As I mentioned in my last reflections blog, my intent for
2019 is to continue with the monthly reflections. However, I am abandoning the sections that
were previously used: The Good, The
Challenges, and The Future. I actually
found them to be a bit restrictive. A
lot of the things I wanted to mention had good and bad parts to them, so I
struggled to decide where to categorize them.
For 2019, I will just use a topical divide and let my discussion be as
positive or negative as my thoughts on the matter.
January in general has been a bit of a struggle for me. I have spent much of it not feeling
particularly well, though I have not actually been sick. By that I mean, I have not had any colds or
flus or other tangible illnesses, but instead I have been plagued with
headaches, stomachaches, joint aches, fatigue, low-energy, and just general feelings
of blah. I have found it hard to stick
to my work out schedule. My diet has
been less than stellar, though I have mostly refrained from the
ridiculous. The weather has not been terrible,
but it has been a typical winter of generally cold temperatures with periods of
rain/snow. This has not motivated me to
leave the house any more than necessary.
Overall, I think I might be suffering from some degree of SAD (Seasonal
Affective Disorder). I feel like I
always struggle more in the winter months than the rest of the year. I cannot afford them right now, but I am
considering investing in some SAD therapy lights for next year to see if they
make a difference. Given this general
state of apathy and lethargy, here is where my January thoughts have been
focused.
CPA Exam
I am back to studying, mostly. I am working on my final section of the exam,
BEC (Business Environment and Concepts).
I was on track with my study program for the first 3 weeks of
January. I have slipped a bit this week,
but will hopefully catch myself up by the weekend. I have scheduled my exam for March 6th,
so I need to get through everything before then. BEC is a collection of non-accounting
business topics (economics, finance, corporate governance, operations,
strategic management, etc.). As such,
there is a lot of variety on which topics I enjoy doing, which I do not, some
that I know much of the material, and some I know nothing. I am not seriously concerned about anything
content-wise so far. The biggest change
for BEC is there is a Written Content section of the exam, which has not been in
the other sections. While I am not
particularly concerned with my ability to write decently, I do get a bit
concerned over writing on particular topics.
The Wiley review program gives WC assignments to practice, but there is
no feedback to it. You basically read
their canned answer and grade yourself to move past the assignment. Some topics I am comfortable enough to
regurgitate information, but others I cannot remember much detail without any
prompts. I know I do not need to be
perfect, and I just have to give it my best shot come test day. But I know I will still worry about this part
of it until I am done with the section.
Simplify
I tried to do some goal setting exercises in
December/January, but I have been so unmotivated that I did not get very far on
them. I have decided to abandon that for
now with the intent to do it in April when I hope the returning sunshine and
warmth will make me feel more hopeful and enlivened. In the meantime, I have still tried to focus
on getting some things done during the month.
All my activity seems to be around the idea of simplify and declutter
and organize. Here are some of my
accomplishments and/or projects within this area.
Netflix: I reduced my DVD subscription to the “1 at a
time, 2 in a month” option. This is the
lowest option available. I like the
couple dollars savings, but really I am trying to reduce my TV time
temptations. I remember when renting a
movie was a special treat for a family night.
Now it feels like I need to see everything that catches my interest, and
that is just ridiculous. By lowering the
number of discs I can get, I now have to choose what I actually want to see the
most. I still have the Netflix streaming
service, FIOS, and Amazon Prime, so there are plenty of options available if I do
feel the need to find something to watch.
Book of the Month: I canceled my Book of the Month
subscription. This definitely falls into
the save money category. However, the
bigger reason was to help me reduce the amount of books in my house. I love books, and I definitely want to have a
personal library. As I work to simplify
my life though, I have come to the realization that I really want to be
intentional with the books I include in my library. They should represent me and what I really
love, not just a random assortment of things I acquired haphazardly. While I have enjoyed the vast majority of
the books I received through the service, very few of them are ones I
necessarily feel the need to own. Therefore,
I have canceled the subscription. I
intend to get most of my books at the library, maybe buy some through my Nook,
and reserve purchasing physical books for the ones I love the most.
Youtube & Other
Online Time-Suckers: I am taking
steps to try to reign in my online activity.
The big one is Youtube. I have
reduced my subscription list from 40-something to 21. My goal was 20, but I am having trouble picking
the last one to unsubscribe. I decided
to just let it go for a few more weeks and see if one will work its way to the
nix list. Going forward, I am going to
try to whittle it down even further, but at the very least do a one in, one out
approach. This still leaves a lot of
content for me to choose from (maybe still too much), but at least there will
not be quite so many videos screaming for my attention. In addition to Youtube, I have tried to eliminate
some of my other online activity as well.
I am working to reduce my Goodreads To Read list to no more than 100 books
(currently at 114, starting somewhere around 130 at the beginning of the month,
but more like 300 when I started trying to reduce it last year). This does not take up time online, but it
makes me anxious seeing such a long list of books waiting for my attention. Plus I used to just pull books at random off
the shelves in the library, but now I feel like I cannot do that because I
already have all these ones planned out to read. I am also not going to be writing reviews on
Goodreads going forward. I will still
rate them, but I do not think it a good use of my time to write reviews any
more. I am working to reduce my
BlogLovin’ subscriptions. I had
somewhere around 60, and I am down to 35.
I hardly ever read any of them, because there were just too many to look
through in the amount of time I wanted to give blog reading (typically a
lunchtime activity). I am now trying to
read posts from the ones I have left to determine which ones actually give me
value and which ones do not. My end goal
is following 10-15 blogs, with a one in, one out approach going forward. Finally, I went through my Instagram and
unfollowed everything that did not inspire me.
I kept everyone I knew in real life.
