The second half of this month has been insanely busy. At the moment, I feel really overextended because of a confluence of events and deadlines on top of the grading, committee work, class prep, and marathon training. I may require many centering moments and mini meditations and copious amounts of coffee and glasses of wine in order to not lose my sh*t over the next couple of weeks. Thanks to my husband's deft cooking skills and kindness and wine's antioxidants I probably won't contract scurvy.
Even with the intense schedule, I've made some progress toward some of my goals.
1. Run my third marathon and PR while doing it. I was sick and off my feet for about a week during the middle of the month. However, I still feel like I'm making decent progress with my marathon training plan. I've had several good runs with my TNT group, including a 70 minute long run that featured a beautiful sunrise a couple of weeks back. In February I ran 39.55 miles and dedicated training runs to my friends Gail, Jen, John, Liz, Shanda, and Zeynep.
 |
| Scenes from a 6.3 mile training run dedicated to my friend, colleague, and sponsor Liz |
2. Make significant progress on other research projects. I only transcribed three documents this month so I didn't meet my transcription goal. I made better progress in some other research arenas. I wrote a research presentation and have made some significant progress on my article project. In the month to come, I'll largely be focused on working on a conference paper and copy edits to my book manuscript that just came back yesterday and have to be turned around pretty quickly.
3. Establish a mindful practice of gratitude and optimism. Although I haven't used my gratitude app every day, I've used it most days. I've also tried to be kind to myself, to make yoga more of a routine for both my overall physical and mental health, and to not compromise when it comes to getting enough sleep. Exhaustion is the enemy of optimism.
4. Write some non-academic things.This has been on the back burner for most of this month as grading has mounted and academic writing deadlines have popped up. I'm alright with that as I'm still percolating on ideas for the short story I've been working on and writing down a sentence or two here and there.
How are you progressing toward your goals for this year? Did you do anything special with your extra leap day?
I am doing ok on my goals for the year. I think the marathon goal is going to have to be taken out of consideration. I am going to have to take 3-4 weeks off from running and I can't see myself running a strong marathon on a compressed training schedule and I would hate to risk injury... so I think I'll have to adjust my running goals for the year. I'm surprisingly ok with this. Of course I would have loved to have ran Grandma's - especially since I paid for it... but right now my goal is getting back to running pain free.
ReplyDeleteI am in Chicago for work so spent my leap day in the office and then took some coworkers to HH and crashed at 9:30 as I am just exhausted as I am also battling a cold! I love traveling for work but it really wears me out to be 'on' for so many hours!!!
I'm definitely progressing toward my goals but feel insanely overextended in doing so --- basically I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I get a proper break soon!
ReplyDeleteCourtney ~ Sartorial Sidelines
Impressive, as usual. I'm feeling in a bit of a holding pattern recently, but when I stop to evaluate now, I realise I've upped my running distances gradually over the last month, got myself back to two yoga sessions a week, and I've continued to make progress with my Italian, while continuing to work on culling and editing all the stuff on/in drawers, closets, and shelves here. Some of my writing has been back-burnered because of that, but then again, clearing out the clutter helps to make room for the creative stuff to happen, right? Thanks for the chance to take stock.
ReplyDelete