Whirlwind of a Month: Here are my failures!

WOW FEBRUARY! You have 3 days left. I am going to do a recap and tell you about all the things I DID DO during this 4 week whirlwind, but I think I’ll dedicate today’s post to all of the things I didn’t do.

(Just so no one thinks I meet every goal I set. Actually pretty sure you all already know that, but more examples probably do not hurt.)

What Made February Feel Like a Whirlwind:

It’s not the 28 day length, though that didn’t help.

It’s the fact that I had only 1 “normal” week out of the 4!!

Week 1: Flew home from Philadelphia into a call week

Week 2: Ugh, colonoscopy week! Sounds trivial but it meant seeing patients on Monday, and spending Weds/Thursday fasting and then having the procedure. I was actually pretty productive anyway on Wednesday but it wasn’t a ‘normal’-feeling day.

Week 3: Super fun trip to PHL/Poconos/NYC! (And I had trepidations, but am overall glad we went and would consider it a successful trip!)

Week 4: Normalcy. Other than having to rent a car, life has been organized in its usual manner: Monday/Weds creative work, Tues/Thursday/Fri patients, and (coming up) a pretty normal weekend (I mean there is STUFF such as a gym meet and flag football game, but nothing crazy).

So, even though I’m not mad at myself for not doing much on my monthly list, I am slightly mad at myself for PUTTING the things on the list! Come on SHU – you knew better.

Okay, now let’s review the failures . . . (successes in a later post, it wasn’t a 100% fail month, but there were many!)

#1 – Nails. Try mani every 2 weeks. Nope! I did get one cute mani/pedi in early February (purple nails that are long gone, hot pink toenails that are still going strong). But definitely did not consistently have ‘done’ nails. At least I didn’t leave the mani into the chip phase!

#2 – Buy a cross stitch kit and keep playing piano. ACTUALLY I am realizing I COULD STILL GET THIS DONE ( ** searches Etsy for Taylor Swift cross stitch patterns . . ** ). I did play piano (not daily, but a decent number of times). Okay, so not really a failure (yet) on this one. This one is a possible failure.

#3 – Buy pajamas/loungewear. Nope, because I went shopping with Lani for other stuff instead! And now I need to give my allowance fund a rest. PLUS I realized actually have a lot of “cold” (well, FL cold) weather loungewear.

#4 – Buy and start declutter package. WELL. I DID meet with a consultant and scheduled our first (in person) session – for early March! I haven’t paid yet though so I’m not sure I have ‘bought’ but I feel like I get partial credit (sort of) here. At least things are in motion! But I can’t say I actually started anything.

#5 – Get estimate for bathroom. HAHAHA NOPE. Didn’t even try.

#6 – Declutter closet before trip. Yeah, no. (But see #4 above – I think we’re starting with closet!)

#7 – See a movie. Nope! Watched some good TV but that wasn’t the stated goal.

#8 – Enjoy the Olympics. Also nope. I mean, I enjoyed watching the Alysia Liu video on YouTube (amazing!) and 30 minutes of a hockey game while on a date, but that was all I caught! AHHH! Oops!

#9 – More 1:1 time with A/C. No. I didn’t schedule it so it didn’t happen. I mean, I leaned into the times where it worked (in the car) but would not give myself credit for this item.

#10 – Pitch 3 podcasts. Negative! (Never my favorite activity, and the ‘well I was busy’ excuse is so convenient!)

#11 – Record one YouTube and ask Josh to help with setup. No, but I really want to do this! It’s happening in March!

#12 – Sign up for peds endo conf and book flight. No, but I DID reserve the hotel (have learned that this is the piece that has a scarcity component and I really like to be stationed at the hotel where the meetings are!)

#13 – BLPA2.0 outline and calendar. Ha, NO. I absolutely want to do this, but will require deep work time and space to do it right. So – what was I thinking throwing it into a month with zero excess creative work time? This simply did not fit. I could have done some of this work on the plane but I didn’t and I’m not sure any other time slot would have made sense.

So there you have it – 13 FAILS for the month of February! Again, it wasn’t actually a failure of a month. I just messed up and assigned myself way too many ‘extras’ in a time-constrained time period.

(Luckily I have a spirit of curiosity and not judgment about these lists, so I will just use it as one tool to decide what to prioritize in March!)

Honestly as I’m writing all of this and thinking about the month I’m thrilled with what DID happen! Including last night’s library presentation!

And look who came to hang out . . . yes it’s JENNY!!! She lives much closer to that library than I do and I was thrilled she came!!

It was a really lovely group including women in their 20s and a mom with a 3 month old!!! Really fun to talk about planning stuff with a crew different than the usual, so really glad I did it.