Monthly Review

by

Dec 2022

I’m realizing I haven’t posted here in a while…since August which is almost half a year. Everything feels sort of fuzzy to me. Where have I been? What have I done? Who am I? I have 3 months left of work and then a new baby and 6 months of leave. With MG I was so nervous, but with this baby I feel more excited to have a cute little buddy in the house. I am really wanting to spend a month in Europe somewhere, not doing anything touristy but just being elsewhere for a while, but still working to convince R that is not a crazy idea. This year really went by in a blur. I’m thinking about getting a paper planner for 2023 that might include some reflection prompts.

For the end of this year, I am trying to both soak in some of my day-to-day moments of life and take it easy. Unlike most years, I don’t feel a desire to think about a whole new me. We do have a lot of home errand items on our list that we are moving through, but other than that, life has been pretty relaxing.

by

July 2022

For some reason, it being July feels like my life is passing before my eyes. My only goals for the month are to do summer.

  • go to the beach (at least 3 times)
  • have park picnics with our friends every Friday
  • spend some hot days at cold museums
  • have or make ice creams and popsicles
by

June 2022

I’m not really in the mood to have goals this month. We all got COVID, then a stomach bug, then MG and I got another fever. It’s been awful. We are finally mostly back to health and normalcy. I am going to the gym today for the first time in 6 weeks! I want to go the beach, eat mostly healthy, workout, and see my friends. Very low-key nourishment. Oh and maybe buy a banjo.

by

March 2022 & Thoughts on Weekends

You know, I was coming into this looking at my Feb list and being like how the heck do you have fun/leisure??? But then I realized I’ve been having some really nice weekends and wanted to unpack. I have thought for a long time that nothing I can easily access puts my into flow states. A few things do: a really beautiful hike, dinner and drinks with friends, but I rarely do those things. But I’m realizing that a weekend totally off tech — like no phone, no computer, maybe we watch 1 movie at night, puts me into a different state of consciousness where I can access leisure. And then I sort of switch back to internet-mind on Monday morning.

This no-internet weekend state is so nourishing for me. I cook, I can play at the playground FOREVER, I take long walks, I read a lot, I go to the coffee shop. It coincidences with having a 3-year-old (!) who is a lot easier to just have a chill weekend with. For the first time, it feels like we live our weekends out in NYC like we used to before we had kids, wandering around, eating somewhere, sitting on a bench, running into friends, etc.

But it also means I am like behind on calls and texts and various internet work (e.g. buying a thing or writing an email) and don’t take any photos! For some reason, I have a hard time accessing tis world without total disconnection.

So my March 2022 goal is two-fold:

  • weekends: keep figuring out this nice weekend flow and working to make weekends nourishing for the whole family.
  • flow state: keep exploring the concept of flow state and see where I am starting to access it
by

December 2021

I’m feeling a little listless and depressed. I know I always feel better about myself if I am being held accountable to some type of daily habit, so using the occasion of Dec 1, 2021 to move myself in this direction.

For health:

  • do my 8 workouts for the month
  • focus my diet better (for me, this means no treats unless there is a treat occasion aka a social event; eating 5 servings of fruits and veggies every day (oh hey green smoothies) and doing some type of IF even if just till 10am)

For holidays/fun:

  • plan something nourishing for my birthday (karaoke?????)
  • plan two holiday things (caroling and cookie swap)
  • get really thoughtful gifts for other people
  • figure out what I want for my own presents

For societal betterment:

  • either increasing meditation which I have been literally doing 0 of or listening to onbeing weekly or attending meditations events in person
  • starting my giving circle to unfuck America

This is plenty. I am going to print out this list and commit to it.

by

Sept Goals

So…August goals were like a complete, 100% fail. Just absolute. We got two separate fever/rash diseases, I had a raging UTI almost all month. Absolutely no fun in our household.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this sort of whirlwind life pace. The weird thing is we’re like not busy. We don’t really do much scheduled stuff at night or on the weekends, but I think there is a sameness to the days that makes them really blurry.

Winter is coming up, or at least Fall. September is always when I start to get really down in the dumps SAD-wise. So I’ve been thinking about what I need to make winter WFH work for me, again, as we go through what will be almost two full years of WFH in our two-bedroom apartment. Like, what is a god mental health routine for me?

30-day challenges sound appealing, with some breaks built in. For Sept. I was thinking about decluttering to really set up our home nicely as we are entering the era of spending more time in it. In the winter, likely some things were I make sure to take an hour-long walk daily. Or starting to go to yoga twice a week. I am just feeling really down about delta, another WFH winter, and a lack of indoor spaces with an unvaccinated kiddo. Like, do I have to make another pod this winter??? And my podmate moved away, as did my last other friend in NYC with kids. But it is really, really, really hard to make new friends right now. So probably instead of moping, trying to also focus on the friends that I do have.

So I guess Sept goals will be doing my 30 days of decluttering and finding some sort of WFH routine that works for my mental health. And then, I’ll try to take things one month at a time instead of forecasting out to forever.

by

Jan Reflection/Feb Goals

Oof. What a month. A stomach bug, a stressful client presentation, freezing cold weather. The one shining light was officially creating our indoor pod and having indoor hangouts with them. That was a real relief because it was organized before the weather has dropped to feeling like 20 degrees every day. I did give up alcohol and coffee. Alcohol was easy and has never been a problem for me. Coffee was really rough! I never stopped wanting it and it was brutal to have some early morning baby wake-ups without it. And, I started sleeping from like 9pm to 5am which made me realize I haven’t actually lost my old body clock, but I’ve just normalized it a bit with coffee. Anyway, I am back on the coffee training and grateful for it. Especially on days like today when the feels like is 10 degrees!

