April Goals Review

Happy May Day! I wish I could say that I bounded out of bed this morning, eager to embrace a new day and a new month! But in reality, I overslept (something I very rarely do anymore) and borderline had to force myself to do my workout because I felt a little bit like I had lead bars in my shoes. 

But, even though my energy was lagging, I DID get up, I DID do my workout and the good news is, I am now feeling more awake and more enthused about both the new day and the new month again. My morning schedule has been thrown off, but, I can work with that (thank you to COVID-19 for the flexibility in our school schedule). 🙂 

It’s May! Thank goodness for a sunny, spring-like day to start it off!

Some baby geese!! Grown up geese kind of scare me- they are just NOT friendly looking!- but the little babies are so cute!! Photo from this morning’s walk with Ivan.

April Goals Recap

Since I started this blog I haven’t really gotten into my system of how I manage personal goals too much (besides listing my 20 in 2020 items). I have kept notebooks for many years and generally have always set yearly goals and then more specific monthly goals for myself. 

In the last couple of years, however, I have made some minor changes to my system based on some tips I have picked up (mostly from Sarah at theshubox.com)- primarily, this year I decided to try her “quintile” system for goal setting, breaking the year up into 5 chunks instead of 4 traditional quarters:

January –> spring break, spring break –> end of school, summer, back to school–> Halloween and then Halloween –> end of the year 

From those, I like to break it down even further and list out some specifics for each particular month. I’m sure I’ll write a whole post on all of this at some point, but that’s the basic gist. 

Anyway, at the end of the month I always do a little review/ recap where I just look over my previous month’s goals, see how I did and write out my list for the new month ahead. 

Well. April was kind of a joke. I did make a goals list, but I wrote it shortly after we returned from Mexico at the end of March, a bit high on the novelty of the quarantine and envisioning this dream-like period of huge open spaces in my days with nowhere to go and tons of time to accomplish all sorts of lofty goals. (hehehehehe. I was so cute.)


Here’s my recap of my April Goals, pitiful as it may be:

Family:

• Finish Extreme Space Missions book with boys – Not done, but we did make some good progress… we have done probably too much movie watching at night and not as much reading, but oh well. 

• Work through WW II section of The World Wars book with boys, watching interactive videos from at least 2 pages per day – Did not do. I wrote this goal back when I was more in charge of their schooling; once we started receiving curriculum from school, this fell by the wayside.            ***Of note, the book I am referring to is an amazing Usborne book (see link here). It has awesome images and then on the website it has interactive links for each page where you can watch short video clips about Hitler, the concentration camps, other leaders at that time, etc. IT IS SO COOL! I am kind of obsessed with both the book and the concept of the interactive links. I want to get some other Usborne books eventually! 

• Go on a hike – We did this, but only at a local trail nearby. I had wanted to actually try some new hikes this year, but then they closed down a lot of parks and trails, so I didn’t bother trying to do this yet. Open to suggestions though!  

Home:

• Work on organizing the storage room for at least 2 30 minute blocks of time – nope! I didn’t even touch the darn storage room. In my defense, I did get some other project-y things done not on this list, but I just didn’t really feel like tackling the storage room since Goodwill and other places to dispose of extra junk have been closed. 

• Read about gardening/ research tips for at least 3 30 minute blocks of time – nope! Didn’t do this either! I just never really prioritized this. This is one of those things that I do want to do, but I don’t really know where to start, so then I just don’t. I am definitely bumping this WAY up the list though for May, since if I’m going to do this, I need to get my act together. 

• Move/ organize 2 years worth of old photos from hard drive to Amazon photos. – I DID start on this. I don’t think I got 2 years worth moved, but I figured out a system to do it and got started at least.

• Do our taxes – Oops. We still haven’t done our taxes!!! This is bad to admit. In the beginning of the year we just put it off since we were planning that big spring break trip and I was putting a lot of energy towards that. We planned to do them right when we got home. Then, with all of the chaos that ensued, plus the luxury of the deadline extension….we just sort of let it slide. We need to get them done though since it’s annoying me to have that looming over us. 

• Read at least 10 minutes per day – I know this sounds like a weak goal for someone who likes to read. But, I honestly just haven’t had much time to read! So many of the little “breaks” or times that I would normally read have been going to the kids/ helping with school instead. Also, I am no longer sitting in my car waiting for kids outside of practices, etc., so a bunch of normal reading windows have also disappeared. Too many days have passed that I haven’t even touched my  books. But, on the other hand, I have had some days that I have sat and read for an hour or more at once, which is rare in normal non-COVID life. So, I guess it’s been a balancing act. 

• Complete 21 Day Fix– Done! This is a home workout program on Beachbody on Demand (see my post for review on that). I did successfully complete it and have now moved on to The Work (also on BB), and am 6 days into that one without missing a day. Acccording to my habit tracker, I only had 5 days in April that I didn’t exercise, and on all 5 of those rest days I did at least go for a walk. 

• Get outside for at least 10 minutes per day – Mostly done. I really did try to prioritize this. I missed 3 days in April, all more at the beginning of the month when the weather was crappier. I am proud to report that Ivan and I have taken our short daily morning outside walk around the block for 3 full workweeks now without missing a day! 

• Do the Duo Lingo French app everyday for 5-10 minutes – total fail!!!! I was doing SO good with this when we got home from Mexico for a couple weeks. It was so fun too! But then I just totally fell off the wagon. Ce n’est pas bien. (I think that means, this is not good. 😄) It’s the perfect thing to do INSTEAD OF scrolling Facebook or whatever…so I am going to recommit to this for May! 

• Start blog- yay! This one is a definite win and has been a major highlight of my month! I have successfully started my own blog, which you are currently reading, and have written religiously on it (for now- not sure I’ll be able to keep up daily posts long term but for now it’s working!) and am loving it! I have also (finally) started to peel back my nervous little turtle shell and have actually shared it with a bunch of real life people and made a private Facebook group so that I could share some post links that way too to hopefully engage some more people. Please let me know if you are liking it or feel free to offer some (gentle! 😉) criticism! 

More walk photos from this morning!

Not gonna lie, kinda wanted to run home, grab my book and sit on that  bench the rest of the day instead of working.  That’s it for April! I honestly didn’t even really pay that much attention to my goals throughout the month and there were times that I thought about working on them and then was like, nah, I don’t want to do that right now. LOL! Just being honest! I think it’s okay to relax a little bit during this time, though I do like the structure of creating goals (I enjoy the process itself a little bit too much probably!) I am sort of a chronic “over-goaler”, meaning I love to bite off way more than I can actually chew. Ah well. Gives me something to keep working on.  Stay tuned tomorrow for my May goals!!! I am going to repurpose some of the above, but am also going to shake it up a little bit. I have a couple smaller, daily habits that I have totally let go of that I really want to re-incorporate into my life. So, just for fun, I decided I am going to attempt a “May streak” of sorts for a few items, challenging myself to do them every single day for all of May. But you’ll have to wait until tomorrow to know what they are! Hehe! 😁 Do you set monthly goals?? If so, how’d you do in April?? I would love to hear about anyone else’s goals system! Reading about other people’s goals is so much fun to me! I love hearing what others are working on or into right now.  Daily Gratitude:  I am grateful for a new month! Even though I woke up not feeling very refreshed or ready to reset, I do generally enjoy the momentum of anything “new” (new week, new month, new year…). I am also grateful for the fact that we can always choose to reset ourselves and our lives whenever we want, though! Really, the first day in a new month is just another day. I’m grateful that we can change directions in our lives at any point. If something isn’t working, we can change it and I love that!