December 12 in 12

 Whew! I haven't written in forEver and I want to post this twelfth in my 12 in 12 good habits before it's 2013. In part this has been because I'm absolutely not feelng the Christmas Love. It's been all I could do to fake it till I make it - but I shall continue to make that effort. Usually I'm cock-a-whoop with Christmas Joy. I am sure the 2012 supply is around here somewhere .... I just have to find it. 

So here it is - the last good habit I want to weave into my life. It may sound like an odd one for a librarian - but it is important for me to reveal the Great Librarian Secret: 

We do not read books all day 

 Yup. That's right. We don't sit around reading all day.

What do we do? 

• We introduce little ones to their first act as citizens - to benefit from the common good, to care for the borrowed books, and to return them so they can be shared with someone else. 
• We help 9 year old boys find something they can do a book report on that isn't full of princesses and dresses. 
• We listen to teenagers as if they were adults. And then we answer them as if they were adults. 
• We help your mother log on to the Internet to see the pictures you emailed her. 
• We mop up the bathroom after somebody evil has made a mess. 
• We fix the lights outside. 
• We explain to county/city/state/federal sources why they need to fund the library 
• We entertain the Rotary/Lions/Chamber of Commerce/Masons/Women's Club with stories about life among the stacks - before we ask them for money too. 
• Oh yes. And then there is the paperwork. 

So - what we tend to read all day are book reviews. We only get to read books at home .... like you. And for a couple of reasons, I don't seem to read all the books I intended to read. This is especially true for reading teen and tween fiction - where I believe some of the most innovative writing is happening today. Don't get me wrong - I love a good mystery and now and again I can find a historical writer who is not into Vampires or time travel. Ken Follett comes to mind first but there are other great historical writers out there who can put a convincing amount of modern mores into the world of Castles and Kings. But I don't like a lot of the adult fiction that's coming out right now: Mean bitchy women and weak men ... Ugh. 

Alas, I've resorted to reading mostly non-fiction or familiar old friends - novelists I can depend upon - Austen, Bronte, Lovelace and Wilder - and while this is certainly alright - my choice - even a good thing -- the danger in avoiding contemporary fiction is that one looses touch with the values and beliefs of society. It is only through fiction that we pass on what is important to us to the next generation. And so, my 12th in 12 will be:

7. Read some fiction every day. 

I am thinking seriously of limiting my reading to YA and junior fiction. The teacher in me wants to find out what type of fiction - besides vampires, of course - is reaching young folk these days. I actually started last month - because just knowing this was coming reminded me that it was also going to be fun. I finally read The Giver (Lois Lowery) and the first of the Percy Jackson novels (Rick Riordan) and I'm rather rubbing my hands at what I am going to pick up next. 

And how am I doing with my other habits? How was November? 

 Clean the kitchen every night. Not perfect but good enough to make me take notice how pleasant it is to walk into a kitchen that is clean and tidy. I would give myself an A-

 Food Tracking eh - there have been some days when I just didn't bother - but then there was Thanksgiving when I Pre-tracked! I give myself a solid B 

 Exercising Yep. here I have done well - and even done very well so it gets a solid A 

   Drink 6-8 cups of water every day Can't figure out why I haven't been drinking water - but I can feel it. Not a failure but I need to do better. I give myself a D+ 

   The Charles Schwab list at work I realized I was letting this slip and ... uh. no. not a good thing. Not enough work gets done when I forget. I earn a C 

  Read my 5-year plan every morning week Eh. Not. What was I thinking? This earns a C-

   Compliment someone on my staff every day This month has been all about planning for someone's retirement so I was aware of what everybody does and how valuable they all are - and said so. I get a B 

 Draw 20 minutes a day. I did some art most days till I finished the 40 watercolor Christmas cards I'm sending out - and then I stopped because ... there are other things to do that demand artistic effort - I get an A 

 Select a big life goal - a big personal thing - and take one step towards it ... every day. Got to admit this - I have drifted a bit in November. It's the beginning of the Holiday Season so I won't be too hard on me, but I will only give myself a C 

 Ditto at work - Same issue - same grade C 

 Pray. I realized last month that I needed to do lots more of this ... and I did - the healthy, kind, grateful, honest sort of prayer. I'm proud of this. I get an A

Next year I will work on keeping these habits fresh and alive and perhaps, just perhaps, limit my resolutions to only a few key things. 

And now ... where is that Christmas Mojo - did I leave it at Tara? 

Better'n 3! It's a 5 Day Weekend!

Of course, it is Thanksgiving too - and I am thankful for both the day and the reason for the day - thankful for the thousands of blessings I enjoy - but most of all - I am thankful for some time off.

And just typing this makes me pause and wonder why I feel that way. This way. This is more than the usual delight-in-goofing-off sensation. This is a taking-off-tight-shoes feeling. This has a soupcon of relief to it. And it's been a long time since I felt relief at escaping my day-to-day world. But this has been a very challenging year. I love that word - it's such a good euphemism for rotten. And of course, this hasn't been a rotten year either. But for a ENFP Virgo - which is already such a conflict - I've had to spend more days than I like doggedly getting through whatever I had to get through.

