By Sarah, on January 15th, 2010 So, two weeks into the new year and the question still remains: How well did I do with 2009′s resolutions? Let’s break it down, one a day for the next 5 days. Before I delve in though, how about a recap?
Sarah’s 2009 New Year’s Resolutions
1. Clear my inboxes down to zero and then keep them clear.
2. Stop falling asleep with my makeup on.
3. Take more pictures.
4. Join a gym and get in shape.
5. Get a financial life.
So, after a year of working at it, how well (or poorly) did I do in these 5 areas? First up, my inbox.
Well, I’m proud to say that my struggles with overflowing email inboxes are over and my work at this resolution has been a total success. After years and years of feeling overwhelmed by hundreds and hundreds of emails just sitting there yelling at me, I finally took the bull by the horns. I developed a better labelling and filing system for my email, did a lot of kamikaze deleting of old stuff and unsubscribed from A LOT of useless newsletters. After that, it was all about slowly but surely reading through more emails every day than I received, till I had finally whittled it all down to zero.
And this doesn’t mean that I’ve become a compulsive email checker, either. I don’t answer every email as soon as it hits my inbox, or anything crazy like that. Instead, it’s more of a once or twice a day thing, generally morning and evening. And if I notice things starting to pile up, I nip it in the bud before it can balloon into an even bigger problem simply by blocking out some time and dealing with it.
So I guess that makes the score so far Sarah – 1, Bad Habits – 0. Not a shabby start.
Tomorrow, Resolution #2: Falling asleep with my makeup on.
By Sarah, on July 8th, 2009 So I thought about it, and here’s what I came up with as a template for my days:
On most mornings, when I’m not fighting off illness, I tend to wake up naturally around 7:00. I’ll do the tea/coffee and email/blog thing for a half hour or so. Just enough to keep the email landslide at bay. While I like and enjoy technology, I’m trying to make sure I’m not a slave to it. I was starting to feel that way for a while there, but I think that recently, I’ve found some balance on that front and no longer need to read every twitter or respond to every blog post. There just would never be enough hours in the day.
After that is the usual shower/breakfast/get dressed trio, and Daisy often needs a mid-morning walk as soon as I’m presentable. Perhaps I’ll take the camera along on some of these and see where we go.
An early afternoon snack, say around 1ish, with a magazine and a cup of tea may be a nice way to break up my day. I’m thinking it also may be enough of a break to shake me out of any possible morning brain-stuck I feel setting in. Because the plan is to not waste away entire days uselessly.
Tuesday afternoons are the Farmer’s Market/CSA pickup, and taking some time to peruse fresh veggies is always a real treat. And the bonus of being off this month is that I can get there early and swoop up the good stuff before it’s gone. You know, instead of being the one at 5:45 in the afternoon, moaning, “Darn! The peas and spinach are all gone again?!”
And I hate late dinners (one of the blights of my current existence) so if I start cooking promptly at 4 p.m. every afternoon, I’ll never have to worry about feeling bloated at 10 p.m. and may even have enough space for the occasional dessert!
And finally, since I generally tend to run myself into the ground every evening before plunking down into bed too tired to even wash the makeup off my face, 8 p.m. will now be my Gettin’ Ready for Bed Time. I’ll still probably end up doing all sorts of things in the evenings before falling into bed exhausted, but at least I’ll be doing them fresh-faced and already safely in the PJs.
Now you’ll probably notice that there are a lot of things that I didn’t book into this schedule, and that was on purpose. There are things I wanna do when I’m ready, when the mood strikes. Not when my schedule says I must do it. Stuff like writing, trips to the gym and the library, more walks with Daisy, visiting with friends, chores, chats with my mom, etc. I want each individual day to have its own feeling. To be memorable in some different way, instead of each being exactly the same, stamped out by a cookie cutter. I get enough of that during my workdays. This time isn’t about that, it’s about discovering me.
By Sarah, on February 8th, 2009  Man, a girl decides to take on her first freelance copyediting gig and, poof, all her lists and schedules go up in smoke! I’m sorry I disappeared, but those were two crazy, work-filled weeks. Lots of 13-hour days, not lots of sleep, and then lots of recovering; you know how it is.
Well, with that all done for the time being, I’ve had breathing room enough to take a look around. And what do I see? For starters, Month 1 of The Year of Freedom is already over. Most of it was spent playing catch-up and getting back in touch with my life. Lots of cleaning and stuff-purging and lots of getting together with people I hadn’t seen in months. There was a lot of thinking about the future going on, too.
February is shaping up to be just as busy. But this is a really good, new kind of busy. The busy of outings and social gatherings, of fun times and hard-won sleeps. Much better than the stress and strain of essays and exams, readings and homework.
And how are my New Year’s resolutions looking after this first month? Well, some of them haven’t been started yet (Good Life, you and I have a date next week.) and some of them, particularly my email mission, haven’t been going so well. Probably because I’ve barely looked at my email at all in the last two weeks, but still. I’ve got about a hundred extra emails in my inbox than what I reported having last month. I know, I know! Bad, bad!
How do people do it, not getting swamped under the landslide of emails that come in every day? Seriously, if you know some magic secret that I do not, help a girl out! I’m all ears.
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