NikithaJuly is the month which was named after Julius Caesar. Just like him, the month was dictating for me.
How did I handle such a dictating month?
I buckled under pressure in a few areas. In the few others, I gracefully handled them.
What went well?
Writing:
The highlight or the most time consuming activity of the month was writing. As you already know, I signed up for a 30-day blogging challenge in July. And I forced myself to write and publish everyday. I was already aware of how tough it is to decide what to write on, generate ideas, write and edit on the same day. Writing was not like a flow. Probably the word ‘Challenge’ had already hinted me that it was not going to be flow. But I feel like a warrior who came out victorious at the end of the journey. It was that tough for me. There were the creative days, accomplished days, tiring days, frustrated days and break down days. It showed me how my daily job was much easier than writing. But the difficult does not matter. If I want to grow in the area I am passionate about, I need to learn how to face the challenges too. Overall, 30-day blogging challenge taught me good lessons. It gave me the confidence that I can write everyday if I badly want to.
Reading:
I read books for more than 22 hours last month. Then around 10 hours I spent on Quora and Medium. But I still found it very less because they were not giving me any ideas to write better. I decided to work on that this month. A few useful books which I read last month were ‘The power of the other’, ‘Lean In’, ‘Gifts of Imperfection’.
Exercise:
I was not that regular with exercise when compared to the other months. But one good thing I have done is posture corrections. I recorded my postures while exercising and worked on them till I got them right. If I would not have got this idea, I would have wasted or even hurt myself due to the incorrect postures. This small act makes exercise activity to fall into ‘what went well’ section.
Art:
I made a rakhi and a explosion box type greeting card for my brother. I made an organiser with cardboard box and painted it for my sister. There is so much joy in playing with colours. I felt rejuvenated when I got ideas on how I can make the piece of art beautiful. Just like writing, art does not come out beautiful at the first time. But it gives its own type of joy. One needs to get one’s hands dirty to understand that happiness. I felt like doing it everyday after that. But yeah, priorities in life!
What did not go well?
I ignored my small routines for the bigger challenge. My small routines don’t take much time. But I was not ready to invest any time in them mentally because I was already mentally exhausted at office as I was working without any breaks.
Plans for August:
I want to make august more colourful and successful than July. And I have been on track for the first 2 days for them.
30-day Reading challenge:
I have been reading everyday for the past one year. Reading just 2 pages also counted as reading for me. But now, I want to change that. I want to read 75 pages a day. It is very ambitious but not impossible. It will eat up a lot of my time. It will not leave me with time for other small things in life but that is okay. I will learn to navigate through the storm. That is the aim of the challenge too.
I used to write notes for the just the first few pages and once I am into the story I forget about the note making part. I want to be a better note taker. For every chapter I read, I want to see what are my take home points. This is the second part of the challenge.
For each book I read, I find a few things wonderful. Unless, it is closely related to my life, I don’t start implementing them on the go. I want to write an action list for each book and then give a timeline for the action point. This is a very crucial step of the challenge without which I will just be a consumer and not a doer.
One more small task to this activity is to not just assume the meaning of the word in context but to actually look up the word in the dictionary and learn its meaning.
These 4 components to reading is going to make it definitely a tough job. I am so excited about this!
Exercise:
I want to get back to doing regularly. I have found a new workouts to add to the exercise routine which I already do.
Mood Tracker:
I started a tracker where I enter what I am feeling every hour or two. This gives me a picture on what are the frequent em
otions I feel and what I need to work on.
Life Lessons Tracker:
There is at least one new thing I learn everyday. I want to make a note of it and review them periodically so that I don’t make the same mistakes again or avoid mistakes totally.
Get back to my small routines:
Small routines just take 15 minutes of my time. Without any excuse, I want to go back to them.
How was your July? What are your plans for August? Let us know in the comments section.
Happy planning for August!