But not this week.  This week I am going to savor my time, enjoy my family, explore new foods and read the Percy Jackson series.  My traditional holiday weekend reading is usually the 4 high school books in the Betsy/Tacy series - and I'll read them, too, but they are fun all the way up to - and through - Christmas.  The last of my 12 in 12 habits is to read YA and older children's fiction 20 minutes a day. The underlying intention is to be better grounded in that genre and I'm not going to get too weird about the 20 minutes a day thing after December .... though I will stick to it during this final month of 2012. And since I'm thinking of using minutes of reading instead of number of books read for our Summer Reading Club, it will be interesting to see the effect of monitoring my reading time.

I like this series - it's got a lot in common with Star Wars and Harry Potter - the same 'special' kid, the same fight against the dark side, the same enigmatic teachers who won't lay it out, but insist upon their charges risking their lives while figuring it out. I have always found that last aspect sort of weird because if I were coaching someone who's life was at risk, I'd give him all the tools he needed to reach his quest  - but there - it's a guy think, I think. BD used to do the same thing to LD and I, at least, had the good sense to stay out of it.

I also recently, and at last, read Lois Lowery's The Giver - a different sort of book - with much less of the quest and a much greater development of an alternative culture. In many ways it was a far more horrific book because a single soul was expected to contain all the feelings of an entire community while everyone else buzzed along in neutral.

The initial books in both of the series are good enough to tempt me to continue reading - even if their structures are very predictable. They are, after all, intended for young readers.  In fact, that's part of why I enjoy reading children's literature. I like distilling stuff down to clear lines.

But before any indulgent reading happens there must be HouseCleaning and Feast Preparations. I have silver to polish. I have pies to make. I want to go to the gym before lunch. We have New Guests coming for Thanksgiving. First the Feast - then the Fiction.

Ta.

November's 12 for 12

And so the year slips into November, drawing the covers up around its shoulders as it prepares to go to sleep for the winter. It's also time to add the next to the last habit to my days and to look back a bit and asses how well those other habits have been integrated into my life.

There are only 2 habits left and for November I choose: 

Clean the kitchen every night.

This is an easy one for me to integrate because .... way last winter when I selected these 12 habits I started cleaning the kitchen every night. As I wrote back then, 

I am a morning person and am often really tired at night. It's easy to get up at 5 and clean the kitchen - but seeing a dirty kitchen first thing in the morning starts my day off with a tiny bit of ugliness. How about starting it off with something pretty instead?

As soon as I'd written those words, though, I realized that it would be easy to just start doing this right away and now it's already a habit.And I was right. It's nice to walk into a spanking clean (at least as spanking clean as I can get it) kitchen and start making the morning coffee. There have been evenings when I've walked through the kitchen and thought "I'm too tired" but then the habit would pinch and I'd  spend the few minutes to tidy things up. That is what a habit is for. 

As I move into the holiday cooking time, it will be good to already be in the habit of cleaning up after myself. I expect it will make this stretch of time go much more smoothly.

As for the rest of my good habits - I must begin with a caveat. October has been a difficult month in spite of the many lovely events and pleasures that dotted the weeks. First off there is An Issue that needed to be dealt with - something I've dreaded - and, though I put on my big girl panties at last and peeled back the curtain, I was only able to let in some cleansing sunshine. It's better - but it's not done yet - and, alas, may never be done with - which is part of why this is such a difficult situation. Like humidity in the summer, this is something that will always have to be factored into the equation.

Also, we've been short staffed at work due to illness, making the work days feel sooooo long. In addition, I'm facing a huge staffing rearrangement - the consequence of time, as a senior staffer is retiring. I have been dreading and grieving over the shake-up because this particular team has worked so beautifully these past few years. Even though I can see wonderful developments arising from the staff alignment that's moving into place - I hate to see something old, successful and precious come to an end. Oh Yes. Then there was the storm. Yeah. Dread + Stress + Mild Grief = Difficult Month. 

So I am cutting myself some serious slack on the habit forming stuff. Still, it is better to know how I've done before it all becomes a blur and I lose all the ground I've made this year

Food Tracking

I have done so poorly at this I should give myself an F. Looking back at my track records I see I only tracked daily for one week. After that - once I had 'blown' it for the week ...usually by Saturday ... I just quit. Yes there was the 1200 calorie cheesecake (of which I ate only 1/2) and yes there was the wedding and the anniversary and the convention. Okay. So why am I so afraid to look at myself when I'm not being perfect? I think there is a serious SERIOUS issue here with self delusion. I want to see me as being a Good Girl and Not Making Mistakes and Knowing Better ... and a tracker that says I ate enough to feed a football team won't let me see that. But if I did eat that much, gosh - what's the point in saying "I did not write it down, so maybe I didn't really eat it" ... Like those jokes about Southern Virgins we told in the '60's. "I didn't get caught so I didn't do it..."

hmmm. 

I think I need to come to peace with myself about what food and eating is all about and perhaps about why I am bothering to care about tracking and what I weigh and how I look and the entire body thing. I do care. I care because I want to be healthy. I care because I want to look good. But unfortunately I also care because I want to be a Good Girl but I want the food that makes me feel like a Bad Girl.

There's a focus on the wrong things and I am going to have to do some serious thinking, some deep soul searching, and realign the focus onto the positive issues. In fact - I need to get comfortable seeing me overeat - because I promise you, when I overeat I refuse to acknowledge it till later - in short - I won't look at me doing something I think I should not do ... even if I do it. I need to get comfortable looking at all of me if I ever want to get along with all of me - instead of getting blindsided by the chocolate-candy-eating me. It's time for the Left Brain School Marm to have a little chat with the Right Brain Wild Child and see if they can start working together again. 

