Narrowing Focus to Broaden Success

There are many reasons that I’ve had a hard time picking a specific career to pursue. One of which, is the fact that there isn’t really one singular thing that I was ever able to imagine making me feel fulfilled and happy for the rest of my life. I’m grateful for all the many talents, interests, passions, and abilities that I have. The problem has always been that there isn’t enough time in a day to devote myself to all of them the way I’d like to.

Even this blog stands as an example of my difficulty sticking with one theme or niche and really remaining faithful to it. The name of this blog is Protect the Innocent because when I started it, my goal was to make a blog with vegan commentary and to give advice to new/rural vegans. I wanted this blog to be my little attempt at activism. However, despite my deep concern and interest in this important topic, it quickly becomes oppressive to me when I feel unable to write about anything else.

It seems like I always end up either doing nothing at all when I can’t decide where to put my focus and energy or I just do a little bit of everything. The problem with the latter is that then I am unable to really delve deep into any of the things I want to do. I’m not able to master anything or do any really big time consuming projects. My energy is always being scattered and worn thin trying to pursue all of my many interests at once.

I get anxious when I think about narrowing my efforts. It feels like I am sacrificing so many things when I center myself on just one. I know it doesn’t have to mean I never pick up my other hobbies again, but it’s still hard to reassure myself in that regard. I’d really like to try to structure my time more effectively. Perhaps I can focus on just one thing certain days of the week or set an entire month aside to really delve deep into a certain project or skill set.

I think setting up a more diverse, yet focused schedule for myself would be an excellent way for me to make more meaningful progress towards my various goals. I also believe this could solve my issues with burnout and lack of inspiration. This way I’d be able to give myself a break from one thing, while still feeling as though I’m doing something meaningful in the meantime. The most important step is going to be the first one. I need to set aside time to work out this schedule for myself so that I can move forward with a clear intention and reserve my mental energy for the task at hand.

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Intentions & Goal Setting

There is a lot that I would like to do in my life. I am constantly thinking about ways I’d like to improve and change things, but I can never seem to find time to actually take action. It’s hard to move forward without clear intentions. I’ve got to find time to organize my life plan on paper before I can start to implement it. I have a lot of vacation time coming up this month. Now seems like the perfect time to start making concrete plans of what I want to do with all of my free time. It will be awhile before I get another opportunity like this. First I want to start off by making a list of things I want to achieve this month and the steps I need to take to reach those goals. Then I’ll go about scheduling precise days to complete different tasks. Hopefully this will help relieve some of my stress and quiet the noise inside my head for awhile.

June Goals

1. Stop smoking cigarettes
2. Clean out moths in kitchen
3. Update cover letter/resume
4. Apply to local schools
5. Schedule therapy appointment
6. Schedule vet appointment

Goal Breakdown

Stop Smoking Cigarettes:

1. Order nicotine salts for vape
2. Slowly replace cigarette habit with vaping again
3. Write about why I want to stop

Clean Out Moths in Kitchen:

1. Clean all food out of pantry
2. Buy large plastic/glass containers
3. Place all pantry foods in thick plastic/glass containers
4. Monitor for moths/larvae
5. Put out moth repellant

Update Cover Letter/Resume/CV:

1. Brainstorm ideas for references that won’t tip off anyone that I’m applying other places.
2. Ask Kaytlyn, Scott, & Jay if I can use them as references
3. Research how to make a CV
4. Write a new cover letter based on experience at Harmony House

Apply to Local Schools:

1. Make a list of all local high schools
2. Make a list of all local middle schools
3. Make a list of all local elementary schools
4. Craft different cover letters based on school level
5. Call school/send out resume
6. Check indeed for schools hiring (student services?)
7. Compile applications
8. Send applications

Schedule Therapy Appointment:

1. Write about why you want to start therapy
2. Make a list of places to call
3. Set up bi-weekly appointments

Schedule Vet Appointment:

1. Call Redwood Veterinary Clinic
2. Make appointment for Sybil and Lucy
3. Update shots, clip nails, heartworm medicine (?)

