Goals 2019 -- August Recap

This month, K and I were trying to get things done through journaling.

Did it work?  Did we get things done?  Here's what I learned about myself:

1. I have very little control over my own time during the work day (and right now the work day is extending to encompass longer and longer hours).  I might have all the good intentions about what I hope to accomplish, but when it comes right down to it, it's not really up to me.  I'm putting out fires, and that's about it.

It seems that this book might be better suited for someone who is either not employed, is self-employed, or otherwise just has more free time which requires planning.

[Aside: I just listened to an episode of Hidden Brain called You 2.0: Tunnel Vision, all about scarcity and the changes that go on in our brains when we are faced with a shortage of something.  The obvious scarce item is money, which is how the show opens, but there is also a segment on time scarcity, which I am totally feeling right now!]

2. Despite not being able to control my own time, I am more interested in journaling if I get to use a collection of fun-colored pens to do it!

3. I realized how much different my weekday schedule is from my weekend schedule (more on this next month).  I could really only commit to journaling in the morning if I kept the journal in the car, so it was there for me to work on in the morning on the way to work.  But that meant that I almost never journaled on the weekend, because getting up and going to the car wasn't one of the first things I did in the morning.  On weekends, by the time I remembered about the journal, it was either too late in the day for it to be meaningful or I was elbows-deep in a project that I didn't want to interrupt.  Accordingly, most weekend days were journal-free.  That is perhaps a bit counter-productive when referring back to #1, since weekends are when I have the most available time!

4. Each day, I looked back at the previous day's goals to see how I did.  Overall, I have about 1/3 more green check marks than red ones.  Seems like something good.  But what I noticed was that I started setting very small goals that I knew I could accomplish, because I wanted to get that green check mark!  But, as K pointed out, isn't that kind of the point?  The whole goal is to make you feel productive, and if that happens by breaking tasks down into smaller and smaller sections so that you can make some progress, it's a winner!

I like that interpretation.  It might be as much justification as interpretation, but I'm going with it!

Apologies

Sorry everyone.  Work is kicking my butt right now.  Hope to be back to posting soon.

What I Watched -- I Am Sam

We picked up I Am Sam at the library.  I have wanted to see it for years, but just never got around to it.  S had seen it, and warned me about how sad it was.  I knew he was right, but I'm not really sure I was prepared, even after the warnings.

It's the story of a developmentally disabled father and his young daughter, separated by the juvenile court system.  The court makes an initial determines that Sam, played by Sean Penn, is incapable of adequately caring for his daughter, played by a young Dakota Fanning, due to his Autistic tendencies.  A high-powered lawyer, played by Michelle Pfeiffer, takes his case on a pro bono basis, out of shame if nothing else.

Since I spend some time in my professional work in juvenile court, I found it at once fascinating and horrifying to look at a case from the outside.  I supposed I am just too involved when I am in the middle of a case to look at it in a completely detached manner, which I was able to do while watching this film.

Bottom line: S was right -- it's worth seeing.

What I Read -- Am I There Yet?

I've started and finished my next postal book club book: Am I There Yet? The Loop-de-Loop, Zigzagging Journey to Adulthood.  It is part graphic novel, part memoir, and part advice book.

I think this may have been more meaningful to me a handful of years ago, but nevertheless it was enjoyable, if a bit inconsistent.  Parts were touching and poignant -- especially when she actually talked about her father's death (rather than mentioning it in passing, which got old) or had a real revelation.  Other parts were a bit simplistic and seemed unnecessary to the stories.

Let me return for a minute to my earlier description of this book as "part graphic novel."  It's really, now that I think about it, more "part adult picture book."  I think of a graphic novel as a book that tells the story through images, an elaborate comic strip.  In Am I There Yet?, the pictures are illustrations.  They do add something to the story -- my favorite ones were the double-page-spread summaries of the author's favorite things about various places that she had been or times in her life -- but if you were to remove the illustrations, everything would still make perfect sense.

Come to think of it, maybe she has a future in travel writing.

One final thought: there is something nice about a quick read. When you've been struggling to finish a few books lately, a quick read can sometimes be just the re-energizing jolt you need to get motivated to read again.

Goals 2019 -- July Update

Here's K!

M and I talked throughout the month about how surprisingly difficult it was to fit a little thing like walking into our daily routine. It seemed like a relatively simple task when we chose it, but it ended up being quite a challenge!

Overall, I would say that I was successful with this month’s goal. When I was in Europe, we walked miles every day. On the cruise ship, I gave myself credit for the walk from the restaurant to our evening activity and then to bed given that those little walks were more than the walk that I would have made at home from my kitchen counter to the couch. Then, when I came home, mom left to join E and A in awaiting the arrival of little L, so I was back on morning dog walk duty. There were many mornings where Argos did not want to take a walk, but whereas before I would have accepted his hesitation as an invitation for my own couch sitting, I made him go out whether he wanted to or not. And, like me, most of the time, once we got out there, he was happy about it. 

Even though this is a hard goal, I’m going to try to keep it as a part of my daily activities by putting my lunch in the refrigerator in the building next to mine. This will make me, I hope, get up in the middle of the day, step away from the computer and the demands of work, and squeeze in a little walk even though it might like the hardest thing in the world to do is to put one foot in front of the other.

Goals 2019 -- August Edition

For July, our goal is to get sh*t done.  We will do this, hopefully, with the help of Mel Robbins's 5-Second Journal.

K ordered this for me and it arrived the other day.  I have to say, I'm not sure it'll happen in 5 seconds each day, but I'm hoping to use my morning commute on the weekdays.  Weekends will be a little bit tougher; maybe it will be my coffee activity, instead of scrolling through Insta.

So, what exactly am I planning to accomplish?  I haven't decided yet.  I think the idea (though I haven't read the journal intro yet) is that it's whatever is most pressing at the time.

I'm not sure it's in the journal, but I probably will also spend the next morning recapping whether I accomplished the prior day's tasks or not.