Week 2 kickoff

My sleeping habits are woeful. I sleep terribly, pump myself full of caffeine to get through the day, and am so wired when night falls that I again sleep terriby. So, this week I am going to try to cut that cycle off. I am going to try to ease away from the caffeine.

It sounds simple, but I'm actually pretty sensitive to the stuff. I abhor coffee, but I guzzle Vault Zero as if it won't be there tomorrow. I know that stuff isn't good for me, but it keeps me going. Previous attempts to cut back on it have been met with wretched withdrawl headaches.

This week, I'm going to challenge myself to scale the consumption back and get down to only one can of the stuff per day, and absolutely none with or after dinner. I'm not quite ready for the pain of going cold turkey and cutting it out completely; maybe that is a challenge for another week.

If I can stick with this one, it is beneficial in so many different ways. The most obvious is that it might help me to right my sleeping patterns a bit. However, it also holds financial benefit - this stuff doesn't grow on trees, after all. Not to mention, I'm sure my overall health will benefit: if I'm not drinking a soda, what am I drinking? Probably water, which is much better for me.

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I suppose I should also officially wrap up Week 1. I'll say it was a resounding success. It is now habitual for me to spend a bit of time each day planning ahead before I start on things, helping to ensure that I focus my efforts where they are really needed the most.

I mentioned before that I was thinking about giving myself a little reward, possibly a haircut. Well, I went a little further. I haven't changed my hairstyle in about a decade now... I've been wearing it long with all hair the same length since I was about 14-15. So instead of just getting a trim, I decided to change the style. I love it - it really changes how I look in a subtle way, and it makes me happy.

I don't know if I will reward myself every week. Since one of my major goals is to finish school with only the debt that is absolutely necessary, it seems a bit counter-intuitive to reward myself weekly. But every now and then, if I keep it reasonable, it makes a great motivator.

Week 1: Home Stretch

One side effect of devoting time every day to simple organizational tasks is that they take less and less time once you are on top of everything. Earlier this week, I consumed the entire 30 minutes set aside for organization without even trying. Now, by Sunday, it's actually a chore to fill the time completely.

I love lists. I've made lists for everything: To do lists for home. To do lists for school. Lists of things we need for the vacation next week. I unexpectedly adore it. There's something satisfying about scratching something off a list when it's done. I'm wasting so much ink and so many trees.


Since week 1 is nearly over, I've started thinking about the concept of rewards. I'm not sure if I'll reward myself each week for staying on top of what I've devoted myself to, but this week I think I might. I sorely need a haircut, so I might treat myself to one tomorrow.

... better put that on the list!

Week 1: Update

I hope nobody thinks the brief lapse between posts means I have already fallen off the wagon! Actually, I spent most of Thursday violently ill, and was unable to put my plans into action.

Friday was a different story, thank goodness. You see, I'm a full time (even in the summer) non-traditional college student. I'm carrying three senior-level courses
that are all compressed to a 12-week semester. Between them all, I will write 13 short papers, 4 comprehensive research papers, complete two mid-term projects, and then sit through finals. (Let this be a side-lesson: Anyone who tells you it's okay to load up over the recommended summer course load because "Summer classes are easy" is full of shit.)

So one of the main themes of my summer is that I've always got homework to be doing. Always. This is why I picked organization to tackle first. Before today, I had a mess of due-dates, a stack of required reading, and no clue where I really needed to focus my efforts first. A mere 30 minutes plotting all of my deadlines for the next couple of weeks on a calendar changed all of that.

Even better, was that after I had everything sorted out, it was so much easier to get focused and stay focused on one thing until completion. Typically I end up with 5 things all partially done instead of one or two that are complete because I let myself ping-pong between them. I think this stems from a lack of clear direction before I start, which will hopefully not be a problem from here on out.

So far, so good! With Week 1 feeling so successful, I should start considering what I will tackle with Week 2. Considering each of my blog entries are subsequently later and later at night, maybe I should consider sleeping habits next. :)

Week 1's change

First, I would like to thank anyone at all who might be reading this. I received a few comments last night, which was quite frankly, "a few" more than I anticipated. Having those votes of encouragement waiting for me today when I checked my mail was very honestly the difference between this becoming one of those one-day-abandon blogs, or me making something serious of it.

Since I'm here, I hope its obvious that I've chosen to stick with this. That swells me up with pride, at least a little.

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This was really more difficult than I thought it would be. I had have so many things that I'm really unhappy with about my life. All I needed to do today, in addition to my general "day-to-day" duties, was simply to pick one small thing to change.

It was much tougher than I expected!

By making one choice on a little thing to change this week, it feels like I have to prioritize. What am I most unhappy about? What do I most want to change, even a little?

Even now, I am questioning my choice. I need to hurry up and post it, so it will be set in stone!

For week 1, I plan to devote at least 30 minutes per day to organization.

One of the things that stresses me out are my responsibilites. Even when I know what they are ahead of time, that time has a way of slipping by unnoticed until I have far too little to accomplish what I must.

So, for Week 1 (June 18th - June 24th), I plan to set aside just half an hour per day for personal organization. Either making to-do lists, or scheduling my day... there are lots of ways that a mere 30 minutes can save me many hours if I use them to plan.

I decided on this change first because I think this daily planning time will really set the groundwork for future changes.


Would anyone like to join me in this week's challenge? Feel free to post what strategies you think you might use; I plan to review them along with some of my own ideas tomorrow. If organization is already for forte, by all means please comment and share with us your favorite tips, tricks, and tools.

Hopefully this gets me off to a running start. Maybe it will jumpstart someone else, as well?

-<3,
Merah

Week 1 of the rest of my life

I can't sleep.

For probably the hundredth time just this week, I'm consumed with a bout of self-loathing. There are so many things about my life that I could have handled ... I could be handing so much more successfully.

For probably the millionth time in the past decade, I am suddenly filled with motivation. "I'm going to fix myself!" The question is, what will make this time different from all the other times? The fact is, such waves of motivation are fleeting. Like so many other late, sleepless nights, I will come up with a plan tonight to fix everything. It will be flawless; if I just do all six-thousand, three-hundred twenty-eight of these things, my life will be perfect in short order.

For the first time in my life, I made myself slow down. Waves of personal-reinvention are, at least for me, always doomed to quick failure, and I've finally figured out that I'm doing it all wrong.

If I want to create lasting change in my life, I need to start small and keep it simple.

So that's exactly what I'm going to do.

In order to keep up the pace, I thought about keeping a journal or log of all of my changes. After further consideration, I decided I would keep a blog instead. I can't be the only person suffering from these things that keep me unhappy: weight, career, money, home life... these are all common complaints. So I decided to put this out for the world to see, hoping maybe one of my little changes will help someone else on their own quest for peace.

Besides, something about putting this online makes it more real of a commitment, to me. If I don't keep up with my promises, I'm not only lying to myself, but to all of you, as well.

All, er... zero of you. Well, every blog has to start somewhere, right?


Tomorrow, I will select my first little change and get started.