January 2021 in Review

February 01, 2021

Woah, first month of 2021 done already. This month went by quickly for me. Definitely some ups and downs… but thankfully more of the former than the latter. Overall, I think this month went well. Let’s dig into that and see why I think so:

Habits

Read 1 page or more per day

• This was my best habit but not by much
• Missed 1 day out of 31 putting me at a 97% completion rate

This is a pretty easy habit to do so it’s going to stick around. Some might ask “why only one page?” To that I would say, why not? Every time I successfully completed this habit, I ended up reading way more than one page. It’s also very adaptable. Listening to an audiobook instead of reading a physical book? Substitute one page for five minutes of listening. The goal here is to read every day, not read a book a week. That being said, eventually I do want to increase the page count to something like 20-25 pages per day.

Molding Mobility every day

• Second best habit
• Missed 2 days out of 31, 94% completion

Also an easy one. It’s nothing crazy but that’s why I also have Starting Stretching. Easy to do in the morning or maybe during a lunch break. This is going to stay with me as I go into February.

Starting Stretching every other day

• Worst habit of the bunch
• Missed 3 days out of 15.5 (since it’s every other day), 77% completion

This wasn’t too bad. Thing is, the percentage takes a big hit since the total days are half of those used for the other habits. Still, it was my worst habit. I think there was one main issue: I would often wait to do this routine until before bed. Usually that’s not a problem but on days when I go to the office I come home exhausted. Solution: do this routine in the morning or afternoon.

Cardio for at least 15 minutes per day

• Second worst habit
• Missed 5 days out of 31, 84% completion

This has actually become a favorite habit of mine. I grab my iPad and just watch random videos on YouTube while I ride my exercise bike. I’ve basically tricked my brain into liking it by doing something fun at the same time. The problem here is similar to the previous habit: on days when I go to the office I don’t want to do anything related to exercise. But weirdly enough I still tend to get this one done even though it takes longer and is more difficult than stretching. I’m upping the minimum minutes to 25 for February.

Journal every day

• Third best habit
• Missed 3 days out of 31, 90% completion

Well, this was an interesting one. I’ll talk about this more when I give an update on my yearly habits. My workflow for journaling is pretty much just

1. Open the Day One app before I go to sleep
2. Write about anything I want to with no length requirement

This has worked out well so far. I think two of the three misses were just me forgetting to journal as opposed to actively deciding not to.

Habits for February 2021

Yearly Goal Progress

Graduate college

I actually ended up pushing some classes into another term at WGU. It hurt to make that decision but I think it’s the best for me. This means I’ll still graduate in 2021 but now it’ll be in November instead of May. Doing this allows me to have a life and find time to do things other than work and school. That’s worth the extra months of school and tuition cost.

Hit 20K in savings

Doing well here, thankfully. As of writing this, I’m at $12,790.34. It looks like I’ll have some larger expenses this year than I expected but I still think I’ll hit 20K before year-end. Just need to be frugal.

Journal daily

Well, I did what I said I would: before writing this post, I compiled all of my January journal entries and read them back to back. What did I learn? Not much. But I wasn’t expecting to be surprised. There were a few things I wrote that made me cringe, laugh, or remember an insightful thought but nothing crazy. That’s fine with me. For me, journaling has become as much about letting my current feelings out as recounting past feelings later. It’s great for both and I’m really glad I started doing it.

This site

The only major change to this site in January 2021 was the addition of dark mode (click the little moon icon at the top). I had a few urges to do a redesign so I’m glad I stuck to my guns and didn’t do that. My writing and projects are still the main focus of the site, as they should be. I hope to write more self-contained blog posts this month. What will those posts be about? As of now I’m not sure.

Outlook

I’m excited for February and for where my life is headed in general. If you had told me one year ago that I’d be blogging consistently and keeping up multiple habits, I’d have laughed. But that’s where I am now. Tricky part is keeping on this course. Here’s to February 2021!