Goals and Such - My Schedule

Frost
Originally uploaded by m.Lee

Last Day for Domestic 1st Class Christmas shipping. Orders need to come in by noon so I have time to package them and get them to the post box before the 1pm pickup. I am doing free Priority Mail upgrades to orders $30 or over. But the cutoff for that is tomorrow.

Something I have learned is that it is very important for me to have some sort of a schedule that includes getting to bed around the same time every night. More than anything I can do outside taking medication a sleep schedule is important to managing bipolar. In fact even when on an effective medicine combo messing with my sleep can totally override it. It is that important, but also very hard for me to stick to. I failed last week when I stayed up past two printing and I paid for it big time for a number of days. Right now my goal is to be in bed by midnight which I have mostly stuck to (once was up until 12:15) but I don't think that is good enough. I really should start winding down around 10:30 and be in bed around 11 so I can hopefully be asleep by 11:30 since it is hard for me to get to sleep. Always has been. This gives me a few hours of sleep before blee wakes up between 1am and 3am for a feeding and changing.

Another thing I have been doing has been using a list on iGoogle (kind of like Widgets for OSX but better since it is web based). I set seven reachable but important goals for the day. And I always rotate at least one out and one in each day to keep things different and help me get things done. And if something becomes total habit I remove it completely. Right now I am working on making wearing blee and exercising habit and I think I am almost there. Thankfully the two often go hand in hand since I am able to do certain exercises like squats while wearing her and using her as a handy weight.

I think I may start posting this here since the problem with the widget is that there is no record after the day is over. This way I can go back and cross things out and see how I am doing week by week. And see what I am doing.

1. wear blee (min hour total)
2. art
3. exercise
4. tidy up
5. List 2 Items
6. blog/ Flickr
7. rest

These are good simple goals to have that keep me from stressing about everything thing that needs to get done and helps me get more done because I spend less time stressing.

Also, I recently joined a group called BostonBabywearers and was rather disappointed because they never seemed to meet in Boston but always well outside the city. Not locations friendly for my carless butt to drag my three month old too. Heck, they weren't even on the T line unless you include lots of bus transfers. No thanks. So I politely spoke up and asked about meetings in Boston and a number of interested women in my area spoke up and now we are planning something in JP early next year. I'm excited about connecting with other mom's that I hopefully have more in common with than the one in the mom's group through church. Don't get me wrong those women are all very nice generous and kind hearted people and I like them. But I seriously feel like the odd duck out in that group. Even though I am not much younger than any of them I feel very young and I think I am the only one that didn't grow up Christian and that seems to make a huge difference. The only one with any doubts, or at least will admit to them. I really have a hard time opening up to them. I mean none of these highly educated upper middle class to downright wealthy women knew what agnostic means! One of them tried to define it but failed miserably. A for effort I guess? Having been agnostic the vast majority of my life, borderline atheist I was shocked by this. I want to continue going to that once a month meeting, but I think these babywearers may be a bit more like me. Or at least balance it out.

Time to get to some since blee is actually napping!