And so, even if my actual tracking activity earned such a low grade - the fact that I have explored what was going on before November got into full swing earns me a low, but passing grade this month - a D+ 

Exercising

All the traveling I did this month interrupted my beloved weekly schedule and I missed weight training several times - but I got in lots of other activity - frequently deliberately substituted for the tried and true. I will give myself a B+ 

Drink 6-8 cups of water every day

Eh. sometimes yes, too often not - but enough to earn a C 

The Charles Schwab list at work

I couldn't have made it through the month without that. There were a few days when I forgot and it just made things SO bad that I could not really function. It earns a B+ 

Read my 5-year play every morning week

Which I did till last week and this - and I will blame that on travel and hurricanes and give myself a C

Compliment someone on my staff every day

Every Day? hmmm. Perhaps 3 times a week. I wonder if every day is impractical and yet I fear if I don't hold on to the daily intention I will drift into forgetfulness. I will have to ponder this question. But ... I grade myself with another C 

Draw 20 minutes a day. I will never get any better if I don't practice every day

Surprisingly - I've kept up with this fairly well. I am not drawing every day because I am painting some too - and working on a 'project'  that has kept my art supplies spread out on the dining room table all month. This has earned me an A-

Select a big life goal - a big personal thing - and take one step towards it ... every day.

Okay - this is a tricky bit. If I want to be fit and slim and healthy and to develop my artistic skills ... all specific Previously Mentioned Habits and I do something towards even one of those Previously Mentioned Habits, then ... have I also fulfilled This Habit? Uh. The operative word is Select because if it's a habit did I select it? Well. My intention when I wrote these habits was to be conscious of my efforts and deliberate, not just lucky. In light of the Other Challenges of this month I will give myself a C

Ditto at work - Same issue - same grade C

Pray. 

You can be sure I have done one heck-uva-lotta praying this month - praying for courage, praying for wisdom, praying for the storm to miss us - but not the daily thing I should have done and again - not the deliberate and scheduled way I intended when I first plotted out this scheme of habit forming behavior. But though I did not pray at scheduled times, my prayers were not just the plea for pleasure selfish ones.  There was enough of the true prayer this month to justify a grade of B+  

12 in 12 for October

Well. As our dear Robert Burns reminds us, the best laid plans gang aft agley, and if there was ever an agley September, this was it. Whew. Everything just seemed to interrupt everything else. It was a "lower my head and plow on through" month.

Mind now - it was not a bad month. It held a Birthday - complete with 3 deserts, 2 happy birthday songs and presents. It had a New Puppy in it. It included buying a completely TheQueen-like dress at way more than I usually spend. There were a number of parties and there were may loving birthday wishes too. But ... it was also a doughy month - a 'swimming-in-pudding' month - a long hard tough chew of a month and for the first time I can ever remember - it was a September I was pleased to bid goodbye.

All the astrologers are giving me uplifting October horoscopes though, and I am ready to welcome them into my life. Ready for life to be a little bit easier, a little bit more predictable. Adding a New Habit to your life is difficult when things turn all upside down from day to day. Let us hope this more settled period will help me score higher on my Habit-0-Meter.

First off - the habit for October is:

10. Ditto at work - Select something from the 5-year Plan and step one step closer to achieving it - or to realizing it's not the goal we wanted to achieve and getting it out of the plan. 

This is the mate to "reading the 5-year Plan every day - September's habit. I won't be able to tell if I'm actually forming this habit (which I have always heard as "Good For You") unless I stick to September's habit - a good thing since I did not do all that well at reading the plan every day last month. I started off with enthusiasm but crowded days and a little internal anxiety about Other Things made it easy to drift away from my focus. Now that I acutally have to do something each day besides look at it - maybe I'll look at it more often. But ... Daily is a bit of over-kill. Weekly will be often enough.


As for the score card on the rest of my habits, let's just have a quick review.

September: Read 5-year plan daily - uh. hmm. how about 10 times or 33% which is a failing grade except that .... even that 30% was a Big Help. I will pass me - but, just barely. D+

August (and September) Draw every day ... well. I drew about 20 days out of the month - whic is about 66% of the time so - see above, right?  Another D+

July: Charles Schwab List at work - yes. even when I didn't obey it at least I knew if I was slipping off the point. Not perfect - but I would say a B+

June: One Step Towards Big Life Goal .... I'm still blaming the kinds of things that were happening last month  so I'll give myself a C

May:  Compliment someone every day    hmmm. my bad. another C

April:  Exercise   even here, with my beloved exercise I was a slacker. C- for me

March: Water - nope. Pretty bad with this one too. Not a failing grade but maybe a D+

Feb:  Prayer - here I did much better. I made a conscious effort to pray every day. Not always at the same time - which I think would make it easier to do - but every single day I took some time out to pray. This was an A fer sure.

Jan:  Track what I eat. Well. I did. I tracked all those coconut cakes and did you know an Applebee's shooter desert - yeah - I'm talking about the small desert - is 13 Weight Watcher's points which translates out to 650 calories or 1/3 the daily total for an adult female. Yikes! Not good. So. I tracked. But I gained weight - and I don't track for the fun of it. I track to some purpose and the purpose is weight loss or weight maintenance. Not weight gain.  So that is a C as well.