Setting a Date

Fist Days Off (3-9)

• 2nd – Buy food storage containers
• 3rd – Schedule vet appointment
  • Order nicotine salts
  • Write about why you want to start therapy
• 4th – Schedule therapy appointment
  • Clean out pantry/store food in containers
  • Make a list of local high schools
• 5th – Write about why you want to stop smoking
  • Make a list of middle schools
  • Check Indeed
• 6th – Write a new cover letter for high schools
  • Put out new moth repellent
• 7th – Write a cover letter for middle schools
  • Research CVs
  • Make a list of local elementary schools
• 8th – Write a cover letter for elementary schools
  • Update resume
  • Make CV
• 9th – Compile at least 2 applications

That seems like enough planning for me today. I feel much more hopeful that I will actually be able to get more accomplished this month already. Now all I have to do is try to stick to my schedule as best I can. At the very least, I won’t have to think about all of these things anymore today. I won’t have to be constantly wondering and worrying about when I’ll ever find time to get started. Setting intentions and writing things out is always helpful. Feel free to use this little brainstorming post as an outline to help you work towards your own goals.

Remember Why You Started

As you know, I’ve been thinking a lot about exactly how I ended up so enmeshed in the repetitive behaviors I now perform daily. I thought back to the first time I remember giving myself a similar list of tasks. In the beginning, I remember it being so exciting. I had big plans about bettering myself and working towards becoming the person I wanted to be. I’ve come a long way since then. I’ve made a lot of progress towards those goals. However, sadly I seem to have lost the passion that drove me to start this journey in the first place.

It feels like in the last few years, I’ve started to stagnate. These efforts at self-improvement were supposed to be fun. I want to get back to that passion that I once had. I was energized by these activities rather than exasperated by them. I believed in myself, in my potential. I was excited at the idea of reaching my goals. Somewhere along the line I seem to have lost all that faith in myself. I lost sight of the self love that once spurred me onward.

Thankfully, spring always reawakens something inside of me. I feel filled with a new energy as the air begins to heat back up and the sun reemerges. And with the coming spring, I’ve also had an important realization. I’ve been scrambling around inside my head trying to figure out a way to make time to meet a new vegan friend I met online. I’ve been ridiculously stressed out by the effort of trying to cram yet another activity into my already busy schedule. Only after a few days of this psychotic planning did it suddenly dawn on me, it doesn’t even matter if I miss doing all of my usual things for ONE day. How obvious.

The whole point of the things I make myself do everyday is self-improvement. Doing them every day was just a way to get into the habit. It was just supposed to give me direction and a way to feel productive on days when I had nothing else to do. I don’t know at what point it started to dominate my life instead. It seems like for years now, I have been prioritizing these “hobbies” over everything else in my life. I don’t make plans with friends and family because I tell myself I don’t have time for it. I neglect other, more important things, in favor of completing my these rituals. Only very recently have I realized how absurd that is.

These activities were supposed to help me become a better person, not prevent me from living a normal life. The ultimate goal isn’t 365 consecutive days of checking off these arbitrary boxes, the goal was to use my time wisely and learn new things. It completely defeats the purpose if in the end these habits inhibit my life rather than compliment it.

This is why it is so important to have clear intentions for yourself. My intention somehow got lost along the way. Luckily I’m finding my way back to it. Maybe a few years ago, what I needed was to have a more structured routine, but needs change. It’s time I allow myself to change with them. These habits were meant to serve me, but instead they’ve consumed me. Now what I need is learn how to give myself a break. I need to remind myself that it’s okay to rest. I don’t want to look back on my life one day just to see hundreds of checked off to-do lists. I want to give myself the freedom to have spontaneous adventures and make meaningful memories as well.

Tomorrow I want to give myself a long over due gift. I want to have a day off, a day free from my own demands. I want to meet someone new, get to know them. I want to explore and be curious and flexible. I want to not worry about whether or not I’ll have time to read later or write in my gratitude journal. How silly that the act of writing down a list of things I’m grateful for everyday became more important than allowing myself the time to enjoy what I’m grateful for. It’s no wonder I’ve lost all of my drive and passion. I’ve burnt myself out a long time ago. I’ve been running on fumes. It’s time to stop and recharge. It’s time to take a day just to breathe, to reflect, to enjoy the progress I’ve made, and to share my new and improved self with new people and with the ones I love, the ones that have stuck with me through all of these years of being distant and uninvolved. It’s time for me to thank them for that. It’s time for my to thank myself and enjoy how far I’ve come, how strong I’ve been. Time to refocus on my intention and reignite that excitement, that passion for my life.

