12 for 12 for June

Every day, identify, articulate, and explore at least one of your heart's desires.

--Martha Beck, The Joy Diet

I'm letting my favorite life coach, Martha Beck, guide me this month. And in true TheQueenly fashion, I'm going to adapt my own goal to fit the reality of my life like short row bust darts make a sweater fit the reality of my body. 

In June I will: Select a big life goal - a big personal thing - and take one step towards it ... every day. 

I'd actually been wondering how I'll ever keep track of one more habit thingy already. The idea wasn't to try something for a month - but to add something permanent every month. Ambitious? Probably. Possible - well - in an 80/20 sort of way. If I can do it 80% of the time that's good enough ...

But even 80% is tough as the list grows longer - and last month's 12-4-12  was to compliment someone every day.  It was really hard - for two reasons: Sometimes I'd forget to compliment anybody and sometimes I'd forget that I'd complimented somebody. A simple compliment ... doesn't sound that hard does it? I'm not living in prison cell. I talk to people every day. I work in a public arena too - so I ought to be able to drag my self-centered consciousness out of my naval gazing long enough to say "good job" to somebody once a day. Truth? I am not sure I did. Sometimes I'd compliment several people in a day and forget most of them. Those were days when lots of people did things I noticed. But on Sundays when I stayed home and saw only BD ... I don't know if I complimented him or not. We are a long married couple and we're in the habit of saying nice things to each other. Is "I love you so much." a compliment? I'm not sure it is in the context of this habit I wanted to inculcate into my life ... not when the purpose was to really look at the person and see a good thing about them and ... compliment it. The whole point was to Pay Attention To Others. I tried to jot down each day the compliment I made and I did a pretty good job of that till this past week with its long weekend, spent mostly with family - whom I thanked, mind you, for the help they gave me, but is thanking someone actually complimenting them?

Anyway - the idea of the 12 for 12 was not to agonize about my failures but to try to add good things to my world. And I certainly complimented people more than I would have if I'd not made an effort. And I have this month - and the rest of my life -  to keep on doing it.

This month's 12-4-12 is another that requires tracking - but it's much more self indulgent. It can also be much more varied - more ... all over the place ... but it will also be pretty durn pro-active - because most of our daydreams and sighing wishes are static, placid, inactive things. There are 214 days left in 2012 - so if I am successful with June's habit - I should be 214 steps closer to my dreams by the end of the year. And if I miss a few days ... why - I'll still be closer to those dreams than if I had not taken ANY steps at all. 

As for the first 4 12-4-12? Well. I am tracking my food still, and drinking enough water without having to track it - I've gotten an exercise schedule that I really love without becoming obsessive about it and I pray almost every day. I think 2012 really has been a better, happier, more fun, and more productive year because of these little habits I've folded into my life. It's been ambitious, but some how - not as daunting as other ambitious NYR's. Yup. Mostly - I'd say this is a fun thing to do. After all - this is one girl who loves the journey. 

Happy June first to one and all. 

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! 

12 in 12 Reviewed - and What's On for 2013

Whew! that's how the cram-packed insistently demanding days of January have left me - slightly wiped out. Thank goodness for this 3 day weekend, coming after all the January deadlines, to rest up and get my groove back.

The past 3 weeks have held introductions, deadlines, trips and guests - all great opportunities to shove my New Years Resolutions to the back burner - not where they'd be forgotten, but where they could simmer gently till I was ready to serve them up. Of course, the operative word in New Year's Resolutions is New and since the are new, I'm not sure they're quite ready to lay out in print, but if I don't do this now, I may not do it at all and I know for sure, if I don't write them down, I'll feel bad all year. So. Here goes. 

First off - the recap of 2012 and its 12 new habits. I loved doing these. I loved them so much I was tempted to say I will just do the same 12 in 12 in 13 and leave it at that. In fact - I will do that - with some tweaks and modifications. Another reason for addressing these on a daily basis is that they aren't firmly enough established to ignore them. I don't want to lose ground and I do want to forge ahead in each of those areas of my life. Those habits centered around 4 core areas: 

1. MY PHYSICAL LIFE (food tracking, exercise and water)

I'm very pleased with the end results. These 3 actions are at least habitual enough to make me uncomfortable when i don't do them. I intend to keep on concentrating on these good habits. And though I'm not at my goal weight, I did lose 10 lbs last year and kept them off. I started lifting weights and am twice as strong now as I was a year ago. And in a whole year I did not once talk myself out of going to the gym! So Proud.

2. MY WORK LIFE (Charles Schwab list, 5-year plan, BigWorkGoals, Compliment Staff)

I'm pleased with how I incorporated these into my work life. I may not yet have them entrenched, but they are part of the work world. I also realized that reading the 5-year plan daily was overkill but I will do it twice a month and see that my staff does too. The BigWorkGoal and attention to my staff are not yet habits but they're on my  horizon. The Charles Schwab list is an absolute essential and keeps me so focused and yet so much more relaxed about my job that when I forget to do it - or just don't bother - I get a Smack Upside The Head feeling. Love me that CSL!