Hmmm. C habit maker. Average. Not, alas, what I hoped these Good Habits would lead me to. I can be aveage without trying. Let us hope I will do better this month. At Tara.

September 12 in 12

Yes. A Brand New Month - and Birthday Month at that - and I'm still thinking I can add another good habit to my life. I've been trying to make small step improvements to an already good situation all year. Looking back, I remember it was hard to come up with 12 habits given the criteria they had to meet:

• take little time 
• be done every day 
• make my life more fun, happier, better

 Of course I'm always enthusiastic about New Years Resolutions. I simply adore the idea of things being better tomorrow - at Tara or at home or on the job. I love progress and movement and the joyful spiral of Better Things. Habits, the experts say, are formed when one does the same thing for 21 days in a row. The trick is ... if you miss a day, those same experts say, you have to start all over again with day 1. So perhaps I did not, in fact, create new habits in all cases. Truth is - I am not a metronome and can neither tick nor tock with perfect consistency. But since the real aim is improvement, progress and Better Things, (after all - should I achieve perfection, that would mean the end of Better Things, right?) I am okay with my B+ efforts Since the October board meeting is when I report on the status of the 5-year plan I think it behooves me to add this one to my life in September.

 5. Read my 5-year play every morning - because it is so durn easy to forget what I'd planned to do until it's review time and then I have to confess to all the things I failed to do! (a corollary to this is - have each of my staff read it at least once a week too - but that's another list)


Wise readers might think I ought to have added this much earlier in the year - and perhaps I could have but there were Other Things I wanted more.  Also - most of these habits were not things I had never done before - were not steps into entirely new directions - they were things I sort of did slap dash, hit or miss and now or then. The idea was that if I did them more consistently, made them daily habits, I'd make More Progress and have Fewer Moments of Horror when I realized I was late for something, missing something, about to crash and burn. In short - I already did all these things sometimes. I just wanted to do them more often.

Also, I put this one off so late in the year because I feared I would get bored with my plan. I needed to figure out how to go about reading it. It's actually a pretty lengthy document, full of definitions and explanations and ... well ... words.

Maybe too many words. Maybe it needs to be given a serious overhaul. Or maybe it's a really good plan. But whatever - I am going to focus on it with deep and concentrated thought from now on - not just because it is Good For Me, but because I'm moving into a late stage in my career and it's time to think about succession - and about what must be done in the next few years to make a smooth transition from now to a post TheQueen reign.

This is not to say that I haven't looked at my 5-year plan since last January. It just means that now it gets daily attention, sharper focus and more time. And if September will be to study the 5-year plan, October will be to begin making daily steps towards fulfillment of that plan. It all fits in with the Back-to-School feeling of autumn.

And should you be curious about how well I am doing with the Other Habits - well here's an update:

 August - draw 20 minutes every day - which I did - and watched my skills improve.  A+ for me

July  Charles Schwab List - August grew very fractious and difficult and though I'd make the list every day ... I didn't always follow it the next day. I will just say, I did my best and got through a rough month as lightly as possible.   A- for me

June  One Step Towards a Big Life Goal ah well - See August. Because a BLG for me is to become a better artist. So that's a pro forma A for me.

May  Compliment someone at work each day -  Why this is so hard to do I don't know. I believe I am kind and thoughtful - and I certainly DID compliment someone sometimes. But I always felt that little moment of "Ah Ha" whenever it happened. This is not a habit yet. But I am aware of it when I do it. I'd say ... D+

April  Exercise - well. I love me some exercise and I get in 4 days a week almost every week. On other days I am just active period, so I give myself an A on this one.

March Water .... Yup. I'm good with this one too - perhaps not perfect - but certainly I deserve a B++

February Prayer ... daily prayer. Here I have to admit that with a month as difficult as August was I am sure I prayed Every Day - if not many times a day. Of course - I believe the idea was to pray thankfully more often than I prayed supplicatingly. I can't give myself an A since I only acted in deed, not in spirit. I shall, instead, give myself a fat C+ and try a little harder this month.

January Journal my food - another A for me here - I am, if not the perfect weight, at least aware of how I got where I am. And I'm close. And my dining is healthier and better and I feel better for it. In fact, I wonder how I would have made it through Awful August without being nutritionally strong.

And so it is Labor Day. If I labor at all it shall be on cleaning the house - which I may or may not do. It's humid and rain is in the forecast. I may choose to be labor-free today and werk harder tomorrow. At Tara.

DRAWING some conclusions ...

So. I have been drawing this month ... if not every day, I am at least up to ten 20 minute sessions. There have been days when I truly couldn't find 20 minutes to spare. But I've persevered and will continue to do so - it's been such fun exploring pencil on paper, line and shadow.

One of the things I love about practicing drawing is how it makes me look at the world differently. Driving in to town I examine the shapes of the open spaces the trees create as they branch over the highway. I notice what the different little black shadow spaces look like - see the blank white spots created by sunlight on leaf tops. With a librarian - it's all about the story. With an artist - it's all about the shapes.

