MAY GOALS

1) Work out every day in May. Not complete, but I have a very good reason for it. I was doing really well all the way up until my mole removal procedure, and then I got nervous to do too many Peloton workouts because of the placement of my stitches. I didn’t want to pull a stitch by accident! I could have continued to exercise with long walks, but I didn’t. However, I still managed 19 days of workouts, which is a whole lot better than April, when I only managed three workouts.

2) Check my bank account every day. Not complete. I’m still struggling with how I want to budget, so I think I may end up going back to the way I used to do it. At least then I was doing something.

3) Schedule a LASIK consultation. Not complete. I just kept putting off the phone call, like the true millenial I am.

4) Get my skin tags removed. Not complete. My mole removal was front of mind for me in May.

5) Do not use my phone until my morning workout is complete. Complete! I am really proud of myself for kicking ass with this goal. It makes me feel so good and productive.

JUNE GOALS

1) Schedule a consultation with a dietician. I wrote about my goal to work with a dietician in a post I wrote last week, and I want to get the process started this week. I’m excited to work with a dietician and will definitely blog about my experience.

2) Schedule a LASIK consultation. Rollover goal.

3) Attend at least one Pride event. It’s Pride month, friends! I have never really involved myself in Pride for reasons I should probably talk about in therapy (and perhaps will blog about), but I am hoping to at least attend our local Pride march. Our city also throws a lot of other events like block parties and festivals, and it makes me grateful to live in an area of Florida that loves to celebrate queerness, especially considering all of the anti-LGBT legislation happening in our state.

4) Get my skin tags removed. Rollover goal.

5) Use the “Downtime” feature of my phone to stay off apps in the evening. Just as I was in a bad habit of using my phone first thing in the morning and delaying my workout, I am also in a habit of using my phone in the evening and delaying my nighttime routine. If I’m not scrolling Instagram or a Reddit forum, I’m playing phone games, and it’s a problem. So I finally implemented “Downtime” on my phone from 6:30pm-9:30pm Monday-Thursday every week. (I may extend the downtime into the evening if I find myself scrolling too much once I’m in bed.) This will hopefully keep me away from all sorts of apps so that I can just focus on making dinner, watching TV, cleaning up, and doing my nighttime routine without getting distracted by my phone every .5 seconds. I’m not sure what I’m going to do about podcasts – maybe I’ll just stream a specific one from my laptop at night? Will report back!

APRIL GOALS

1) Keep a food journal. Not complete. I didn’t even attempt to food journal this month. I have made this a goal many, many times and I never complete it. Maybe I just don’t want to?

2) Replace my bed. Mostly complete. My new bedsheets, pillowcases, and quilt are here. My bedframe has been delivered. My brother has ordered the mattress and box spring from his work. All that’s left is for him to deliver the mattress/box spring and then set up my bed, which should be happening either today or tomorrow. WOOHOO!

3) Schedule a LASIK consultation. Not complete. I submitted a request for a LASIK consultation at a nearby eye center, but I never followed up with them. Oops.

4) Work through the Anxiety Toolkit that my psychiatrist sent to me. Complete! Once I finally sat down with the workbook, it didn’t take me all that long to go through. It wasn’t life-changing by any means, but it was useful to go through it.

5) Set a biweekly budget. Complete-ish. I set the budget, but I did not really check in on it like I wanted to. I must get better about this!

MAY GOALS

1) Work out every day in May. This will be a tall order for me, but I’m also excited about it. I failed miserably with my walking/exercise goals last month, so I am very behind with my goal of logging 50 Peloton workouts (of 20 minutes or longer) this year. I’m also not doing great with my goal of walking every day. A goal like this, where I have to find the time to get in a workout daily no matter what, has worked well for me in the past and I’m hoping the same holds true this month.

2) Check my bank account every day. After many years of being meticulous about tracking my spending and itemizing every purchase, I grew very tired of the practice in early 2023. And… I just gave up on it. I wanted to find a different way to track my spending that didn’t feel so overwhelming. I’ve been playing around with different options, and I may have finally settled on something that works better. It may feel like this idea of a daily check-in of my bank account isn’t any less overwhelming than itemizing my purchases, but we’re experimenting here. Maybe this works, maybe it doesn’t. But I won’t know unless I try!

3) Schedule a LASIK consultation. Rollover goal.