Photo by Nandhu Kumar on Pexels.com

Making Plans

There are only a handful of weeks left to us in the hellacious, year of our lord 2020. It is around this time I feel it’s appropriate to start making plans for the new year to come. I know most “New Year Resolutions” fall to the wayside and are forgotten after a few weeks at most. But there is something deliciously invigorating about the illusion of a fresh start, a clean slate. It may not ultimately help you follow through with or achieve your goals, but it does make it a hell of a lot easier to feel inspired enough to a least make a plan for yourself. And that is worthwhile and important in it’s own right.

I personally am in desperate need of a plan for myself. I have been drifting listlessly for what seems like a very long time now. Every time I think of making a change, it just feels hopeless. Why bother? However, knowing I’ll have a few months to mentally prepare myself makes it seem more manageable. (Not to mention still getting to enjoy a hedonistic holiday season.) Don’t get me wrong, it’ll still feel daunting when the day finally arises at my doorstep, but I’ll at least hopefully feel more ready. Having a clear plan in mind is always helpful.

So what kinds of things do you want to change in 2021? Start a new habit? Kick an old one? Spend some of this waning time in 2020 to get a clear idea of what you would like to do and how precisely you plan to do it. Having a detailed plan is key. Vague goals are the most slippery. Much too hard to actualize.

Maybe even more important than making your plan specific is making it incremental. Don’t expect yourself to wake up on January 1st 2021 and lead an entirely different life. That isn’t going to happen. I’ve always been afraid of being “too easy on myself.” I worry that if I’m not strict and rigid, I’ll fail. But perhaps that is exactly the reason I have already failed so many times in the past. I think it’s more important to be kind to yourself along the way. You will mess up. You will have days, maybe even weeks, when you feel like you’ve given up, that you’ve failed. But there are no rules to follow in this life. There are no disqualifiers. Keep playing. Start again as many times as you need to.

There is no shame in what we perceive as failure. Only an opportunity to rest. To collect ourselves. To be gentle with ourselves. And begin again with new strength, new determination, new wisdom. So make your plans. Make the small improvements something to take pride in. Expect to mess up. Expect to start again many times. But remember one thing above all else. These are your goals. You are the only one invested in the outcome. And do you know why? Because beneath it all, it is your self-love that moves you. The belief you have in yourself. The deep desire for you to be happy, healthy, prosperous. You’re doing this for you. Inspired by pure love. So don’t forget. Be kind to yourself. As you would be to a child that you only want the best for. Comfort yourself when you fall, and help yourself back up again.

It is time for another transition. It is time for change.

Social Scheduling

I have been thinking back on my childhood a lot recently. There are so many things I miss about those times in my life. One thing I never seemed to realize is just how sociable I was. I had a good number of friends and we saw each other every day at school. Then we would always be on the phone or using instant messenger when we weren’t together.

Compared to my day to day life now, it seems like those must be the memories of someone else. Unless I am working, I don’t usually talk to anyone at all. Maybe a stray text here and there. But it has been years since I’ve had regular phone calls with anyone besides my mom. And now even those have become few and far between.

I often find myself missing the days of AIM (instant messenger). It seems simpler to me than texting is now. One of the amazing benefits of texting is that you can text anyone, anywhere, anytime. However, for me at least, that is also a huge problem. I am always preoccupied with the idea that I am bothering people. With AIM you knew who wanted to talk because they were online. If they were busy or unavailable they would put up their “away message”. This way I never felt like I was bothering anyone on there. Or be distracted and trying to respond to people all day. Not to mention a lot better conversations can be had when you’re able to type out a response rather than peck for letters with your thumbs.

