2011 Goals Check-Up: May/June

Why I don't blog as much anymore
Here is my "monthly" check-up on the goals I (should be) working on:

7.5 hours of sleep per night - Definitely not doing this. I'm getting better at making sure I'm getting to bed earlier than the night before, but then it all resets on Sunday night. I've been "tracking" by texting B. every night, but it's clearly not as effective as having a calendar full of red squares staring back at you...

Drink at least 1 L (one water bottle) of water per day - This is something that training is *definitely* helping me with. I don't hit 1 L every day, but on the days I train, I definitely get a little closer, if not more. The only problem is right now I'm having a negative relationship with my water bottle. It's broken a few times and I've "fixed" it with crazy glue, but now it leaks (and I don't know how good it is that I'm ingesting mg of crazy glue every day!) so it's not as convenient to carry around. I'm on the hunt for a new water bottle, preferably one that I can drink from with my boxing gloves on.

Continue increasing number of blog posts per year - This is something that training is definitely *not* helping me with. My plan is to slow down a little bit over the summer though, so hopefully I can at least get through the backlog! Don't think it's realistic to expect to post more in 2011 than I did in 2010 though, which is too bad, especially because I've also been losing readers along the way... :S But, I think the training is worth it!

Read at least 12 books this year - I did end up picking up Bitter Medicine and read it in two days! It was a little bit strange reading it as I know a few of the members of the Martini family, and I felt like I was peering into a part of their life I wasn't supposed to know about. It is an easy, but poignant read, and a very personal call to arms for more support in mental health care. Now I'm working on Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell. It took me a while to actually open the book since I bought it, but once I did, I got through quite a bit of it very quickly. I've since slowed down (again, time) but I think once I give myself some time to just sit down and read it, I'll finish it quickly.

Win a kickboxing/Muay Thai fight - As I said in my previous entry, I entered an exhibition fight during May long weekend. My opponent was younger, smaller and less prepared. Unfortunately it wasn't adjudicated, so I'm not sure if it counts as a "win". I had another fight on June 18 where I lost against someone who has been training for twice as long as I have, and has a few full fights (this was a "smoker", so there were fewer rounds, and they're shorter) under her belt. Despite losing, I got a lot of positive feedback in terms of how I was able to hold my own against someone as experienced as her, which was good. My trainer has been dangling a fight in August in front of me, but more realistically, I'm expecting to fight again in October.

Cook at least one recipe from every cookbook I own - A few weeks ago, I participated in a "Culinary Bootcamp for Dietitians" taught by Mary Sue Waisman, who wrote/edited Cook!, the latest cookbook from Dietitians of Canada. As a group, we tackled 10 recipes from the cookbook - my partner and I were personally responsible for two. I will definitely blog about it soon eventually, but I just want to say I thought it was a great way to just try to tackle a lot of recipes from one cookbook. Perhaps if I could get a few people who like cooking together, we can have cooking parties where we can help each other work through our cookbooks...

Put my savings/RRSP somewhere where I can make more money - Now that I have every second Wednesday off with my new permanent position (!) I should make an appointment soon...

Create more/Participate in another creative/reflective project this year - I have not been journaling at all. I'm secretly hoping that #reverb11 will do daily prompts again in December, which will be better at forcing me to stop and reflect, I think.

Set aside one weekend every month with no commitments - During May long weekend I had my fight, but then for the rest of the weekend we just sat around the house and watched Netflix. That was nice. We did end up having some sort of plan every weekend in June, but we also did take downtime here and there... just not two days in a row.

Rewards
To be honest, having the time to sit and write this blog post feels like a reward after two months of training up to six times a week, in addition to starting a new almost-full-time position in June. I am looking forward to more downtime this summer...