Otherwise I still have a collection of
fitness/health/travel/food/photography/whatever that either inspire me or
provide beauty that I can enjoy for the sake of beauty. Gone are the overt sales pitches, the canned
inspirational quote posters, and the random celebrities whose lives do not matter
to me (I do actually have a couple of celebrities left, but only the few whose
posts I actually appreciate). I have no
set number for this (currently it is around 115), but I just want my feed to be
filled with stuff that is interesting to me and not just thousands of selfies
of people I do not know. I feel good
about the sweep I have done this month of all my online activity, but I am not
done yet. I still need to tackle
twitter, delete Pinterest which I never use, and continue to evaluate the ones
already mentioned. In the future, I am
going to try to be more careful with my online accounts. I want to make sure I am only adding things
intentionally that add value to my life, while continuing to let go of the
stuff that is dragging me down.
Personal Product
Inventory: Another area of my life
that is out of control is my personal products.
I did an inventory of almost everything I own (I know it is not complete
because I keep finding things I never included). I have over 200 items of makeup. I have almost another 200 items of skincare,
bath & body products, and hair products.
My collection has accumulated from several sources, including stuff I
bought myself, a lot of stuff I received in subscription boxes, and gifts from
other people. My goal for 2019 is to
work through as much of it as I possibly can.
I am uncomfortable throwing away good products, so I am planning to try
to use stuff up unless it goes bad or is truly terrible. There is very little of it I can give away,
because most is opened and/or of unknown origin date. Also, I am trying very hard to limit the
amount of new items coming into the house.
Obviously I cannot do much about gifts, though I will not be asking for
anything specifically. I canceled all
the subscription boxes ages ago. As for
items I buy myself, I am putting myself on a 20 items restriction in 2019 which
includes restocking anything I used during the year. Originally, I wanted to do 10 makeup and 10
everything else. After reviewing what I
use and what I have in stock, I decided 10 is too many for makeup and possibly
not enough for everything else. For
makeup, I honestly think mascara is the only thing I should need to purchase
the whole year, anything else would be a want.
For the rest of it, I have categories where there is no way I will use
up what I have (body wash, hair oil) and categories that I will definitely need
to rebuy, maybe more than once during the year (toner, deodorant). Once I reduce the excess, my next step in the
process is to really focus in on building a good, simplified, self-care routine
for myself. I am open to experimenting
with new things over time, but right now I have so much stuff and use so much
variety that I really have no idea what works best for me in most categories.
For January, I used up/trashed/gave away 15 items – 2 eyeshadows,
1 mascara, 1 tinted lip balm, 3 lip balms, 1 face moisturizer, 1 toner, 2 sheet
masks, 1 clay mask, 1 body exfoliating cream, 1 scalp treatment, and 1
hairspray. I only bought one thing,
CeraVe SA Cream, which replaces the empty body exfoliating cream I used up
during the month. This is one of my
favorite products, and one of the few things I repurchase constantly. It has done wonders for my dry, flaky, itchy
skin since I started using it 3-4 years ago.
Low-Buy: I am trying to be very conservative with my
money for the next few months. We have
been on a reduced budget for all of 2018 seeing as we have only had one income
all year, but we have not done the best job at reigning in expenses to match
the reduction. As a result, we have
racked up more debt than I am comfortable having acquired. Once I go back to work, it should be easy
enough to pay it back down. Until then, I
still feel I should do what I can to not make it any worse than it has to be. Therefore, I am trying to be very intentional
with my money for the near future. I
think I did reasonably well during the month of January. I reevaluated my memberships/subscriptions,
and while I let most continue since it seems more a hassle to cancel and
restart, I did cancel the book subscription noted earlier and the headspace app
(I will likely renew this when I go back to work because I did use it
regularly, but figure I can get by on the free version for now). I also postponed some things I was considering
purchasing, mainly fitness equipment and some type of new studio membership to
supplement my current gym memberships (I support multiple memberships if you
like variety, you actually use all of them, and you can reasonably afford it). I did great on no impulse buys….no clothes,
no books, no movies, no tickets, etc. My
struggle category was food. While I did
OK on restaurants ($1.34 over what I budgeted), I went way over in
groceries. I have two issues I am trying
to work through in this area. First, I
am out of practice with planning my meals around my budget. I used to be great in early adulthood, but I
have not had to worry about it in years and am finding it hard to go back. Second, my husband and I split meal planning
and grocery buying duties, but we do not coordinate well. This ends in fluctuations on what is
available in the house, and weird non-planned purchases to compensate. My low buy is only in affect for me; my
husband is still spending like a wild man.
I just have to work with this, because he is uninterested in cutting
back and just harps on my unemployment if I try to bring it up.
Entertainment
I am not going back to doing entertainment reviews, because
frankly I do not want to do them.
However, I thought I would give a rundown of the entertainment I did
consume during the month and notate anything I would particularly recommend.
Books:
All The Missing Girls by Megan Miranda
The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown – Most recommended
Smart Women Finish Rich by David Bach – This does give good
practical beginner advice if
personal finance is something you want to explore.
The Unfortunates by Sophie McManus
Everything that Remains by Joshua Fields Millburn & Ryan
Nicodemus
TV Series:
Travelers: Season 1 –
Most recommended
Criminal Minds:
Season 12
Tidying Up with Marie Kondo:
Season 1
Movies:
To All the Boys I Loved Before – Most recommended of the 4,
but honestly none of these
really stood out to me as great must see movies.
Deadpool
Dumplin’
Thor
There you have it, my month in review. I know this might not be the most interesting
blog post ever, but it is reflective of how I spent January. I doubt February will be much better, because
I am hibernating until spring comes back.
See you next month!
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