I firmly believe that everyone can learn to draw at least some. My response, when people tell me they "can't draw a straight line with a ruler" (and note - I don't say 'you use a pencil to draw') is to ask them if they can write in cursive - if they can sign their name.  All of them say they can - to which I reply - what is a more complicated shape to draw than a lower case letter K? The truth is - writing is just a speedy type of drawing and if people practiced drawing as much as they practiced handwriting they could all draw - at least as well as they can write. It is the looking - the noticing - that makes drawing so different from writing. It is the incredible amount of time and concentration it takes to fill in all the details that makes a picture different from letter. And it is the fact that words are not being used in a drawing to help explain what's on the page that makes our relationship to art different from our relationship to a book.

Something else I've learned as I've sketched away is that it is much easier to draw from a photograph than from real life. No matter how good or vivid or well angled a photograph is - it's still only a 2 dimensional representation of something, which is what I'm trying to create with pencil and paper. Drawing from real life involves slowing down the part of the brain that speed-dials spacial relationships from eye to brain. My one drawing from a real object is so distorted and did so frustrate me that I have decided to stick with photographs for the rest of the month. One needs successes (or perhaps only modest failures) in the beginning to keep one's confidence up. LOL. At least, TheQueen needs them.

Still and all - I am having a splendid time with this exercise. It's supposed to become a habit, you know - something I do every day. It is also part of another habit I wanted to incorporate into the Life of TheQueen - to take one step every day towards a Big Life Goal - and one of my BLGs is to be able to draw - in fact - to live an artistic life. Art really matters to me and now that my mother no longer provides me with it - I need to make my own.

So. May your own BLGs be achieved - and may you take a step towards one today.

Now where's my pencil ......

My 12 for 12 August Habit

Yes. It's August and time to add another good habit to my life. Admittedly, I gave a little thought to calling a halt to all this habit forming effort. 7 changes in a year is a LOT of changes - even when they are small, even when some of them aren't really changes but merely expansions of present behavior. Like last month's Charles Schwab List ... which, btw, I followed perfectly and it's a durn good thing, because wooeee. July ran me ragged. July was so durn hot we actually drove down to the home improvement store and looked at air conditioners. Didn't buy - but at least investigated them. And our summer reading program at the library kept us busier than that set of proverbial jumper cables. The kids read 5319 books in 6 weeks plus 2 days. And tonight we host the  Movie Night for the students who made library ads in the animated movie class. And Interesting Things developed in local government. And of course it was our quarterly board meeting month. And we had company and we were guests.

In short - I think I have a string of accomplishments behind me, as per my wish when I wrote about the CSList month, but I'm too busy to look back - onnacounta - there are More Things lining up in August to keep my nose to the grindstone. It is just possible that life will open up come the end of the month or in early September (Birthday Month, you know) but .... well ... I'll just say - thank goodness I'm using that good tool to keep focused at werk.

So - what is my August pick? This month I choose:

8. Draw 20 minutes a day. I will never get any better if I don't practice every day


As busy as I've been all summer, I just haven't felt very creative or artistic. Yes I know - there is creativity in problem solving, creativity in making a work environment where other people can blossom, creativity in organizing (and yes, creating) a beautiful room (I promise - photos soon) out of a cluttered hot mess. But in the traditional, hands on sense of creating, I just haven't been there. I even took a precious day off 2 weeks ago and met up with a girlfriend with the intention of painting au plein air, but it didn't happen - we just used the time to catch up on each other's lives.  But we did come up with the idea of doing a 20 minute sketch every day in August and emailing it to each other. It helps to make a promise to someone else when I try to effect a change and yet, I'm still shy enough about my own skills and talents to go slow with something like drawing and painting. Also - doing artwork play is very difficult for me. I can easily spend an entire weekend scrubbing out dirty kitchens ... but playing with art takes more initial thrust than getting the Saturn Moon Launch up. We need not go into all the reasons why I have such a hard time letting myself do the perfectly innocent things I want to do - suffice it to say that I have to make a duty out of play before I can actually play. At least I do make it a duty - or part of a list - or a public commitment ... and once I get over the initial fear of getting caught out not werkwerkwerking, I sometimes get pretty good at this play stuff. 


LOL - which is a statement that only emphasizes my Fear Of Play. 


 "But what about your knitting?"  you ask. "That's the only reason I look at this this blog."


Eh. My knitting mojo is a frustrated captive of math. Temperatures are too high, time is too scarce, projects are all at tricky places. Some day it will get cool again and I will knit again. That's about all I can promise.


Of course, my August habit is added to the list of Other Habits I've tried to incorporate into my life so how have I done with the previous ones? After all - a habit is supposed to be something you do regularly. Here's a recap of the 12 for 12 to date:


JAN Tracking my food   Yup. pretty much 100% - with the result that I am now 3 pounds away from my weight goal. Give myself an A+ for this. It's a true habit.


FEB Daily Prayer    well, not as good as I would wish - I'd say more like Every 4th Day prayer - and often only when I'm having a bad time. The point of prayer is to put me in a state where I don't think these bad times are so very bad. I'd give myself a C+ and say it's not yet a habit.


MAR Drink enough water Well - I do that very well, but maybe not perfectly. I keep a glass on my desk and of course a bottle with my gym bag - so here I think I've earned an A-. This is a habit.


APR Exercise  I've done really well here too. I'm not a fanatic about exercise and I can certainly spend a day on the couch with a ripping good mystery (Barbara Cleverly's The Palace Tiger) but I do exercise 3-5 days a week and I've kept at it all year. I'd give myself a solid A for this because ... It's a habit. 


