I need. And I’m starting a new Bible study that the lovely Kyla Roma recommended to me! This makes me super excited to start.

Resolution #3: Get in control of my finances.
I resolved to start tracking my spending this month and I have done that. I still want to sit down and make some sort of chart of where all my money went and make a budget from that. Unfortunately, the bulk of my money I make in May is going towards tuition so I really don’t have any big plans with my credit cards because of that.

Basically, my goal for this month is to cut down on those little expenses. The two times I get paid this month, I’ll take $30 out of the bank to have for any expenditures. I can use this for shopping, food, or whatever I feel led to buy. I really want to get into this habit monthly while I’m trying to get control over my credit card debt so we’ll see how this month goes.

(Also happening this month: a new phone! I’ll be able to shop around for a new phone on May 25th and I cannot wait. I’ve been using my mom’s awful Blackberry since I lost my phone in November and I hate it. So I’m going to get a new phone then, when I can get a nice one for cheap.)