NaBloPoMo: Day 9 "Goals: Part 2"

Current time: 9:02
Sleepiness level: low
Yesterday's goal: ACHIEVED.

I'm partly surprised that it's already Day 9 of all my November challenges, and I haven't muffed anything up (yet). It's a good feeling, and actually I think the determination to stick it out is cumulative, for me. The more successful days that pass, the harder it becomes to throw it away. Kind of like with flossing - now that I've done it so many days in a row with no misses, it's unbearably frustrating to think of forgetting and dropping my streak.

In the same way, I've accomplished all of my monthly goals up until now, and I'm pretty intent on keeping up the streaks, no matter if I lose some hours of sleep over it.

There's a definite "high" from deciding to do something and sticking it out. I remember going on "sugar fasts" fairly regularly throughout college: I'd pick a month and just brutally cut sweets and desserts out of my intake for a set period of time. I don't even remember struggling with those challenges, but I do remember feeling... powerful. In retrospect, that seems like a pretty impressive feat - to not even struggle with such a drastic switcharound. Especially considering my particular weakness for sugar. But perhaps no more impressive than building up to 250 squats in one day (...that's such an obscene number of squats), or writing 30 blog posts in 30 days.

Ok, but on to strategies I'm employing to manage this month:

1. At work, I have the Abs and Squats challenges on the wall at eye-level, right next to my computer screen. Effectively, I look at them all day, and mark each day off as I complete it. I also have a photo of the challenge pages on my phone, so I can be accurate on weekends.

2. For the squats, I spread them out throughout the day, so I'm using some tiny cat post-its to keep track of sets of 10 squats. I line up the cats on the wall in the morning, and then I move them down on the wall as I complete each set of ten. Keeps me from forgetting how many I've done!

3. For minimalism, we printed the 30 day challenge out and have it taped to our bedroom wall. Having Adam in on this challenge is definitely the main thing that's keeping me from slacking on this challenge. He's taking it very seriously, and we both feel delighted with the results in our teeny-tiny apartment - even after a mere week, plus. The thing about small apartments, though, is that everything MUST have a home and GO to its home pretty instantly, or things get very sloppy, very quickly. We're finding the things we've been keeping that are frivolous or surplus, and eliminating them. It's refreshing! But I like how this challenge emphasizes how minimalism is a mindset and a lifestyle. With disposable income and an H&M a mere bus ride away, I've been hovering on the brink of a plunge into rampant consumerism. I think this particular challenge came at exactly the right moment. :)

4. For the month of November, I'm doing a theme for my 1 Second Everyday app (of which I'm a fan, bought it for a mere pittance on my iPhone). I've set the app to remind me to take a vid at three points during the day, which it does. After 2 months of these triple daily reminders, I'm sick of them. BUT, I haven't missed a video since Sept 16th, so they're at least doing their job. Sometimes annoying just means "reaction provoking" - and if that reaction is "getting it done" then I'll just deal with the annoyance. I've not yet figured out how to format the videos to look nice online, but as soon as I do, I'll share!

5. The one thing I don't have a "cue" for is posting on here. I haven't needed one yet, though. It helps that Adam is engrossed in his own project, NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), thus our individual writing challenges are daily conversation fodder.

Current time: 1:12 a.m.
Sleepiness level: Super high

Minimalism and making a "workout" youtube playlist interfered a lot with getting this post done in a timely fashion.

Also, I feel compelled to inform you of a tragic event tonight: I had a random zealous initiative to cook the chicken breasts from the freezer tonight for dinner, only to find out (after setting up the whole butter/herbs/dishes/preheating stuff and getting Adam all excited) that they somehow had gone bad IN THE FREEZER. I didn't know that was possible. :(  And I was le sad. Tres pissed. Triste a l'extreme. So we ate frozen pizza and watched Downtown Abbey and I felt better.

G'night folks! (morning?)

Carpe November!

P.S. Abs, CHECK. At 35 seconds, I officially hate planks now.
Squats, CHECK. (100 today!)
Minimalism.... Partial Check, but not finished. Ok, but I started. You see, today's challenge was to go digital with our picture frames. First of all, I like a few tastefully displayed picture frames in my living space. Second of all, we literally have 3. And I am not getting rid of them. So since this was a non-challenge, I decided to do something a hella lot more difficult: sifting thru and organizing the folders and folders of photos on my tiny laptop and then uploading them to a free online cloud account (I'm using mega.co.nz, a free cloud space company that is serious about privacy). Then I will delete the pics from my tiny, overloaded, super-slow laptop, and see if its performance speed improves. I knew finishing today was impossible, so this is going to be a running project for the remainder of the month. Today I opened my account and got a couple folders uploaded. CHECK.