Onwards and Upwards

In my last blog I talked about my intentions for the year, and while I’ve definitely wobbled on a couple of them, I’m happy to report they are going well, over a month in. I thought I’d take some time this evening to reflect on them and report on my progress.

Intention 1 – Get outside for at least 15 minutes per day = Achievement unlocked. Of all my goals this one I have found the easiest. Between having to go into the office three times per week now, and doing my couch to 5k three times per week, getting outside every day is a doddle. I also decided to add to this challenge by taking a photo-a-day and sharing these once per week on Sundays on my Instagram. I’m really enjoying it so far.

Intention 2 – Read at least one page, or listen to an audiobook for at least one minute every day. I managed this for all of January, but then unexpectedly in the first week of February one of the books I was reading – The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron – actually calls for an abstaining of reading. For a whole week. I can’t not read for a week, as I have to read for work, and to be honest the more I thought about this request the more it annoyed me, everyone has to read. You have to read the train times, in most jobs you have to read at work, stop signs, cooking instructions, medication etc. No-one could realistically in this day and age NOT read for a whole day, let alone a whole week. Unless they were in a coma maybe. But I wanted to at least TRY to do what the book said, so I tried to abstain from reading for pleasure for a week. I still listened to audiobooks, so technically I still did my intention of reading or listening to one minute of an audiobook, but it kinda made me have a bit of a wobble on physical reading. Which is ironic really because that meant I didn’t read the next week of The Artist’s Way either, but I’ve picked that back up now too, so I am getting back to a semblance of normality with my reading. I doubt I will finish reading any books this month – other than my re-read of Outlander book 2 as my book club wraps up on that book next week, but as I am only ‘re-reading’ that on Audible and as it’s a re-read, I don’t really count that as finishing a book – but at least I am back reading physical books once again.

Intention 3 – write every day in my journal or diary. In doing The Artist’s Way I’ve also been writing my morning pages every day, but I’ve massively slipped on this one this week. I’ve slept terribly this week and so writing in my journal before bed was not the highest of priorities, and as I’d kinda stopped reading The Artist’s Way as well, my morning pages have also fallen by the wayside this week too. But last night I caught up on the days I had missed this week in my journal, and so technically I am still on track, even if I did have a few days where I didn’t write ON the day. I will make more of a conscious effort with this one. Especially as I have picked up The Artist’s Way again.

Additionally to my three intentions, I have also been doing The Artist’s Way and Couch to 5k as I mentioned above. I made the decision to do both of these things in January because I figured that both are free, and I knew I would have no money, and because I figured that January – with its nights closing in early and lots of time for self reflection – was the perfect time of year to dedicate to these two ways to improve both my mental and physical health. Due to a slight wobble in doing both of these things I’m up to week 5 on both, which has turned out kinda serendipitous. At week 3 of C25k I really struggled to just run for three minutes without stopping. I was determined not to move to the next week until I conquered it, and so I repeated it two or three times over. In the end I decided if I was stopping to walk then I might just as well stop to walk during a five min run than just keep trying to do the three min runs and feeling like crap because I was failing. So I moved on to week 4 and today was the fifth five minute run I managed to do without stopping. Similarly, with The Artist’s Way I kinda hit a pause on week 4 because that’s when it said to stop reading. So today I started week 5 of c25k, and I also started week 5 of The Artist’s Way. Maybe I just needed to do them in tandem for them to work. We will see.

In terms of work and money, things seem to be going from bad to worse, so now that I’ve got the intentions rolling along nicely without needing much in the way of hard work to keep them on track, maybe it’s time I start focussing a bit more on work goals. I’ll update next month to see how that’s progressing. For now I will keep going onwards and upwards. How did your intentions for the year go? Let me know in the comments.