There are three things I want to focus on this month:

  1. Having more fun. This has been happening organically through our pod group, but I want to keep shifting weekends and evenings towards more fun, rather than just passive recreation. I ordered a puzzle table so we can do a puzzle in the evenings but store it out of the way, and then I’m also interested in seeing if we can do cooking or crafting or some sort of fun activities. I read this hilarious article on why nothing is fun during COVID (basically nothing is new or spontaneous or social) but I’d still like to find a bit more…pleasure or nourishment or something.
  2. Stop using phone internet. I used to be SO GOOD at this and now I am SO BAD. It started with the election and then ticked waaaay up during the armed insurrection at the capitol. I just don’t need to be doing it. I also haven’t been taking full tech sabbaths. Both practices I want to bring back and I want my phone internet to go back down to 0%.
  3. Decluttering. The Marie Kondo bug has been striking me again…we haven’t done it since before we had a baby (I think actually two apartments ago), and obviously we are spending a lot of time at home. I don’t think I can do an all out effort, but I am thinking about making my own list of mini-categories that can be done post-bedtime and slowly working through some things. Her practice of choosing what to keep versus choosing what to discard always worked well for me.

That is all. Onto February!

by

January 2021

I just cannot think about a full year of resolutions, but I do want to get back to making monthly goals.

For January, I gave up coffee and alcohol. Alcohol has been absolutely fine but I am REALLY missing coffee. I’m fine drinking tea, but apparently I only want to drink tea with cookies. There is something about the total satisfaction of coffee that I WANT. But it honestly doesn’t feel like caffeine addiction, as much as the pleasure of it.

My other goal is to have some more fun. I want to get to the point of thinking about what would be the most fun activity to do at night, rather than falling into bed or watching TV on auto pilot. I am honestly struggling so much with this. Maybe I should put some sort of fun audit on my list.

Other stuff has been mostly good — working out, meditating, sleep, eating, etc. so just want to focus on the stuff above.

by

What a Year

I have been struck, as is pretty usual for me, to do a recounting of this year and a planning ahead for 2021. But every time I start to think about this year I just stop. I don’t really want to go back. I keep thinking about the holidays for 2019 – MG’s first. She was sick from daycare and basically up all night for November. Then she was a bit better and she – and then all of us – caught HFMD for Christmas. I spent my birthday feverish in bed. By February she was better and we felt like we had survived a really difficult window and things were turning a corner. Her birthday party was probably the last time we had people in our house.

From there, it has been a total shitshow. WFH with her, the total fear and panic of living in NYC in March and April, the house fire, five months of living with parents and in-laws. When daycare reopened and we moved back home it was like reaching the promised land. There were a few rough weeks of transition but since then, our life has been stable and happy once again, even in light of occasional COVID quarantines, masks, no indoor playdates, etc.

But it was hard again for other reasons – I had a miscarriage at 7 weeks, the fear and panic of the election. I just feel so wrung out and tired, like I need three years to recover from this one. And we still had it easier than so many people. We have stable jobs that paid us the same amount even when we were doing childcare half the time, we didn’t lose any loved ones to COVID, we didn’t get sick ourselves. But it was so hard in so many ways.

I have been looking forward to 2021 but softly. Thinking about doing a weekly tech sabbath which I have been finding really restorative and a way to bring the pleasure of boredom back into my life. And I long, I honestly long for, a cold rainy weekend day when indoor play dates are allowed once again and the kids can play with trucks and the adults can have some pizza and wine and we are all warm and dry and safe. I feel thankful and I am filled with so much longing.

by

March

It’s March! And super Tuesday. I am still rooting for my #1 (Liz!) and have a dream where there is a contested convention and she gets the nomination, and then Stacey Abrams is the VP. A girl can wish.

Life is holding pretty steady. There is a big coronavirus scare happening (the first NYC school closed) and we have done nothing to prepare. I’m not that concerned about it, mostly because it doesn’t affect babies much.

Here are things I’ve been thinking about:

  • daily habits and routines (this is like a constant focus area for my mind, I’m not sure why)
  • how nice our group of friends is, and how grateful I am to have so many close friends in walking distance of our apt and a sister who takes the train over every weekend to hang out with us
  • having another baby…
  • this summer and how to organize the weekend so we can go to the beach
  • working 80% time for 100% pay for meeting 100% of job expectations (I read a very, very interesting quote about this and have been thinking a lot about it)
  • the racism that was well alive and kicking during the civil rights movement and how it was often in direct coordination with the police and state, so you could murder someone, brag about it, and even today it may be un-prosecuted
  • how to not touch my face. I have been working on this (see coronavirus scare) and it is SO HARD. It takes a lot of self-control.
  • how to better organize our crazy bed situation (one futon being used a bed, one full-size mattress and box spring on the floor being used as a bed), one full-size mattress on a bed frame not being used, and a crib. And how to “solve” this problem in a way that is sustainability for the various iterations of beds and bedrooms we’ll need in the next decade or so.

I haven’t been in the habit of doing monthly check-ins or making formal goals. I have been building a great MommaStrong daily habit which makes me feel awesome.  Other than that, I’m not really in the mood to commit to anything.