My October tagline (because me and my mom are slightly lame and come up with tagline for everything, was Cleaning Out the Dust From My Life, i.e. my biggest struggle organization. While I might be crazy about my planner and have the next three months of my life already planned out, some other not so fun aspects of organization had (ahem) fallen under the radar.
Anyone whose ever met me knows I'm super messy, and I will leave things to the absolute last moment...as an example I ended up with a huge hole in one of my teeth that made it near impossible to eat (and also sleep? because OW!) simply because I was too lazy to make a dentist appointment (and perhaps a little apprehensive of the dentist?) SO I decided to try to the first month to get those things I procrastinated for so long out of the way finally.
Here was my game plan:
Start Meal Prepping (i.e. STOP spending so much money on Whole Foods lunches)
Finish putting together my room.
Make my appointments.
I can't say I 100% meet all of my goals either, but I can say that I finally got a root canal and I can eat on the left side of my mouth again, so you win some and you loose some. There were obviously smaller goals along the way, some that I met and some that I failed spectauarly at-- (who knew mounting curtains would be so difficult). Mostly what I learned after the first month was that this whole thing was supposed to be making me happier-- not more stressed out! So maybe I needed to bite off a little smaller chunks, if only so I wouldn't choke.
The biggest thing I learned was that getting things done takes time, and in order to not get stressed, I really just needed to let it take that time. This became one of my personal commandments and over November it was very useful in reducing my stress.
It became a mantra when I got overwhelmed: Things take time, let them take that time.
This realization kept me from giving up when I didn't receive immediate gratification (which I love love love, immediate results are just SO SATISFYING GOSH).
Meal prepping is time consuming--but then it saves you time and money and stress. Mounting my curtains might have to wait until my dad (Mr. Fix-It-Man) comes into town. I suck (like so badly) at making my own appointments, but then again I'm only 21...I can make my mom book my appointments for a little longer.
This whole project is about learning to love myself and the world a little more, and figuring out the best way to lead a happier life. Month One was certainly a exercise in patience, one that taught me that my version of patience (waiting three months to start serving at my church) and the version of patience I needed to be practicing were very different.
I'm settled now. I live somewhere I absolutely love and I intend to stay here a while. I'm only twenty-one and theres no rush right now on any part of my life. It's certainly an extreme change of pace from New York and NYU, but a MUCH needed one.
Time to slow my roll, settle in and enjoy this new (pretty awesome) life of mine. Thanks Happiness Project for showing me that.
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