3. MY HOME ENVIRONMENT (Clean the kitchen every night)

I started doing this right off the bat - even though I didn't "claim" it as a habit till late in 2012. I found it made a huge difference in how the house looked and felt the whole year. those few minutes of tidying up before going to bed prompted thoughts of what else I want in my living environment. It pushed me to act - and we actually got the bathroom renovated - something I've been talking about for years. I got the rugs cleaned, windows washed and kept the house much tidier all year. Most important of all, those daily moments of mindless kitchen cleaning helped me find the words to start a most difficult discussion with ThePrinceConsort about building out the rest of this house. I must have a space for myself before I retire - for my toys and supplies and clutter - a space I don't have to clean up in order to serve dinner. And we have to do this while he's still young enough to oversee it. We've had several good talks about this touchy subject and there hasn't been any ugliness. Who knew a clean kitchen would do all this?

4. MY SPIRITUIAL LIFE (Pray, Draw, Read, BigLifeGoals)

Yup. Prayed and found such expansion. Drew and got lots better. Didn't read as much as I thought I would - didn't want to read as much as I thought I would - and that was a surprise. And I found that some steps towards my BigLifeGoals were happening just by because I opened up and let them in. The bathroom was renovated. I took the beach vacation with my sister, I revisited a favorite spot from Long Ago, and explored new ones. This year was a wonderful spiritual journey.

I'd say the 12 in 12 were the most interesting and fun New Year's Resolutions I've ever made and ever kept. They were so much fun that, as I said, I want to keep on doing them. But tney are neither new nor resolutions so ... what's on tap for 2013?

Ahhh. It's much more ephemeral. Much harder to describe - to put into words - one reason I've been so long spitting it out. I'm not sure I can even now - but I am going to try. If I come off as Maudlin or blasphemous or just plain weird, so be it. 

There is a power - a flow, a source, an energy - so vivid, so exciting and so magical that it can take me anywhere in a twinkling. I call it God. I do not subscribe to a particular religion but I am absolutely positively certain that God exists and God is the way. God is the source. God is the power, the energy the flow. God is the love. This is not a faith thing. This is a knowledge thing.

And nothing keeps me from this power except my own sloth, laziness and ego. I can tap into the magical flow any time I want to but I have to do the actually tapping and for 2013 I want to tap into that flow every day.

I could say I want to pray every day - but prayer can so easily turn into a Christmas Wish List. "Please God, make me thin. Please, God, help me keep my temper"  that sort of thing. Instead, I just want to tap into the flow and let it take me wherever it wants to go. I'll admit it. I'd also like to use the flow now and then for my own egotistical purposes, but mostly - I just want to open up. Let it in. Participate in its exciting energy. 

Unlike my 12 in 12, I won't have daily or weekly or monthly reports about concrete accomplishments. What I hope I'll have will be insights, revelations, ah-ha moments - some of which might be worth sharing. but that's not the point of this effort. the point is to live each day more within the flow of ... of God. 

Of course - it would not be TheQueen if there weren't some Things To Do on a List so - for concrete accomplishments to be achieved in 2013 - there will be 4. 

1. Reach my goal weight by March - and stay there the rest of the year.
2. Do something each week about my kitchen till it's finally more functional. (cabinet drawers? part with that old Wedgwood china?)
3. Carve a space for myself out of the Junk/Packing/Guest room upstairs - by Memorial Day
4. Have a conversation every month with ThePrinceConsort about the addition to the house - so that it does not drift into the realm of pipe dreams. 

So. This is a different sort of New Year's Resolution list - in fact - the big thing is more of a New Year's Revelation. But here it is, spit out in all it's ungainliness.

I sure do love a New Year.




And I promise - there will be knitting in the next post. Here is a teaser: 

Write. Write Now - a Month of Letters

First Bossy Dogs' Mama C  drew my eye to this challenge. Then C from Knitter's Review pointed me to novelist Mary Robinette Kowal, the originator of it. When two writers, two women I deeply admire bring up the same topic I can not resist and so now I share it with you.

Her idea?

1. In the month of February, mail at least one item through the post every day it runs. Write a postcard, a letter, send a picture, or a cutting from a newspaper, or a fabric swatch.
2. Write back to everyone who writes to you. This can count as one of your mailed items.

Now - I am already doing my own little daily stuff - my 12 for 12  and I'm not really going to promise to write a letter every day of February ... though I might. But I do like the idea of writing more letters. Real, paper and pen, folded cards, sealed and stamped letters. I like to get them and I like to mail them. So if I am lucky enough to have your address - it may be that you will get a little missive from me this month. 

Speaking of my 12 for 12 - it's a new month - time for reflection and time to chose another item to focus on. The food journal was a true success - I never missed a day - although last weekend I came up against The Great Unknown of the Seafood Buffet  - pretty much ruined 3 weeks of careful weight management in a single night. But at least I knew, see? I knew where I went right - I knew where I slipped up. And the little bit paper that asks "uh Queenie - you're eating more than you need so are you really hungry?" often is enough to remind me that I can stop grazing. I even think that this little discipline might have helped me reflect with accuracy upon just why I fell so far off the wagon last weekend. 

So. Good habit. Keeping it up.

As for this month - I believe I shall choose prayer/meditation. It struck me that all the other habits I'll be concentrating on the rest of the year will be easier, more fun, more successfully integrated into my life if I'm open, contemplative, prayerful. Besides - I just feel like that's something missing in my daily routine.

But prayer means quiet time and in this little house, quiet time means early in the morning - so it also means I have to shave 30 minutes a day off my morning computer time. Thirty minutes that begin right now - so - Ta. 

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 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.

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.  

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+  

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? 

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 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.

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.