Portmantle

21 August 2024. 1/75. New end date: November 8.

Well hello there! You know the drill. We’re starting over. But it’s okay, it’s okay. The challenge itself is in the consistency, and I’ve noticed that even on the days where I don’t meet the goals, I still do better than I would have otherwise. It’s okay. In the words of Erin Bow, “No writing is wasted: the words you can’t put in your book can wash the floor, live in the soil, lurk around in the air. They will make the next words better.”

And I believe it! So yeah, I’m trying to turn my life around still. If it were easy, I wouldn’t be growing or changing. It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay. 🙂

I know I may not be the most trustworthy person to take advice from. But I hope that you can at least take inspiration if you need it, and I hope that documenting my ever-accumulating failures is helping even just one person out there.

So as usual, I’m going to change around the rules a bit. I think the reason I haven’t been able to keep up with these goals as much is because I had SO much other stuff going on. And I was technically being productive, just not in ways that I mention in my 9 goals. So I’m going to change my 9 goals to reflect some of those things now 🙂 And actually I’m gonna add a 10th possible goal. But my overall aim is still to do 5 a day.

Side note: I wrote half this post a while ago and to be honest, I’ve been keeping up with the goals pretty well, but I haven’t been keeping track of it very well as you could probably tell from my lack of posted updates haha. Even when I’m not posting or even though I’m constantly starting over, I think it’s kinda good to think about how I’ve made a lot of overall lifestyle changes in my life. I might not be consistent enough to be at 100%, but I am definitely more consistent than I was before, and I am definitely seeing results from it. 🙂 I think my biggest improvement has been in healthy eating and going to the gym. Just making sure to eat my 5 plants a day or more and walk a mile really helps.

Here are the updates:

1. Get out of bed within 10 minutes of waking up OR don’t go on my phone within 10 minutes of waking up (except for stopping alarm clocks and checking the time) OR get up before 7:30am (can stay in bed longer if you wake up earlier) **BONUS POINTS: turn on vitamin d sun lamp for those 10 minutes
2. Eat at least 5 fruits/vegetables/plants
   • banana
   • jackfruit
   • cucumber
   • tomato
3. Walk at least 1 mile
   • Did 18 minutes on the stairmaster. Not sure what that’s equivalent to in miles, but I’m gonna count it anyway.
4. Read 5 pages of any book. 5 minutes of an audiobook counts.
   • I read the book Someone Who Will Love You in All Your Damaged Glory by Raphael Bob-Waksburg a few years ago and I absolutely loved it. I remember there was a poem that really stood out to me because I love poems that rhyme and this one rhymed REALLY well haha. I lent my copy to an old friend that I haven’t seen in over a year, so I decided it was time I get another copy. So I got another copy and it finally came in today and I reread it.
5. Spend at least 10 minutes on a creative hobby
6. Clean one space
7. Attend fellowship class (I’m doing a fellowship in data analytics. Yes, class is mandatory so I will be attending. But also it is 3 hours out of my night, and that means I will be productive for at least 3 hours a night when I have fellowship classes. So I’m counting it.)
   • yessir
8. Attend a real estate class and/or meeting. (These are optional but I’ve been attending 1-2 a day for a bit and they’re usually an hour each. I think just noticing how much time I really am spending on working on myself and improving myself is going to help me overall. I feel like I’ve been rotting since unemployment, but if I really look back on it, I have done so much. I’ve taken so many classes, got my real estate license, started a fellowship, etc., and I’ve actually been more productive than I’ve been giving myself credit for. So yeah. Here’s to giving myself credit for it!)
   • yessir
9. Apply to 3 jobs OR send out 3 emails for any purpose
10. Learn 10 GRE vocab words. I’m either gonna write them into random sentences here or try to worm them into my journal entry for the day 🙂 Pro tip: if you need to learn any tough words, it helps to imagine Moira Rose from Schitt’s Creek saying them. She makes it all seem a lot more fun. I am imagining the sentences I write in her voice, or as a line she would say in the show.
    • Abate: to reduce in amount, degree, or severity
      • My love for Disney Channel abated as I grew older.
    • Abeyance: temporary suppression or suspension
      • The cabaret was held in abeyance as the lead actress was nowhere to be found.
    • Adjure: to reject; to abandon formally
      • Oh Alexis! I am your mother, why must you adjure our relationship so casually?
    • Abscond: to leave secretly
      • I absconded from my sister’s room after “borrowing” her top from her closet. lol.
    • Abstemious: moderate in appetite; practicing moderation or abstinence
      • While I love to eat a little sweet treat every now and then, my mother prefers a more abstemious approach to eating.
    • Accretion: A gradual growth in size; an increase in amount
      • Watching the accretion in my bank account gave me a sense of pride.
    • Acidulous: sour in taste or manner
      • The guilt left an acidulous taste in my mouth.
    • Acme: the highest point; the summit; the highest level or degree attainable
      • I was at the acme of my career, but I decided to quit my job to raise goats in the mountains.
    • adulterate: to make impure