MAY Compliment someone every day  Uh Oh. I have not done so well with this.  This is difficult to do because I tend to think that we are all supposed to be trying to do a stellar job all the time. I am not a perfectionist - but I can't conceive why anyone would not try to do his best, all the time. Why try to do something at all if one is not interested in reaching one's own personal best? Not an arbitrary Best or Perfect Job - but one's own best given the circumstances of time, place, environment. Eh. Well. That's the Virgo in me, I know. But I have made some efforts (obviously not my own personal best, right? except ... given circumstances of time, place ... LOL!)  


Okay - okay - I know. I'm unreasonable and skirting close to hypocritical. I will say that whenever I do compliment someone I am made aware of the habit I am trying to inculcate and that is the only thing that keeps me from saying I've failed at this. I'll give myself a D for this habit, try harder to incorporate it into my life and state .. "Nope. Not even close to a habit yet."


JUNE Select a big life goal and  take one step towards it every day.   Well, heck. That one is so easy to view from all angles that just getting out of bed is a step towards a big life goal of living. I know, I was supposed to big a Big Deal thing ... like the Noroway Fjord trip .. which, btw, I suggested to BD and was quite dissapointed to find that he wasn't even interested. Ah well. He did order in The Vikings from Netflix . That may be all the fjord I ever see - but then - he did suggest a ferry trip around Canada's Maritime Islands. I can do that.


And the weight loss thing - well, that's a BLG and I have to take a step towards that every day. At least I am aware that if there are things I want to do in life, I have to plan for them. Especially if they are Big Things that I want to Go My Way. 


Still and all - If I'm honest I have to give myself a C on this and say it's not yet a habit.


JULY The Charles Schwab List - my goodness. I wouldn't have gotten through the month without that. In fact I've been using it all year but this month I really felt the importance of doing it Every Day. I even used the old ratty notebook I've been using all year, though I did buy a new one. Another thing I'd like to do - maybe another BLG even - is to use up what I have before I go buy a new one. Shampoo, bubble bath, notebooks. There's just too much 3/4 empty clutter in my life because I love to shop and I hate to come to closure. 


I've actually left that notebook on my desk, though, in constant view, to remind me to Make A List. And I have. I do. I'd give myself an A for this and call it a habit.


And if I want to make drawing a habit .. and get better at it ... I had best wind things up here and go get my sketch pad. 


Ta. Have a great day. Make it a habit.  

12 in 12 for July - just a wee bit late

Alas, and just a wee bit chagrined about how I did in June with that month's selection. 

Not So Well. 

But then again ... if looked at from a different angle, pretty durn well after all. 

June's selection was to pick a big life goal and do something every day towards achieving it. The motivation behind this habit which I would like to incorporate into my every day life is the desire to not let time pass without making a push to do the things I want ... and suddenly waking up and finding out it's too late. Behind THAT motivation was a vague sensation that some things ... not necessarily a bucket list of them ... but just things I'd always thought of doing were no where near happening. For example - taking a boat up a fjord in Norway. 

The trouble is - I got stuck on that Norway trip and couldn't think of anything else on the list and was too tired, too busy, and maybe just too chicken/lazy to move on even that known desire. The trip idea stems from a photograph in my 4th grade geography book, taken from the top of a mountain, looking down on a single boat steaming up a fjord. I have never ever forgotten that picture and how I felt the first time I saw it. So... allow me to pause and at least look up fjord tours on the internet ... 

www.norwaynutshell.com/en/explore-th
e-fjords/sognefjord-in-a-nutshell/#prices 

There - I feel a lot better. 

Trouble is - throughout June I couldn't seem to think of any other Big Life Goals that I wanted to achieve. Obviously I need to carve out some dreaming time to create such a list. I will do that this month - both for work and for my life outside of work - because ... I would love some destinations. 

But even though I couldn't come up with any New Ideas, in fact, I did do something every day that moved me towards a B L G. I tracked my food daily. And I drank water regularly. And I exercised when I was feeling healthy and did not exercise when my allgergy/cold was at its worse. And I got right back into the exercise routine immediately I felt better.  And I made serious progress in my weight loss and my nutritional health.

Every day I did something that got me closer to the  B L G  of a healthy body! So July was a resounding success that showed up on the scale and in the red dress I wore on Friday to a wedding - a size 12 red dress from a shop that does not shrink the numbers on their size tags. 

 

And I prayed positive good healthy prayers. Maybe not every day but frequently.
I also complimented staff - if not every day - often, in order to let them know that I value them and exactly why I do. 
And I did this during a particularly stressful period of work and bad weather and upper respiratory crud. 

What do you know - now I think about it - I did pretty durn well in June. 

So what's on tap for July? 

Well - I am going to pick something I already began adding way back in January - because I am still having stress and bad weather and even a tad bit of lung congestion. I choose: 

4. The Charles Schwab list at work 
At least he's the one credited with the idea - you list the top 5 things you need to do tomorrow. Prioritize that list. Then - do those 5 things first, every day, even if you do nothing else. If there is something on that list you did not do today, it becomes the top item on tomorrow's list. The key here is you do it every day. I've diddled with this and know it works - but - I've not been consistent with it. 

