This year, I set myself 22 little goals to pursue throughout the year. I call them the 22 in 22. Each Saturday, I take a few minutes to check my progress on a few of my goals.
These last weeks, with the start of summer vacation for my indulgent husband and my scalawags means I have had to scale back my creative activities until school starts back up again. For example, the podcast is on hiatus and will be back on September 1.
But for now, here is one tiny 22 in 22 success story:
#17 Track steps, water intake, monthly(ish) cycles
Although I am never particularly good about drinking enough water, the obtaining of a glass of water is not very complicated. If I get thirsty, I can take ten steps, pour a glass and ta-da, hydration! No getting in a car, no parking, no searching around a store whose layout is regularly switched around, no out-of-stock items.
That said, do I actually do it often enough to stay hydrated? Well, that is another story entirely. That would be about tracking, and keeping track of how much water I drink isn’t as easy as I would like it to be.
On the other hand, for quite a goodly number of years, I have relished in the joys of the humble pedometer as a way to track how active I am. I’m not a connected device kinda gal (at least not yet). This lowly little device just passively keeps me informed of how achy I can expect to feel the next day. (Interestingly enough: it’s usually the day after low-activity days that I feel most achy. Ahh, the joys of getting older…)
So tracking steps had become a habit which I kinda sorta relied on. Where I was struggling the most on this little goal was that I had no working pedometer anymore. Somehow my pedometer had ended up in the washing machine and consequently was only working one time out of ten for the last…oh…three months, maybe?
“Well just go buy another one!” You might say. And you might be right. But I’m one part lazy, three parts cheap, two parts too busy to get myself to a sporting goods store and five parts not willing to go to a sporting goods store with my five and six year old scalawags because they will beg me for everything they see until I lose my mind….all for this one little tiny thing. