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.

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.  

My 12 for 12 - little habits I want to fold into my days

Those who know me know I love me some New Year's Resolutions. I love making them and I love looking back to see if I kept any. Usually, during that week between Christmas and New Year, sometimes even earlier, little ideas percolate in my brain, nudging me towards that Oz of Perfection that, though I laugh and tease about it, I believe all of us are journeying towards. 

This year was a little different. For the first time in a long time I wasn't chafing with dissatisfaction about myself, my health, my body, my house, my work. Not that there isn't room for improvement or progress or movement - just that - this year I was in a really happy good place. I didn't want to make any grand changes. Who would - when standing in a really happy good place? I just wanted to make some little changes - some 'start small', baby step, trim tab shifts. And I wanted it to feel positive - to feel enriching. I wanted to add some good habits to my life.

Those infamous "They" say that it takes 21 days to create a habit and as I got to thinking about 2012 and how many good habits I might want to add it suddenly hit me - I could
add one good habit a month and I'd have 12 for 12. The cuteness of the thought - because I do realize it's a little sloganey - tickled me. Actually finding 12 things turned out to be something of a challenge since they had to be small enough to be things I'd want to do every day yet important enough to matter to my life.

The ground rules were that I could play around with any of these habits at any time, but each one was to be the star of its own month. Each one would be given a full 30 days of constant attention. And they did not have to be all about weight and health. Each month I could chose the habit that either appealed to me the most, or that seemed the most necessary to concentrate on. If - during the year - some Other Better Habit revealed itself to me I could swap it out for one still on the list.

So. Here are my 12 for 12 in no particular order:

1. Food Tracking
I know this is good for me. I know it's important. I know this is the next step I have to take to get rid of this last 12 lbs. I don't HATE tracking food - but I haven't made the effort to do it. This is the First Good Habit I'm working on.

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.

3. Drink 6-8 cups of water every day
I live where the tap water is absolutely delicious. Even at work!! So tell me why I forget to do this? Idunno - but I do. Good habit to get into

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.

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)

6. Compliment someone on my staff every day
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!

7. Read some fiction every day. 

I love stories - I run a library for goodness sake! But I have grown so weary of what's popular in fiction these days that I have quit reading it. One more snarky woman struggling with her dysfunctional family and looser weak man ... ugh. Still and all - I don't like it that I'm so ignorant about current fiction. Time to at least dabble in the subject.

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

9. Select a big life goal - a big personal thing - and take one step towards it ... every day.
I want to take a boat up a fjord in Norway? How would I go about it. What step could I take today that would get me there?

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.

11. Clean the kitchen every night. 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?

12. Pray. Take a little time to step deep into myself, deliberately, and touch base with what's really important.

And there you have them. All are things I sort of do or do now and then or do once in a while. But just think how lovely 2012 would be if I made them daily habits. Mmmm Mmmm. My My My. Yes. Just think!