Routine
I wanted to expand on some things I touched on in my last post by talking about routine.
I talked about how if you want to change, you need to add things slowly, one or a few at a time and I honestly think that's the best way to approach it and make it stick. A lot of people say you need to do a thing for seven days to start to form a habit, twenty-one days for it to actually become a solid, established habit. We are five days into the new year and I'm already realizing that I've tried to add too many new habits at a time and had to ease off on some goals. Ease off, but not give up.
I love routines. I am bad at following them, but I love them. Knowing what I need to do when I need to do it, that is a very comforting thing to me. If I can't plan ahead, I get anxious... more than usual.
I want to be the person who has a planner. I have a planner, I carry it with me everywhere, it just doesn't have anything written in it... I always forget about my planner. I set alarms into my phone to remember things, even though I know if I physically write it down somewhere, I am more likely to remember it. The alarms work just fine to keep me on schedule, but I aspire to have a beautiful, color coded, scheduled life with stickers and check marks and I'm just not.
My "schedule" is pretty simple. I wake up around the same time everyday, check my phone a little bit, make coffee and then either get ready for work if I'm working that day, or try and run errands/do chores if I work that night. Whether or not I actually do run errands or do chores is a different story ( bad at routines) but that's my basic schedule. It's super open and flexible but it gives me a set idea of what I need to do in a day. The idea of having a basic but open schedule comforts me, but it also easily lets me add or remove things from it. Like
I've started working out when I make my coffee: While I wait for my coffee to brew, I've been doing the plank for incrementally longer periods each day, at first only for twenty seconds and by the end of the month around five minutes. I know that doesn't seem like much, but for my out of shape ass, twenty seconds left my arms and core shaking. I know that I want to do more intense workouts, but I need to work my way up to it. Starting with a simple workout that increases in difficulty over a month seems a good place to start. I have shitty joints so HIIT work outs are something I need to build up to.
I've added a few more steps to my skincare routine in the morning, still not great about doing it before I go to bed though. I am very excited to get to sleep, sleep is all that matters at night. Which is part of why I almost always forget to take out my contacts. Like I said, this blog is the good and the bad about me and my life.
There's also some sillier(?) things I've added to my routine. I love all things spooky, Halloween, and witch-y. I got another beautiful tarot card deck (I have like three now) for Christmas, so I've started doing a single card reading at the start of my day. I don't necessarily believe in magic, but I like symbols and I love shuffling cards. I'm not good at shuffling cards, but the act is comforting to me. So having the small physical act of shuffling mixed with interpreting symbology is a fun way for me to start my day. I also am working on relaxing with a coloring book at some point, no established time of day, but I like coloring and I want to do it more often. Both of these things I'd classify under my Enjoy Shit 2018 resolution, but that doesn't mean they aren't important.
I'm trying to be a better me. Better being happier, healthier, more stable both emotionally and financially. An important part of that for me is improving my routine. Adding things I want to do, removing things that aren't necessary. If that means I need to schedule everything so I can form better habits and improve my quality of life, that's what I'm gonna try to do.