January Lessons Learned

I made some general goals at the beginning of the year: Lose weight, stay sane, and write more. I put a few specifics to those goals, but I really kept everything vague. "Finish a draft of SoD" instead of "Write 3000 words a week" or something. I had a good reason for that. Andrew doesn't really allow for as structured a home life as I'm used to. Gotta go with the flow, roll with the punches. So I resisted putting together a real schedule as I knew I would be more likely to get depressed, discouraged, or monumentally frustrated with The Plan when I kept having to abandon it because Drew decided he didn't want to take a nap on Sunday like he did on Saturday, and so on and so forth. But I also decided to review my goals and my steps toward them on a regular basis. Here's what I learned in January.

In the staying sane department, I learned the hard way that I'm not going to get good sleep--at least, I'm not going to get what I used to consider good sleep. A good night nowadays is one in which Drew only wakes up wanting his pacifier and will go back to sleep. This still means that my days of six or seven straight hours of sleep are gone, or at least very rare. And in the month of January, I had a hard time with that. It didn't help that The Boy decided at Christmas that sleeping twelve hours straight was cool and did so consistently and then suddenly decided it was uncool two weeks ago and likes to start whimpering loudly every three hours or less for his pacifier, sometimes waking up fully for more food. My bod did not appreciate the sudden reminder of what good sleep felt like followed by the abrupt shift back into the normal operating procedures of caring for an infant. I drank a lot of coffee, tried to catch extra snatches of sleep by playing the "snooze button" game, and just generally went a little nuts. I learned that focusing on being tired and on the sleep I'm not getting makes the sleep I do get suffer. And sleep-deprivation of this sort (not the first six weeks of baby sort, which is entirely different, mainly because I wasn't working full-time then) turns me into a deranged Super Woman. I know I'm not getting sleep, and I know I have so much to do, so I go crazy trying to get everything done, and then my brain never really shuts off at night, and the cycle repeats the next day, and my brain keeps this constant stream of babble going that drives me crazy.

Luckily I realized what I was doing after only a week and a half, went home early one day, left Andrew in day care (hey, we're paying for a full week's worth; why waste the money?), plopped myself in bed and read Jenny Cruisie. I tried to nap, but couldn't (might've been the coffee I had had that morning), but by the time evening rolled around, I actually felt tired, not overworked and overstimulated and overwound in general. I've been sleeping better and feeling more productive ever since. Now I can objectively look at my goals, what I did right in January, what I did wrong, and how I can improve.

As for weight loss, I did manage to lose three pounds. Four more to go before the docs consider me healthy, twelve more before I'm back at pre-Drew numbers. The Monday morning treat and Thursday night take-out pattern went well, though the sleep issue made me cheat things and buy more snacks and such. But at least I know this plan will work. Again, the sleep issue kept me from doing weekday workouts, but I did manage my Sunday morning one well. That will work, and working out the sleep stuff will help for February. Something else I learned about my weight loss goal: I absolutely CANNOT try on my pre-Drew pants and skirts until I'm at least within five pounds of my pre-Drew weight. I can't conceive of them fitting me until then, and trying them on beforehand gets me very, very depressed. I don't need that craziness right now.

Regarding writing, I did not do myself proud in January. I did OK, but I know I can do better. It was that damn sleep thing again. I often decided not to write when I could have because I was just "too tired". And I learned that it's hard to forego time with The Boy in favor of writing on the weekends. Especially when he was only taking naps when I was holding him for a while. That's why I really, really need to put together some sort of schedule, something to help me manage my time better, particularly on the weekends.

January wasn't a bad month, but it was certainly a learning experience. I needed that month to figure out a few things about life with Drew and the DDJ. I needed to see how my goals worked in my day-to-day. I certainly did make a lot of good steps toward my goals in January, but I know I could have done more. Now, armed with the lessons of last month, I should get closer to my goals in February and hopefully learn more to close the distance faster in March.