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Goal Check-In: Month 8
December 1, 2003
I cleverly avoided having to do a goal check-in for October by leaving the country. This month, I have no good reason not to do one. Not accomplishing much is not a good reason. I wish it were. I wish I could go back and redo October and November so I’d have more progress to report, but since I live in a world without time travel, I’ll have to report what actually got done (or didn’t).
Body: My weight’s been creeping up lately, and now I’m within shouting distance of 160 again (and not even loud shouting). That’s not good. It’s no secret why this is happening; I’m not being careful about what I eat, and I’m not getting enough exercise. Someday I’ll learn the lesson that I can’t relax if I want to stay at goal weight (even a higher, more realistic goal weight). I hate that that’s the way it is, but hating and therefore ignoring the truth isn’t keeping me where I want to be. At least this time it hasn’t gotten to the point where I stop going to Weight Watchers entirely. Down that road we have the twenty- and thirty-pound gains instead of just the ten I’m looking at now. This morning, I started a WW journal for the first time since the second week in September (fortunately I still had some of the old Winning Points kind, because the new QuikTrak System irritates me, and this is hard enough without petty annoyances like that added in). Just filling it in the rest of the day and then again tomorrow and the day after will be an important step back to being in control of this area of my life, even if I don’t stick to my points limits at first. Exercise is harder. I got disheartened this weekend when I came across three success stories from Shape magazine that I’d saved to inspire me. These women were working out between five and a half and seven and a half hours a week just to maintain their goals. I’m only aiming for two and a half to three hours a week, and I’m not achieving that. It seems a little pointless, doesn’t it? It doesn’t help one bit that I have yet to find a form of exercise I like while I’m doing it. Until I do, I’ll just have to make time for the things I’ve found that I don’t hate, even if it is only for a few hours a week.
Reading: I only managed to finish one book in October, and I had to do that on the plane on the 31st. I did better in November, finishing two, though one was a slender young adult volume. I’ve already started my first December book, though, so I have high hopes that this month I might even overachieve versus my goal. I’m still sad that I read so much growing up and enjoyed it so much and now I’m struggling to carve out time to get through two books a month. Of course when I was growing up, I didn’t have so many other demands on my time, and the people I was trying to impress were happy to see me reading. My boss would rather I write code than read novels or even nonfiction.
Quilting: Well, here’s where some of the time went that I could have spent reading in the last two months. I finished ElleBee’s quilt, made my blocks for the latest group baby quilt and sewed all the blocks together (now it’s off my list until the woman who’s quilting it finishes her part), and began another baby quilt which I started quilting yesterday. I had a grand vision of catching up with all the babies I’m behind by Christmas, but since there are three babies and only three weeks before people start taking off for the holidays, I’m thinking that at least one of the little ones will have to wait a while. I’ll surely catch up before they turn a year old, and that’s acceptable.
House: I’ve managed to empty a box of clippings each month and keep us in clean clothes, but other than that I have no real successes to report. Sure, I Swiff the hardwood floors upstairs when they get really dusty, and I wash the shower curtain and bathtub mat when they get too yucky to stand, but until this morning, I hadn’t opened my box o’ household tasks in a long time (and I only opened it this morning because I knew I’d be doing this check-in). I’ve given up on the room of the month plan entirely; when I can’t stay on top of the day to day and week to week stuff, it seems like too much of a reach to try and do any of the bigger picture stuff.
So that’s one goal I’m doing well on and three I’m not. I’d like to get that up to at least two out of four. How? What’s going to make December different than October and November? I’m going to set weekly goals, that’s what. And because I’m doing Holidailies, reporting back regularly will not be a problem. Therefore, I hereby declare that this week I will: 1) Write down everything I eat. 2) Get at least halfway through the book I just started reading. 3) Finish the baby quilt. 4) Do the tasks on the daily and weekly cards. 5) For extra credit, do one or more of the zone tasks. Tune in next Monday to see how I did.
A year ago, I recapped Thanksgiving weekend. I really wish I’d read that entry before we headed out this year, since we again got caught in the post-parade traffic in Chicago. Oops. For added fun this year, there was a near-blizzard on our way back, but since we’d decided to drive the Ranger, we were able to flip it into 4WD and make it through without too much difficulty.
