September 23 – September 29

The month has drawn to a close with this week, this week which I have taken to calling September – Week Four, as according to my latest and of course greatest daily-life-plan. Would you care to hear about my latest scheduling/life maintenance scheme? Of course you don’t. Maybe one day I will gather all of these plans, these systems, and publish them in a volume entitled The Rantings of a Mad Woman.

Anyway, part of this current daily-life-plan is intentional focus on 3 aspects of my life for 30 days and letting everything else kind of simmer. For the month of September, I attended to the following:

My Health, because I was drawing ever closer to that “I can’t wear any of my clothes anymore” moment, and also I need to get married in a year and would prefer not to resort to an all-cottage cheese diet to fit into my dress next summer. I also wanted to work towards my two-5k New Year’s Resolution, aka stop running so sporadically.

I also focused on my Happiness this month – a term I use broadly to encompass any sort of emotional/mood/behavior/spiritual issues that I might be having. There is usually something going on. Which is probably requires a stronger course of treatment than “happiness,” and is likely related to why I feel a need to craft elaborate schemes to live my life, but I digress.

And last but not least, Life Maintenance. I moved and started a new job. I thought it would be wise to devote some attention to stuff like “moving,” “unpacking,” “signing up for health insurance,” “buying stuff for my apartment,” and “figuring out what to spend my money/time on.”

So this month, I budgeted and signed papers and filled up notebooks and scheduled. This month I re-read Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project and while my original opinions still stand, oh, this book just makes me think differently. I learn a lot about learning a lot about myself, and I’ve been babbling about it to people for the entirety of September. I’m on an interminable hold list for Happier at Home.

And in this September – Week Four, I finished Day 14 of Whole30, ran a 5k in the rain without stopping to walk, and one room of my house is moderately decorated, mostly unpacked, and generally habitable.

A good month.

Next up, Career, Creativity, and (gag) Wedding.

Reading:

• The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart
• Penelope by Rebecca Harrington
• Every Day by David Levithan

Listening to:

• New Avett Brothers
• New-ish Fleet Foxes
• Van Morrison’s “Into the Mystic”
• 7,435 podcasts

Watching:

• Checked out season one of Happy Endings from the library. Here is the problem with checking out season DVDs from the library – you have to watch them REALLY fast. I like this show, but I don’t really like any of the actors. Maybe one. Is that good enough to watch season two? Is this an Arrested Development situation where you are indifferent and confused during season one and then die of amazement and laugh at your past, ignorant self for hating season one? This is a lot of thinking about a television show – I should probably stop this now and use my time on something more productive.