BC – Week 19 and the Start of a New Challenge

Last week was crazy busy around here.  I had people here on a couple of different days getting the new windows installed, vet appointments, doctor’s appointments, parent teacher conferences, helping my brother and SIL move, touch up painting the new windows (which of course led to a bigger painting project) and then finished the week getting all ready for Halloween (which is a huge ordeal in our household).  With all that going on, I only managed to get one walk in and one day where I did the weights and that was it for intentional exercise.  I had plenty of other non-intentional working of my body going on with helping move boxes and furniture and then up and down the ladder I don’t know how many times over the weekend getting part of the kitchen painted and decorating the “Haunted Garage” for Halloween.  That all translated into me finally breaking through the “lost 30 pounds” barrier I’d been struggling with the last couple of weeks and I lost 3.5 pounds.  That put me at an official 33 pounds down from my original weigh in back in March.

Haunted Garage - 2011 by TJFox

Halloween Pumpkin - 2011 by TJFox

Today is the beginning of my year long challenge.  This is inspired by Robin at Life in the Bogs.  The purpose of the challenge is to find something that you would do every single day for a year and helps to improve or enrich your life in some way.  I have three separate goals I’ve come up with that I’d like to accomplish each day.  I structured those goals on different levels, with a minimum goal and an ideal goal to help ensure that I can actually meet them, even on days that may seem too difficult to do much of anything.  I’m going to try really hard to not let any apathy or grumpiness allow me to slack and just do the minimum on a regular basis, but rather to reserve those times for when I just cannot do more than that.

Goal 1:
Minimum Requirement:  Spend at least 5 minutes outside each day.
Ideal Goal:  Spend 30 minutes outside each day with a few focused minutes on trying to connect with nature in some way.

Goal 2:
Minimum Requirement:  Move for at least 5 minutes every day.  Even if it is just something as simple as 5 minutes of stretching, it is getting off my duff and moving.  I figure if I can force myself to move for at least that 5 minutes, I may just feel like doing more than that.

Ideal Goal:  Do something sustained for 30 minutes like walking, riding my bike or dancing at least 3 days a week.  I don’t think it is realistic to expect a full workout every day, but if I can shoot for 3 days with a workout and the other 4 days of each week just focused on getting up and moving, those 3 days will be easier to do.  I’d also like to work up to the point where I’m doing some sort of strength training a couple of days out of the week, but that is something that will have to come over time as I go through this.

Goal 3:
Do something every day to focus on the moment and connect with everything around me.  Something as simple as greeting or saying farewell to the day, the sun or moon, grounding and centering, or even some form of meditation.  Anything that will get me a bit more “in-tune” spiritually than I have been lately.

I don’t think I’ll start posting about my progress on a daily basis, but rather keep it to a once a week update similar to what I’m doing with the better choices posts.  I will already be trying to log my daily progress on Journeys along with several others that are participating in this with me, so I doubt I’ll be wanting to post in both places.  Besides, I’m sure there is only so much of that I can post here before beginning to bore some of you to tears.  I am really excited and a bit nervous about this as I tend to get bored rather quickly.  It will be a very interesting journey to say the least.

For now, I’ve got to spend the day in the garage again, breaking down and packing away all the spooky fun for the year, so I doubt I’ll have any problems meeting my “movement” goal today.  It will feel nice to have the house back to normal for a while before I start all over again with the Christmas and Yule decorations in less than a month.