The Best Planner Ever - Curation by St. Belford

I have found it. The very best planner. Ever. One that I actually used all year last year, and liked so much that I pre-ordered one. They're not cheap, and this year I splurged on the tabs and more stickers (because you can never have enough stickers), so it was my Christmas gift from Santa. 

It focuses on Self Care, which is excellent, and St. Belford even provides lovely podcasts supporting your self-care.

The Sections:

1. Self-Care Menu: what can you do for 10/30/60 minutes for your mind/body/soul?

2. Bucket List for the year: what fun, satisfying adventures do you want to have?

3. Set your Intentions for the year: how do you want to live your life? What do you want to change, achieve, do?

4. The next section is hefty: Missions: what do you want to accomplish this year? And you don't just write "Paint my house". You also give yourself a target date, tell yourself Why you want to do it, Overcome your fears about doing it, lay out the (manageable) Steps with their individual target dates, note your Milestones, your Rewards upon completion, and you even get a lovely Progress Bar that you can decorate to your heart's desire. It's like a big Project Plan on a two-page spread, in your planner, not in a separate notebook. Awesome.

5. Less daunting is the Habit Curator: What habits do you want to incorporate into your life? What are their benefits, the steps to doing the habit, the cues that help trigger you to do it, and a checklist for starting it. In other words, I'm not just listing my habits, I'm setting myself up for success in doing them.

6. Savings Curator: What are you saving for, how can you re-budget or make more money to do so? This section also includes monthly Income and Expenses tables.

7. The Monthly section: All the monthly spreads are in one section, so you can plan your monthly items, write in all your birthdays, see what's going on in your schedule at a glance instead of flipping through pages to find the next month. It should also be noted that every day is a full square. None of those useless diagonal half-squares!

8. Then, and this is the best, the Weekly Spreads: Each week gets two full two-page spreads. 

Pre-Week Planner: The whole month is laid out at the top, and the week you're in is bolded. There is a Gratitude Reflection for the week, a Drawing Board (your mini bullet journal for the week, or for whatever), your week's Priorities / Mission Progress, and a Personal Planner / Tracker (meal planning, workouts, moods, whatever you want). At the very bottom is a prompt for the week - something that will make you feel good.

Weekly Spread: Every day has it's own full block, and each block has an appointment/task section, a checklist section, and a Self-Care line. The spread also includes a space for reminders or notes, and the Habit Tracker for the week.

9. One of the last, and also best, sections, is the Memories section:

Yearly Memory Bank. It's where you write down all the things that you want to remember, like when did you have coffee with that random friend, when and where was your vacation, when did your car go in for service, etc. It has 54 spaces for the things that you don't want to shuffle back through the whole book to find, and it's great. 

Yearly Reflections: prompts help you look back at your year; who/what made you happy/unhappy, and what can you change to make next year better?

10. At the very end are plain lined note pages. Not a lot, but they get the job done. And, new this year is next year's calendar.

That all sounds like a lot.

But the very best part is that St Belford themselves give you permission to not use all the spaces, do all the things, and they even tell you to give yourself permission to not accomplish all the missions etc. that you've set out for yourself. Life happens, and your self-care and mental health are more important than checking all the boxes and doing all the tasks and meeting all the target dates.

I certainly did not do all the things and meet all the dates. Not one of my missions made it off the page last year. I only have one or two habits that I manage to do 50% of the time. I didn't do everything on my Bucket List. And I'm okay with that because I can see what I have accomplished in my general life. Because it was actually a lot.

I finally finished crocheting a dishcloth that I've been working on for a couple of years. Now I want to crochet more.

I exercised a lot more and ate more vegetables this year. I prepped better lunches for work, more often, this year.

I was a better President for a Group this year.

I was less hard on myself for not getting things done this year. And this, right here, is motivation to do even just one more thing this year. And to be okay with not doing it, if it's too much.

Saint Belford Planner - Short and Sweet Review

 I cannot state how much I love this planner enough!

It focuses on your health and well-being while allowing so much space for actual appointments and tasks and planning, and it's September and I'm still using it.

And maybe I'm not using it to its fullest potential, but I'm getting there, but not using it to its fullest is even okay with the creators because they're all about taking care of you and you don't need to stress yourself out by filling your planner completely.

I love it so much that I signed up for the VIP access, ordered 2024's already, and it's still in it's packaging because I'm being a good girl and it's a Christmas present for me but I soooooooooo very much want to open it now!

Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters: The Smiling Experiment Gone So Very Wrong

 I might finish this book in the next few years! 

I finished Chapter 3 on Blond Bombshells (Barbie--Manufactured by Mattel, Designed by Evolution (note that this book was written well before the movie so take that title for what it's worth)) and why men like them so much. The long story short: youth in women = we can have babies, and blond hair darkens as we age so that's an indicator of youth. Etc.

This chapter also talks about how men err on the side of false positive because they're wired to procreate. IE, for men it's better to assume that a woman is interested because if they aren't, oh well, but if they are and the man didn't follow up on a flirt then he missed a procreational opportunity.

Women, however, err on the side of false negative, IE if she's unsure that a man is interested (long term?) then oh well. If he wasn't interested, she didn't get pregnant. If he was interested and she didn't pick up on it, oh well because she didn't get pregnant with someone who maybe just wanted a one-night stand. 

Double IE: men need to err on the side that gives them progeny, and women need to err on the side that doesn't saddle them with long term responsibilities by themselves. 