I keep coming back to the idea that maybe I should just start scheduling time each week to talk to the people I care about. I think it would be greatly beneficial to me. The only two things keeping me from doing so have been the fear of not being in the mindset of wanting to talk to anyone once the preset time arrives and the embarrassment of discussing this social schedule with the people I want to talk to.

I doubt they would care. They may even be excited about the idea. But still, I feel like a fool for having to schedule phone calls with loved ones if I want to manage to stay in contact with them at all. The anxiety part seems inevitable. I am going to want to back out. I am going to feel too anxious. But I need to push past that discomfort anyway. In some ways having a pre-agreed-upon time helps me keep myself from just avoiding the idea all together. I could even plan to have these calls during the half-hour drive home from work everyday. That way I wouldn’t feel as though I’m “wasting time” I should be using to do other things.

I think that planning my social interactions ahead of time would definitely be a huge help to me. The increased time spent talking to others would benefit my mental health as well as allow me to have deep meaningful connections with others again. Now the only hurdle I have to face is committing to make space for these things.

Please let me know what you think of this idea. Is it really as strange as I’m imagining it to be? Would you ever try something like this? Have you tried this already? Has it been helpful? I would love to get some feedback and hear some other perspectives on this idea, as well as how the changes in communication due to technology over the years have effected you.

Bullet Journaling: October

I am happy to say that 2017 has been a very productive and transformative year for me. I finally feel like I am steering my life towards the things I’ve always wanted. I attribute this change in character and consistency to a new phenomenon I stumbled upon called bullet journaling.

This is a type of journaling that allows you to have freedom of form, flexibility, and creativity while still maintaining a semblance of structure. Bullet journals (bujos) most importantly allow you to keep a sense of cohesion in your life. No more rewriting the same goals and ideas over and over again intermittently in different notebooks only to close the cover and blindly step back into the same routines that have been failing you thus far.

I began my bujo last April, and at this point, I can honestly say that I plan to keep it up for as long as I am able. Keeping a journal in this form has allowed me to keep track of and keep up with my long-term goals. As I mentioned, I used to write down the same few abstract goals dozens of times only to come back to them months later not knowing if I had made any progress at all or even what that progress would look like. It has been incredibly fulfilling and self-affirming for me to be able to quantify my small successes each day. If you suffer from low self-esteem like I do, a bujo can definitely help you notice how much you actually are accomplishing. This, in turn, can give you the confidence to break out of a cycle of self-doubt and achieve more of your goals.

Now, if you’re like me, you’re probably already fretting about the possibility that you may see that you are not making progress on a particular goal and how that will affect your frame of mind. However, I have found that even in this instance a bujo can be helpful. Instead of seeing this lack of progression as a failure, it can stimulate you to make some changes. Is this goal really important to you? Should you drop this goal in order to focus more energy on more meaningful projects? And if this goal really is something you want to work towards, can you break it into smaller, more easily attainable goals? Don’t let this type of realization discourage you. Let it inspire you to try something new.

In addition to tracking goals, bujos can include a myriad of other aspects such as: scheduling, habit tracking, studying, grocery lists, doodling, and anything else you want to keep track of all in one convenient location. As you can see from the photos I took of my October spread, I generally use mine to track daily habits and mood, set monthly goals, record my finances, plan my weekly meals, and record what I eat and do each day. But one of the best parts about bullet journaling is that you can change the layout and setup any time you want. Each weekly spread can look different depending on how busy you are or how your feeling that week. After evaluating how your spread worked for one month you can easily revamp it to better suit your needs for the next.

Bullet journaling can also have the added bonus of allowing you to begin to notice patterns in your moods and behaviors. If you see that you were feeling particularly down a few days or one particular week in the month you can look at what else was happening and be better prepared in the future to avoid situations or habits that produce negative emotions. You may, however, start to notice yourself becoming more happier in general. According to Sonja Lyubomirsky in her book The How of Happiness, planning and making goals for the future actually increases feelings of happiness and contributes to a positive sense of well-being.

There are endless amounts of videos online demonstrating how to set up your very own bujo along with inspiration and ideas to add your own special flare that keeps you coming back each day. I hope that this format of journaling benefits your life as much as it has benefited mine.

Happy Journaling ♥