… no, that is not the temperature outside, although it feels like it! As of July 1st, the year is halfway done.
I’ve been floundering this summer, not really settled and not sure why. The lack of external schedule is always harder to deal with, and I’m sad about my kids switching schools. I’m sad about the friends we leave behind, but I’m happy with the school decision. But beyond that, I was just… bleh. I’d make my to do list in the morning, and find excuses to not do pretty much anything that wasn’t urgently necessary. (Do you even know how long I can put off grocery shopping?)
So I sat down a couple weeks ago and carefully went over my goals that I made at the beginning of the year. Then I started a whole new list. I made a mind map drawing and used lots of pretty colors to categorize and prioritize. It is a work of art, I tell you. But that was hard to plan action from so I went even crazier further and formatted my goals into an outline that would make any English teacher proud. I got very specific about my goals, I laid out steps to reach them, incrementally so that I could work towards them daily.
And you know what happened?
.
Nothing.
Nothing changed. Not my motivation, not my ability to cross things off my list each day. Nothing.
I spent two more weeks feeling defeated each day when I looked at what I hadn’t done on my list. It was really depressing! I had followed all the sage advice out there about setting SMART goals. (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-bound). But it just wasn’t working.
I realized that *I* wasn’t broken. My goals were. I wasn’t failing. I had a skewed vision of what “Attainable” means at this point in my life.
You see, I forget sometimes that I have small children. I don’t forget the children – that is impossible! They never leave me alone. But I forget that while some families move quickly beyond the small children phase of life, that is extended for us. And just because a lot of people I know have moved on to more… grown up goals, it doesn’t change the fact that I do, in fact, still have small children and live in a situation where getting the dishes done is a major accomplishment. (Even if I am doing last nights dishes with my breakfast dishes. Why can they never wash the pots and pans?)
I had to ask myself, what goals would I recommend to a friend with a 1 year old, 3 year old, 5 year old, 8 year old, 11 year old, and a few older ones bumping into each other, stuck in the house due to blazing hot temperatures? Would I recommend that they take this time to “get serious about writing”, “train for a 10K”, “read a book a week”? Not a chance.
So I modified my goals:
- Focus on getting my daily list done each day. (Make bed, tidy bathrooms, read to the kids, etc.)
- Get some exercise twice a week beyond taking the kids swimming.
- Try to blog a little more for my own sanity. I like doing it, and I have a lot of little series on here that I never finished. The blogging I do will be messy and disorganized. But I don’t really care. Well, I care a little because I want to improve over time, but I can’t improve without practice and this is my messy practice.
- And I need to get back to counting calories. But it didn’t happen today.
- And I want to get those dishes done. Every day. And maybe some laundry.