The Really Interesting Tidbit from the chapter was the story of a Supermarket Chain making all of their cashiers thank customers by name while smiling and looking them in the eyes. If it was a male cashier, or if it was a female cashier and a female customer, no problem. If it was a female cashier and a male customer, well then there was stalking and harassment because if a woman looks into a man's eyes, smiles, and says "thank you for shopping with us, George Smith," then she must want to be his sex slave and marry him.

Mayhem 30 Hard

I do CrossFit. Not this summer because I'm taking a break (my plantar fasciitis said so). 

I start up again in September, and because my gym is a Mayhem affiliate, the Monthly Mayhem challenge is the Mayhem 30 Hard (based off the 75 Hard challenge, which, if you know nothing about it, Google that shit and then applaud everyone who is determined enough to do it because damn, I could not repeatedly set myself up for that much failure. And my colleague who did it looked exhausted. I'm digressing).

It's a challenge designed to test your resolve and self-discipline. And it's a little easier than 75 Hard. 

But does that mean I'm going to do it? I mean, I could, but does Mayhem not know that people (or their children) start school in September, so it's not just "here are 7 things you need to accomplish everyday to be worthy complete this challenge", it's "here are 7 things you need to accomplish everyday to be worthy complete this challenge and you need to prepare / help your kids prepare lunches, get them to school, drive them to all their extra curriculars (I love having nerdy introverted children), make supper and do laundry on a regular basis. Also have sex with your significant other. Unless you're so exhausted that all you want to do is cry in the shower and maybe sleep there because the bed is way over there and now that you're in the shower do you really need to get out? Because yeah, I need to add to my existing get-up-at-04:30-go-to-bed-at-22:00-but-you-need-8+-hours-of-sleep day.

This is what we have to do (and what my inside voice thinks about it all):

For the September monthly challenge, we’re doing a condensed version of the 75 Hard program, which you may have heard of.

To successfully complete this challenge, for the next 30 days, you must do ALL of the following EVERY DAY (the notes on this say that this scores a 7, and that if we don't do all of it, score what you did do. Also, you don't have to "start over" like you do in 75 Hard):

• Complete two 30+ minute workouts (at least one workout MUST be outside) If I do Shavasana for half an hour on the deck and then for half an hour in bed, does that count?
• Drink 2/3 of your body weight in ounces of water
  (For example: if you weigh 200 lbs, you will need to drink a minimum of 133 oz of water each day) Hahahahahahahahahaha. Wait. Didn't someone die from this? I can get about 60% of this one, but I'm pretty sure that I'm not going to get a 7/7 day.
• Read 10+ pages in a nonfiction book Do CRA rulings count? Financial Statements? Lavender's Blue is non-fiction, right? I'm learning how to deal with drunk people and escape weddings so it counts. 
• Consume zero alcohol for the entire 30 days The blueberry apple ciders will stay in my fridge for another 30 days. No problemo.
• Choose any diet and stick with it The notes on this say that even just logging all food everyday, or reaching the goal of no snacks after supper can count. I do actually want to follow the 800g Challenge diet. You do feel amazing on it! But that means that I have to prep salads for work lunches, and not eat just pasta for supper like you do when you answer a kazillion unread emails on your first day back after a holiday whilst putting out Sage fires. Accounting, not brush.
• No cheat meals Someone I know has a birthday in September, so we all know how that one's going to go.
• Take a daily progress picture There may not be publishable words for this one.

I'm going to bed now.

This Draft is from May. Or March. Probably March. 5th.

 Every time I think I'm going to do better at actually writing. Blogging or not, just writing. At all. It doesn't seem to happen.

I'm using Saint Belford's Planner, and I have to tell you, I love it. It's focused on self care, not do these million things by 3pm. It has a habit tracker in it, and one of those habits should be write something. Other than a financial statement.

Saturday Ski

 Cross-Country skiing is great. Until you need to slow down or stop.

Took a new trail yesterday, and on the map the trail is green. IE, easy, gentle slopes if there are any. 

I did okay. Enjoyed it even.

Got to the last loop of the trail. Bit of a hill. Okay, I've done green hills before. No problems. I don't need to take the little connector to the flat trail I've taken before, I tell myself. Down I go, and all is going well until the left ski left the track and wouldn't come back in and I had to bail. On my face. Good times. 

I get back up with a bit of assistance from someone who has probably been skiing since the beginning of time. I didn't even have to take my skis off! Win for me. 

"Oh," she says. "There is a bit of a divot there," and points up the trail a bit.

"Yeah, that was me. That's where I fell." Apologies to everyone else who had to ski that afterwards.

I continue on. The next hill looks just as intimidating. I follow some other newbies across a gap to a nicer looking trail. Fall on my ass stepping down onto the main trail. 

I make it to the top of the hill just above the lodge, and even though I know it's okay to ski down (I've done it before, even), I calmly ski into the upper parking lot, remove my skis, and take the stairs.

I log into my fitness app and have a look at my ski. I compare its map to the Ski Trails map. I look a little closer.

The last part of the loop is blue, with yellow high-lighting to show that it's lit up at night. And that looks green. Definitely is not green, though.

It's Been a While

You ever have those days where you want to blog / write, but you feel like it's a guilty pleasure to do so because it's something just for you, and that there are so many other things to do, so you don't?

Apparently I've had over a year of that. Over two years of that.

And then I feel guilty about that,  

But then I remind myself that I have done things just for myself these last two years. I've gone to the gym a couple mornings a week which means that my kids have to get up and start getting ready for school on their own.

I've taken dog tracking classes.

I've taken a weekend trip BY MYSELF. 

I've focused on health these last two years.

And now I want to add writing to the table.

So I'm not going to feel guilty.