4) Get my skin tags removed. I have a variety of skin tags that need to be removed by a dermatologist. I’ve had to get skin tags removed before (I’m prone to them), and it’s a very easy process, but best handled by a professional. I just need to schedule an appointment!

5) Do not use my phone until my morning workout is complete. Elisabeth has been having some interesting conversations on her blog about phone usage. I have a tendency to use my phone a lot (my current daily average for screen time is over 6 hours, if that tells you anything). I don’t necessarily feel bad about how often I use my phone, but I do think I use it as a crutch to avoid switching to different tasks throughout the day. I also almost always use it first thing in the morning, blearily scrolling through Instagram as I try to wake up or wasting the first 30 minutes of my day playing phone games (ugh). Since I have a goal of working out every day this month (and I’m going to try to always do my workout first thing in the morning), I’m going to try to build this new habit right alongside it. I already keep my phone on DND from 8pm-8am so it’s not that I get distracted by notifications when the alarm goes off… but other apps can easily distract me. Hopefully, this goal will not only challenge me to use my phone less but also to get up and do my workout so I can use my phone, ha.

It’s Q2 of 2023, friends! How did we get here already? I have been pretty satisfied with the way the first quarter turned out, especially as it relates to my goals. I got a lot accomplished! However, as I’ve been thinking about my goals, I’ve been craving simplicity. Setting 10 goals every month is a lot, and some of them were really just placeholders (do I need to tell you I’m going to recategorize another year of my blog, or can I just fill you guys in when I do my yearly goals update at the end of every quarter?). So, I’m shaking things up a bit and have settled on five goals for April. Much simpler, much more doable.

But before we get into April, we need to look back on how I did in March!

MARCH GOALS

1) Put my bedframe on Facebook Marketplace. Not complete. Well, technically, I did put my bedframe on Facebook Marketplace, and within 30 minutes, I had multiple offers. So, I realized that a) maybe I priced it too low originally ($50) and b) I need to wait to put it up for sale until I’m ready for it to be gone. It will probably sell much more quickly than I anticipated!

2) Recategorize all 2013 blogs. Complete!

3) Do the 30-day fitness challenge (found on Elisabeth’s blog, who found it on Kyria’s blog). LOL, no. I made it to day 12 or 13 and then gave up. I started to notice that I was putting off my Peloton workouts because I was so focused on this goal, and had to ask myself which was more important. In the end, I decided my Peloton workouts meant more to me so I willingly gave up on this challenge.

4) Do a few plantar fasciitis stretches every morning. Not complete. Maybe I’ll move this to the evening and combine it with my nighttime routine. I am wearing my PF slippers more often, though! I don’t wear them all the time, only when my heels start hurting, but they definitely lessen the pain.

5) Do a Goodwill drop and get rid of the old cat tower. Complete! I felt a little bad about getting rid of the cat tower since the cats liked to use it from time to time, but it was time to give it up. And now I feel like I have so much more room in my living room! I also did a nice little Goodwill drop last month – felt great to do that.

6) Work through the Anxiety Toolkit that my psychiatrist sent to me. Didn’t even open this once in March.

7) Order new bedding. Complete! It’s all ready and waiting to be made up on my new bed.

8) Watch a 90s classic rom-com. Not complete. I chose to watch silly reality TV shows rather than watching a movie.

9) Stand up for one hour each workday. Not complete.

10) Limit myself to two Ubereats orders and two takeout orders per week. Complete! I’m really proud of myself for making this happen.

APRIL GOALS

1) Keep a food journal. I need to start eating better, but I want to do it in a way that feels good. To start, I want to keep a food journal where I can list out what I ate in a day and how it made me feel. I don’t care about how many calories or carbs or macros I’m eating… I’m just curious if I can find any patterns in the way some foods make me feel.

2) Replace my bed. I’d really like to finally get this done in April! There is some coordination that has to happen, like having my brother order the bed through his work and then having him deliver it and put the bed I ordered together. But I should be able to make it happen this month!

3) Schedule a LASIK consultation. This is one of my 2023 goals. I don’t have to make a decision about LASIK this year, but I do want to know what my options are and how much I can expect it to cost me.

4) Work through the Anxiety Toolkit that my psychiatrist sent to me. Rollover goal.

5) Set a biweekly budget. I did not meet my savings goals in Q1, and that’s because I don’t have a concrete plan for my money right now. It means I’m more apt to spend money when I should be funneling it to my savings. I think setting a budget every two weeks (since I get paid every two weeks) should help rein in my spending a bit.