I would absolutely love to end July with a string of accomplishments behind me and a wide open August with some vacation time to kick back and play in. I actually have the accumulated leave - but I wouldn't take it if I was behind at work. There are 23 days left in July and let's say 14 or even 21 days in August to apply the Charles Schwab List to my work life. Then I could take the 3rd or 4th week of August off ... and Stay Home!!!!  Yep. And right now - a week off, doing only what I wanted to do, or nothing at all, is a BLG. I know that Charles Schwab list is just the ticket to a week of stress free freedom. 

So that's my 12 in 12 selection for July - See ya on vacation.

12 in 12 - my habit of choice for May

So here it is a brand new month and this time, I want to concentrate on the people around me instead of always focusing on mememememe. There are some (mostly sisters) who will say that's all I ever think about. It's not true, but maybe it seems that way. I'm not really interested in changing other people, but that's not to say I'm not interested in them. I just think there's room for lots of ways to go about things and your way is probably as good as mine. Still - I'd like to be sure I'm not so busy working on my issues that I don't actually let people know I'm interested in them too. So this month I plan to add complimenting others to my days.

Originally I was just going to do this with my staff. I really like the people who work for me - and they deserve to know it. Also - in order to compliment someone you have to look at what they're doing - and when you do you often notice strengths they have that could be used in other areas of the workplace. People get tired of doing the same thing all the time but they always love being asked to do what they do well. I need to take advantage of these strengths to enliven their day while also enriching the workplace! But there's no reason I can't do this with friends and family too. So the little tweak I'm giving my May 12 in 12 will be to compliment someone every day. 

As the year rolls around, though, and I keep adding things, it's getting a little harder to be sure I'm actually doing all of them. I tried to keep them small so that they'd become ingrained, habitual, a part of me. I also tried to choose at least some things that I already did some, but knew I would benefit if I did them all the time; things like exercise and drinking enough water or planning my tomorrow at the end of today. But now that I'm seriously trying to juggle 5 of them I need some way to keep track of how well I am doing - especially when it involves pro-actively touching others. I've decided to keep a list in my 2012 journal of every one I compliment, what the compliment was, how I made it real, not just nice, and if possible, what was the underlying good trait about the person that prompted the compliment. I certainly value the act of speaking a kind word on impulse as often as I'm prompted, but I want these to be a little deeper - to touch upon the essential goodness of a person, not just the pretty outside.

Keeping on top of some of the other things will require a bit of note taking as well. I already journal the food I eat - and have done so faithfully for 4 months. I know it's becoming a habit because on the one or two days I don't/can/t I get all antsy and cranky about it. If I forget my little Weight Watcher's food journal, I grab a scrap of paper and write down what I've been eating. I've lost about 5 lbs since Christmas. Nothing to turn cartwheels over, but down is down and that's always good. More importantly, the food journal often keeps me out of the kitchen after dinner is over - my bugaboo time when chocolate ice cream whispers to me. Yes it is a tiny low fat ice cream on a stick - something I do not intend to expunge from my life - but No. I do not need to eat 2 of them. Or 3. The little food journal is a gentle guard on the refrigerator door.

I also bought a little exercise journal I can keep in my gym bag. I've been working out with W the Personal Trainer at my gym. I love having a personal trainer. It's ... it's a little like being a kid again. Like having a parent set the bar for you and praise you when you reach it. Or, maybe not a parent - because they love you too much. More like a really good private teacher. While WthePT is friendly enough, he is not invested in me. In an impersonal, though always courteous way, his interest is in my trapezoids or my triceps - not my obedience, cooperation or agreement. He's so full of different exercises that I can't remember how to do them all between one week and the next. There's lots of demonstration and discussion about why we do what, but it's information overload. So from now on, at each session I'll make little notes of each group of exercises so I can practice during the coming days. The point is to give me an arsenal of movements and choices that work all the muscle groups so that I don't get in the habit of doing the same old routine - and my muscles can't figure out how to make those exercises easy. It's challenging and fun, but so rich I need to take notes.

As for how I'm doing with the other new habits - well -  I have probably not always been as good at drinking enough water, there are days I don't get to the gym, but I'm stronger, steadier and fitter than I was 4 months ago. Prayer has helped me over a lot of tough patches this year and I'm exploring new avenues to fulfill my spiritual hunger. So - I am making progress - and for a classic ENFP, that's all I really wanted anyway.

April's Pick of My 12 for 12

Okeydokey (Yeah I know. I'm quaint)

It's a new month and time to pick another good habit to add to my daily routine. In January I added food tracking, with the goal of looking like Helen Miren on my 60th birthday too - well - maybe not in the bikini. Don't really like bikinis. Nor do I hope for the dangle-less neck skin, since I can't afford the surgery I'd need to have that jawline. But you get the picture. I'm aiming at my version of hot at 60.

So far I've done pretty well - clawing my way down to within 10 lbs of my old Weight Watcher's triumphant goal. There have been some ups too, sadly but at least I knew what caused them and several times, knowing how much I've already eaten in a day has proved to be the stop sign I needed to keep me from crashing into excess. Also - with the exception of one week when family duty really kiboshed my efforts, I've tracked everything I've eaten for 3 months.

