Summer Goals and No Beach Body
Summer is the changing of seasons, the changing of sweats to shorts and for me the changing of habits. For my “new year, new you” doesn’t really start until June or even July after my lack of progress since January really and truly sets in. Here in northern California we are fixing to have one our hottest summers to date and I for one am not looking forward to it, I don’t sleep well when I’m hot, I don’t eat well when I’m hot and I am generally a more cranky and uncomfortable person.
To change how I feel this summer I have decided on a pretty simple plan: change my habits and build a routine. Now many of you know that I have severe anxiety and my comfort zone is always and forever my routine. This summer I want to start on working at my routine to make it more...successful. What I mean by this is that my routines are not always the most healthy things on the planet for example, I’m hot and cranky so I don’t want to cook so I go and get tacos. Not a good routine. Round two, it’s hot and I can’t sleep so I stay up all night but do nothing productive and sleep all day the next day, also not a good routine.
This summer I want to change a few key things in my routine that I hope will make a difference this season and hopefully I will carry them into winter as well (California only really has two seasons, summer and winter). The first change I want to make is to be healthier. Now I don’t mean lose weight or get that beach body we are all looking for, I mean cut out the tacos and eat at home. In the summer since it is so hot we rarely cook at home usually so we have been stocking up on what we call “quick fixin’s” to get through the summer months. These are things that don’t require heat or if they do they only require a small amount of heat that won’t add to the temperature of the house (like when you use and oven). This year we have several plans to go on trips and therefore need to save money. Ron and I spend hundreds of dollars every month just on food that we get either at a restaurant or a drive through and we hope to stop that cycle by eating at home. To go along with this change we want to start working out more so that the heat won’t be so terrible for us next summer. I have decided to make it painfully simple. Monday through Friday I work out for at least 30 minutes after work. Not if or buts or coconuts. If I make this a part of my non-negotiable schedule then it just makes it easier to make this part of my daily routine.
The second change that I want to make this year is to do what makes me happy. I love to write, I love to talk to myself on my blog like people actually read it and I even like to make YouTube videos about my random life. I want this summer to be the summer that I really dedicate myself to putting out content that I want to put out and not being self conscious about it. I really want to meet new people who share my interests and reach out to people like so many of my favorite bloggers have reached me. So this summer I will be coming up with a content schedule so that I can keep myself accountable to releasing the content that I want on a daily basis. Even if no one ever see’s it I can say that I put it out there.
The third and final thing that I will be working on this summer is my book. I want to make serious headway in my writing and hopefully have a full manuscript by next year that I can then begin editing. I plan on setting deadlines for myself weekly to work on my book as well as outlines to actually start getting some work done on the projects that I have been working on for the past 10 years.
What are your plans this summer? Do you plan on making any life or habit changes? I would love to hear about it if you are. Have a safe 4th everyone! See you Wednesday.
