January Goals- I Have Some!
I know… I’m a little late to the party here. A third of the month is over and I’m just now setting some goals. Furthermore, I don’t intend to implement one of them for another week. My son is home until the 16th. I don’t think I’ll look back and regret that I didn’t get more sleep for these weeks, but I will be sad if I don’t make the most of the time I have with him here. Speaking of sleep… Goal #1 If I said my goal was to get more sleep, that would be an oversimplification. I’ve been saying I need to get more sleep for months (years?) now, but being sick the week between Christmas and New Years really brought my sleep issue into focus. For that week, I slept better than I’ve slept in… oh, I don’t know- nineteen years? For seven nights in a row, I crawled into bed and slept solidly for 8-9 hours. I would wake up once to use the bathroom, but then immediately fall back into a keep sleep. The night before I went back to work, I suddenly had trouble falling asleep. I wasn’t anxious or worried- I was just aware that I had to get up the next day at a specific time and be somewhere, and I couldn’t fully relax. I proceeded to eventually sleep fitfully, waking several times to use the bathroom, and woke in the morning feeling unrefreshed. And the problem is… that is my norm. Right now my son and I are watching all the Harry Potter movies in the evenings, which isn’t conducive to getting in bed early and sleeping well. That’s okay! But starting next week my goal is to at least get into bed eight hours before I need to get up. I’ll give it until the end of January, and if I’m lying in bed for eight hours but still not sleeping well, I’ll consider a further sleep intervention for February. Goal #2 This one is more straightforward! I want to read four books in January. For the past few years, I’ve had a (modest) goal of reading 50 books for the year. I haven’t quite reached that goal, but I’ve come much closer to 50 than if I didn’t set it at all. Last year I was doing great, until I re-read all the Harry Potter books, which led to an existential crisis, where I felt like I couldn’t read anything else ever again. Luckily I finally got over that and am working my way through my Christmas books. Four books in January is definitely doable. Goal #3 Fitness! I’m going to continue to run every other day during January, building up my mileage slowly. That’s the easy part. Everything else gets more complicated. I loved my yoga challenge for November, where I did a yoga class every day. I realized yoga is important for me and I want to keep up with it. However, I need to add in more specific strength training (during my month of yoga, I counted the power yoga classes as my strength training.) So my goal, for January, is to do yoga three times a week, and add some running-specific strength at least twice a week. And pushups. Must keep doing pushups. Those are my January goals… the hardest one will be the sleep one. We’ll see how it goes! Did you set January goals? How’s it going so far?