February I knew I needed something different. February was a fractious cranky month. In February I chose to add prayer to my daily routine. I have my own highly personal way of praying. Well. I suppose everyone does. Mine combines meditation and searching with being open enough to see the value of what I get in answer to those prayers. I love it and it has certainly helped me as I navigated a tough winter. Now and then it's skimmed me over rough ground very lightly. It has been harder for me to squeeze my own special TheQueen type prayer into my days than I'd have thought it would be - I have not been as consistent as I'd like to have been - but for sure I have taken the time for this quiet introspective conversation with the divine a lot more frequently than I would have had I not decided to make the effort. And ... these are things I want to add to my life forever, so I have the next couple of decades to get better at it.

March, knowing things were only going to get tougher, I decided to go easy on myself and add only the habit of drinking enough water every day. Like prayer - I have not been quite as perfect as I'd have liked to be - but there has been progress. The big deal is weekends ... I really can forget to drink water on the weekends. So now when I make coffee in the morning, I fill a big 20 oz glass with water and leave it out on the kitchen counter. Two of those downed get me close to the goal.

And now it is April and though all the astrologers promise me the second half of the month will be much more fun - I still have to slog through the first two weeks. I shan't go into detail about this. Just know that right now is an inordinately demanding time for me. I am far more prone to wake up dreading the day and there's nothing I can do but slog my way forward. There is another side and I will get there. But I'm not putting any unnecessary pressure on my psyche, my spirit or my brain. What I will do is choose to add to my life something I know will help me both now, during these hard days, and later, when things slide into easypeasy land. For April I choose #2 on my original list.

2. Wear a pedometer and get those 10K steps
10K steps, 4 activity points, whatever you want to call it - the goal is to build into my life more movement - I move - but not enough.

I actually love activity and fitness and only drift away from it because it's easy to drift away from anything. I've also been pretty good about getting in some exercise each week. I'm going to make this month the one I totally concentrate on strengthening TheQueen and to start off right, I've scheduled a session with the personal trainer at my gym. 3:30 today. Can't wait!

So. I leave you with my Virgo Horoscope from Rick Levine: 


You can feel the winds of change blowing through your life, but you're not able to catch the right breeze just yet. It's as if the wind tries to pull you off course instead of pushing you toward your desired destination. However, trying to resist can wear you down quickly. Don't try to fight against the prevailing currents. Follow them until they settle down and then you'll be able to correct your course more easily. 

Ta now - may the new moon come quickly.

12 in 12 March Update

I bet I am not the only one who is pondering the resolutions, thoughts, plans, hopes, ideas she had last January as she contemplated the richness that is a whole new year. Those of us who like NYRs don't tend to drift away from them till sometime in February or March. I know I can tell you everything that happened in just about every January of my life, since journaling and diary writing have long been a part of my January rush of Improvement. Mays and Junes are a lot foggier.

Last January, as I thought about the numerical significance of twenty twelve I decided to add 12 tiny (I hoped) habits to my daily routine - small additions that I might already be doing sporadically to which I would give special attention. Nothing monumental - not because TheQueen is already regal enough, but because I just wanted - and still want - to tweak the system a little. In January it was easy to stick to my resolution.  I wanted to journal my eating every day - and I did! In February, a month that was a little rocky, I added prayer to my daily routine and while I did not achieve a perfect score, I still made time to consciously pray more days than I forgot to.  I found that if I want to go into that quiet deep place, give thanks, accept love and ask for help every day, I really have to do it first thing in the morning. It's not that I can't carve out the time and quiet space to do that later in the day - I did. I do - and it's an amazingly productive thing to do on a workday afternoon ... to turn the lights off in my office, lower my chair and sit quietly for 5 or 10 minutes. But far too often I become totally distracted by all the rest of the world and forget - something else I did - and do.

Prayer is an important element in my sanity and my productivity. It's also something that I have done since I was fairly young. I had no formal religion till I was a teen and honestly, by that time I'd already created my own plan for spirituality. Happily, it folded into the formal Catholic Girls School practice neatly enough to go undetected. It's difficult for me to write about how important prayer is for me, not because I can't find the words, but because it touches something so very deep inside - and a public blog like this tends to have only so much information in it - and usually it's information about the physical side of life.

It's the very fact that prayer is so very important to me that I decided to give it more attention from now on. Of course I pray when I think I need to. I pray when I think I'm in trouble or when I need help. But that's just the point. It's all about I, I, I. It's all about my ego and its thoughts. It's about thinking and I know, absolutely, that thought is just part of the picture.  I need to honor prayer's rich and sterling qualities when I am not in trouble:  the giving thanks part of prayer; the joyful accepting of a love that is beyond the physical world, though still connected to it; the petitioning for help not just when I can't solve my problems, but asking for it just to live better, more connectedly, more kindly, wiser. It is a way of taking my ego out of things and uniting with something bigger than I am.

Well, what do you know. I did write about prayer - at least a little.

And now here it is March and this time I chose to add something a little more mundane to my daily routine. This month I am concentrating on drinking at least 6 glasses of water every day. It may sound like a silly habit to fold into one's life, but alas - drinking water is something I also forget to do. I like water. I have delicious tap water both at home and at work. I feel better when I drink water. I look better when I drink water. Alas, I also forget to drink water. A day will go by and I'll realize I haven't had any water all day. It's almost scary. But it's something that can be rectified by just scheduling "water breaks".

And now you know the status of my 12 in 12.