I made it through October! Usually one of my favorite months of the year, this one was a bit more tough. I talked about it a lot in some of my posts last week, so I’m going to try and keep this relatively brief. I had five main goals this month and didn’t do the greatest job at most of them. But – I’m okay with it. I believe I needed the breaks I was taking from a lot of things this month and that was ultimately more important than following through on my original goals.
1. Stick to three!
I had the full intention of prioritizing my long daily to do lists into a section of three I absolutely thought I could accomplish each day, and the rest of the list would just be a bonus. I thought if I finished those top three things every day, I would feel good about myself and my accomplishments, even if I didn’t touch the rest of the list. I do still like this idea. The problem is that it felt pretty rare to get all three of those things done. I often chose the biggest and most day changing things to be a priority, and sometimes you just don’t have enough time in the day to do three major things. At the end of the month I tried to make it more manageable, so I could check those items off. I still like this system and will probably continue to write my to do lists this way, I’ll just alter the priorities a bit to give myself some grace.
2. Implement Writing Wednesdays
I continue to battle internally between wanting to write and wanting to sew. Well, this month I didn’t really want to do either. I don’t always feel like I have enough time in my life for both, which I know is ridiculous. Plenty of people are MUCH busier than me with jobs outside the home, running kids all over the place in the evenings, and they still have time for hobbies. I really have no excuse. Needless to say, I failed at this Wednesday thing. On the weeks I was sewing, and even the weeks I wasn’t, there was something going on every Wednesday that was ultimately more important. I love this idea in theory, but I have a new thing I’m going to try in November to get a healthy mix of both. But more on that tomorrow!
3. Work 20+ hours a week during the day
Well, we all know I totally failed at this one! I needed the break to do some soul searching. I worked 20 hours in the first 11 days of the month and then I took 17 days completely off. And then I got back to work this week. I’m not sure that hourly goals are going to work for me in the future. I’ve been wanting to see Heartstring Annie as my full time career and I honestly think that’s been my downfall. After all my reflecting this month I decided that I want to stick with it and keep making dolls. But I want to do it on a smaller scale than I’ve been trying to force myself to keep up with these last two years. I’m going to make the dolls on my time table, on my terms, and my customers will just have to be okay with that.
4. Finish at least 3 nonfiction books
I started so many nonfiction books this month! I have stacks of books in every room and I want to read all of them all the time. It’s just so hard to fit in! Especially when I’m always deep into a fiction book that almost always takes precedence. But I have TONS of nonfiction unread books in my house that I need and want to start working through. I did finish three this month. I’m almost done with another. So check this box off as one goal completed in October!
5. Have a lot of fun!
Even though October felt pretty tough overall, I definitely had fun too. I went on tasty birthday restaurant adventures with a few friends, family, Greg. I had my vacation in DC. We had a lot of great Halloween memories. Overall, I think I did let loose a little and enjoyed myself more than I have in the past. Probably because I took all the work pressure off myself for most of the month! Ideally it’d be nice to have fun AND work, but it’s okay.
And a few random facts from my tracking this month, just because it’s fun…
- Annie got to go to the dog park 9 times this month.
- I ate at restaurants 15 times in October. Mostly between birthday and vacation, but that’s a lot. Really, way too many! But it was so delicious.
- I felt I had some sort of quality time with Greg all but one day that I was home this month. I had quality time with Shepard almost every day. And Caden continues to be the one with a lot of gaps because he simply never wants to do anything with me. But I’ll work on it.
- I had some sort of quality time with friends eight times this month – half those days because of DC, but still. It’s more than usual, which is great!
- I felt I gave myself a span of self care time during the day 19 days of the month. Often this means I took an extra break, usually in the evening, to read for awhile. Sometimes it means a special shopping trip or walk or adventure out of the house.
- I always rate my day on a scale of 1-10. My average this month was 6.45. I had a few pretty low days, but I also had a lot of really high days.
And that’s it for October! See you tomorrow with my November goals!