FEBRUARY GOALS

1) Decide on the mattress I want to buy. Complete! I finally decided on the mattress that I want and sent it to my brother so he can order it for me. Wahoo!

2) Recategorize all 2012 blogs. Complete! And I finished this with a few days to spare. (I took a whole month off blogging in 2012, which helped, ha.)

3) Schedule a knife skills class with Amber. Complete! Our knife skills class is next Sunday. Yay!

4) Start my nighttime routine by 8pm, Sunday-Thursday. Oh god no. I am still struggling with this. 8pm feels so early!

5) Try a new dessert recipe for the Super Bowl. Complete! I made these peanut butter brownies, which were very, very good!

6) Find the hosting platform for our podcast. Complete-ish. Podcastpage is a great option to make a pretty easy podcast website, but in order to get our own URL, it’s $144 a year. I need to decide if it’s worth the cost. Do we need a website for our podcast? I’m just not sure yet.

7) Make a spreadsheet for apartment hunting. Complete! I added a handful of apartments to look at sometime over the summer, and want to add a few more. I’d love to stay in the general area I live currently, but I’m also not opposed to going further north if the prices are better.

8) Schedule a dermatology appointment to get a retinoid prescription. Not complete. I started dealing with this weird scalp issue (diagnosed as scalp psoriasis by my dermatologist on Wednesday, fun times). Now I’m on a steroid ointment to try to get rid of it, and I’ve decided to wait until this clears up to look into getting a retinoid prescription. (My skin is super-duper sensitive and I just don’t want to introduce something new to my routine while I’m having a skin flare-up.)

9) Stand up for one hour each workday. Not complete. I was so bad at doing this in February! I think I only stood up a few times the whole month.

10) Limit myself to two Ubereats orders per week. Complete! I’m really proud of myself, especially because two of the weeks, I only ordered Ubereats once. As long as I grocery shop correctly and have easy meals to make for myself when I’m feeling lazy, I don’t feel the urge to order takeout as often.

MARCH GOALS

1) Put my bedframe on Facebook Marketplace. I’m going to try to sell my current bedframe. I don’t expect to get more than $50 for it, but something is better than nothing! I need to take some pictures and get it up there.

2) Recategorize all 2013 blogs. Nobody is surprised by this goal. 🙂

3) Do the 30-day fitness challenge (found on Elisabeth’s blog, who found it on Kyria’s blog). My mom and I will be doing this fitness challenge together! It looks challenging but doable.

4) Do a few plantar fasciitis stretches every morning. The heel pain remains, so it’s time to start figuring out how to make sure my self-diagnosed PF doesn’t get worse. I’ve been wearing shoes more often when I’m in my apartment, both my sneakers and house slippers (which are specifically made for PF, ironically). I also want to start my day with a few stretches to see if that helps at all.

5) Do a Goodwill drop and get rid of the old cat tower. I have a whole trash bag filled with items to donate, as well as a few other items that don’t fit in the trash bag. I have also been holding on to the girls’ old cat tower but the scratching posts have completely fallen apart and it’s time to get it out of here. Plus, it’s just taking up space I don’t really have.

6) Work through the Anxiety Toolkit that my psychiatrist sent to me. Back in January, my psychiatrist sent me the link to this Anxiety Toolkit workbook and I keep forgetting to go through it. She seems to think it would help me a lot. I asked my mom to print off all 42 pages of the workbook (bless her) so I have it in hard copy form and want to spend time this month going through it.

7) Order new bedding. I already have my new sheets, pillowcases, and quilt picked out, and the money saved up to buy all of it! In March, I want to go ahead and buy my new bedding so it’s ready to go when my bedframe + mattress arrive.

8) Watch a 90s classic rom-com. I’m thinking either Sleepless in Seattle, Notting Hill, or While You Were Sleeping. Which one do you recommend?

9) Stand up for one hour each workday. Rollover goal.

10) Limit myself to two Ubereats orders and two takeout orders per week. Okay, so reality check: While I did an amazing job with limiting myself to 1-2 Ubereats orders every week in February, I also think I got fast food/takeout a lot more than usual. It was so easy to say, “It’s not cheatingggg” since the goal was to limit Ubereats orders, ugh. So I’d like to now challenge myself to this goal. (“Takeout” in this instance means food I pick up to take home. It’s cheaper than Ubereats since there aren’t delivery/processing fees to deal with, but it still adds up.)

Do you have any goals this month?