Wednesday 8 November 2017

October- Goals and the No Spend Year

We are nearing the end of the year and I can say that I am happy (for the most part) with the progress of my goals.  Only 2 more months left to go!  

#1-  Complete a No-Spend Year.

I bought something on my "Banned" list with my birthday money.  I bought myself winter boots.  I had banned shoes on my no-spend year list.  I took my daughter to daycare wearing my current boots in the snow.  By the time I made it to work, my socks were soaked and my toes were cold.  I feel strongly that I need to put my the health of my feet first so the other boots are hitting the trash.  I ordered quality boots that will last me many years.  I live in Canada and winter came early this year.  Our temperatures go as low as -40 degrees Celcius (-40 Fahenheit) and I am not risking my toes.  I knew that my boots were starting to leak last year so I am not sure why I didn't put it on my approved spending list.

#2-  Establish a Self-Care Routine

Let's talk about this.  I really thought that I was doing well with this goal and I was.  Life threw more than one curve ball at me in October.  I had a huge deadline at work, a major fundraiser for the local daycare (I am on the committee), pregnancy related nausea/dizziness/headaches/fatigue and I was working a LOT due to my co-worker being on vacation.  It all added up to one large meltdown where I was bawling an hour before the fundraiser was set to begin.  I have looked back at my busy month and I am not sure what I could have done differently.  Most of the curve balls were out of my control, besides the fact that I didn't take a sick day when I was feeling awful.  In hindsight, that wasn't practicing good self care.  I have been reading an interesting book by Gretchen Rubin called The Four Tendancies.  I am an upholder with obliger tendencies, which means that I am good at meeting both inner and outer expectations.  It also means that sometimes I work too hard to meet outer expectations and I occasionally experience burnout because of this.  I find my work to be a heavy expectation at times.  My work involves the health of my clients (I am a lab and x-ray tech in a small town) and I find it really hard to call in sick when I am ill because I know that my clients are often dealing with much worse situations.  I need to start putting my health first, especially in this last month and a half of my pregnancy so I am working to set up some clear boundaries this month.  The first boundary is working out well and my co-worker was able to lighten my schedule substantially which has already made a tremendous difference in my well-being. 

#3-  Say Yes to Family Time

This has been going well.  I am finding the "rules" that we set earlier in the year are working really well for our family and are surprisingly easy to follow.

#4-  Start school in September.

This is being postponed until after Baby's arrival.

#5-  Learn more about traditional prayers and incorporate them into my prayer life.

I am still working on figuring out how to make a habit of incorporating these tradtional prayers.

#6-  Establish a routine for the blog and stick to the blog's vision.

Ummmm..... yeah.  So that burnout that I mentioned above?  Well, that lead to a really bad blogging month.  I have worked to circumvent that this month with better planning and a lighter load at my job.  

October was a good month of learning for me.  I hope to apply what I have learned for a successful November.  How are your goals going?

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