Sidequest Updates:

1. Go to one new place I’ve never been to before OR do one new thing I’ve never tried before
2. Write a to-do list for the week every Sunday
3. Get Google Ads Display Certification
4. Get Google Ads Search Certification
5. Start studying for GMAT
6. Go to one Toastmasters meeting

Journal prompt: (Continued) So I saw this TikTok that basically said that everything about your current life is tied to your identity and the way you perceive yourself and the way it manifests into reality. So today, I’m just going to be thinking about the ways I think about myself and the ways its been helping and harming me in my life.

I have so many examples of things that I subconsciously manifested into my life before I even knew what manifestation was.

Like most other high schoolers, I was trying to figure out friendships. I had a friend group that I’d known since about the third grade, but I never truly clicked with them. We were always nice to each other, but we didn’t share interests or sense of humor or aesthetics or backgrounds or anything, so it had always felt surface level to me. I thought they were cooler than me and it made me nervous to be around them, even though they were all extremely, extremely kind. It’s not a big deal, sometimes things don’t click with certain people. But then I started hanging around different people. And in my mind, I was subconsciously comparing these new people to my old friend group, and I started thinking of all the ways in which I clicked with them so much more. I would be more than grateful for every single similarity I had with them, and it led to us feeling more comfortable around each other and sharing even more similarities as we grew up together. I told them constantly how grateful I was for them, how incredible I thought they were. They said the same back to me. It started out with the simple gifts that you give someone on their birthday when you’re in high school. A box of donuts. A bag of Goldfish crackers. A balloon and some candy. Someone says “thank you so much you give the BEST gifts ever.” Now you walk around thinking that you give the BEST gifts ever. The next year, you put more effort. Now here I am years later buying them $200 concert tickets and spending hours on a painting and sourcing the perfect gluten free croissants from San Francisco and customizing lighters on Etsy and designing sweatshirts for them and writing paragraphs in birthday cards.

Even on this blog that I literally haven’t told a single one of them about, I rave constantly about how beyond grateful I am for them. I sing their praises when they’re not listening, and I know they sing mine. I’ve known some of them for over 10 years, and I still let them know to their faces how grateful I am for them. We tell each other constantly that this friend group is the best thing we have in our lives. And damn it, is really fucking is. And it is this way because we amplified the good about each other in our heads until that good was absolutely true. In reality, I’m sure they have more faults than I give them credit for. But in MY reality that I’ve crafted in my head, they are the most generous, kindhearted, supportive, funny, genuine, trustworthy, intelligent, warm, loving, beautiful group of people on the planet. And now I identify as someone who has the best friends on the planet.

And I know my worth as a friend, and I’ve been able to walk away from friendships that didn’t make me feel like i was the luckiest person on the planet, because I knew I would always have friendships that did make me feel that way. When people have treated me poorly, it didn’t affect my self esteem as much, because I knew that I had so many people that loved me. That sounds like a brag. It kinda is a brag. But I’m not bragging about myself or thinking that I’m better than anyone or thinking that I’m more lovable than anyone. I’m bragging because I think I am most most lucky person on the entire freaking planet when it comes to friendship. I could talk about friendship for hours.

I used to work in fashion. I’ve heard people say the most insane, backstabbing things about people they claim are their friends. I remember sitting in a lobby once and hearing a receptionist talk about how she kept to herself because she doesn’t trust girl friends. I’ve watched people get anxious about dinners with their friends because they were worried that they had to impress them or attempt to outshine them.

I’ve never felt like that around my friend group. Their successes are my successes. My successes are theirs. I love them so deeply it’s actually unreal.

It’s a huge part of my identity that I prioritize friendship above almost everything else. Almost everyone knows this about me. And the positive feedback loop it creates is INSANE. Now we’re constantly showing each other how much we love each other.

The tiniest things add up. No writing is wasted.