April 2020 Goals

Wow, what a month. It’s hard to know what to say about such a historical period that we’re currently experiencing. I think it’s safe to say that all of us are a little different than the people we were at the beginning of March 2020. There has been a lot of sad moments and a lot of uplifting moments over the last few weeks. And though March didn’t go like anyone expected it to, I’ve been so encouraged to see people rise to the occasion and overcome. Here’s a recap of my March Goals and my stay-at-home April 2020 goals!

 March Goals – 13 out of 17 completely complete!

• Grout and caulk our shower to prevent mold problems DONE! Our bathroom looks so much cleaner now!
• Paint our kitchen I crossed this off by electing not to do it at all
• Paint our bathroom Done! 
• Follow this cleaning routine every day. I didn’t do it every day, but most days! Such a great way to maintain a clean home that we’ve been spending ALL our time in!
• Read Prayer by Tim Keller. Crossing it off because I’ve been steadily chipping away at it each morning. Still have half the book to get through, but it’s been such a blessing so far!
• Memorize a portion of Scripture. I sort of want to give this a half check. Last month I memorized one verse, so I’m counting it. I would like to have memorized more, but had a hard time figuring out my system. I finally realized that writing the verses on index cards and reviewing them as I brush my teeth or blowdry my hair works great!
• Call one person every day on my walk home from the metro. Well, the metro thing didn’t happen for the majority of the month, but I did make a lot of phone calls on my daily walks out of the house!
• Text/message at least one person every day to check-in. Who knew that a pandemic would be the perfect opportunity to check in on all your friends?
• Run the St. Patrick’s Day 4 Mile Race. Unfortunately, this was canceled 🙁  — I’m counting it a win though because I did run 4 miles! Woohoo! 
• Run 3x a week
• Start HIIT workouts 3x a week after the race. It’s been a surprise to see how much stronger I already feel! 
• Schedule and go on a Spring Break adventure. We managed to squeeze an adventure in JUST in time! We walked around the national mall and went to the top of the Washington Monument the day before everything shut down!
• Post on Instagram 20 times. I posted 16 times.
• Schedule writing sessions at the beginning of each week. Didn’t do this at all. Womp womp.
• Publish 9 posts this month. Published 4; it would have been more if I had done the above goal I think! 😉 
• Attend small group weekly. Done! We started meeting virtually once social distancing started! So thankful I was still able to meet with my group. 
• Attend at least one book club. Unfortunately the social distancing started before I could attend any book clubs. Such a bummer! I’m cooking up some ideas for a virtual one though! 

Lessons learned

All in all, I’m surprised I was still able to tackle so many goals despite the fact that the month did not go at all like I anticipated. I could have easily given in to the circumstances and decided that my goals were impossible to reach in a time like this. But in reality, staying at home gave me MORE opportunities to work on most of my goals. I tried to keep all this in mind as I set my April 2020 goals!

April 2020 Goals

Since we’re now entering into the 2nd quarter, I did a Goals Refresh in my power sheets. Many of them stayed pretty much the same! Some of them were tweaked quite a bit though. One of my big focuses for the 1st quarter was to get our home organized and looking beautiful. I’m so thankful now that I poured all that energy into that! Of course, there’s still plenty more I could organize or beautify, but I think I’m mostly in a maintenance phase, which frees up a little time and energy to focus on some other things!

Here are my April 2020 goals:

• Read The Case Against Sugar by Gary Taub. Reading books like this always motivate me to make changes in my health.
• Write a blog mission statement. I’ve been having a hard time knowing what to focus on here and I think that’s making it tough for me to gain momentum in writing new blog posts. Hoping some clarity will help!
• Write 2 blog posts a week.
• Complete my journaling series on the blog.
• Go on a Friday Adventure. These will certainly look different than I expected at the beginning of the year. I’m hoping to find some walking/hiking trails that aren’t at all crowded. If all else fails, we can go for a drive and not get out of our car 🙂
• Purge 2016 Phone pics. This is part of my overarching 2020 goal of becoming a good memory keeper for our family.
• Schedule 5 Instagram posts a week. This is another micro-goal branching out from my memory-keeper goal.
• Try a new recipe every week. I’m specifically looking to add more veggies to our diet!
• Make a healthy breakfast every morning. Most days this will likely be a smoothie. Eating a good breakfast can change how my entire day goes so I’d really like to make this a habit.
• Do 3 HIIT workouts a week
• Go for 3 runs each week
• Journal every day. This is branching out from my goal to learn to love God with my whole heart. I tend to be a person that avoids emotions, and journaling helps me become more aware of my feelings. It’s hard to bring your whole heart to God when you’re not even sure what’s going on in said heart.
• Text a friend or family member every day
• Call a friend or family member every day

What are your stay-at-home goals?

For some of us, taking care of ourselves might mean we have little to no goals. For others, taking good care of yourself might mean you plan a lot of activities to keep you busy and active. I’d love to hear what you have planned for this stay-at-home month ahead of us!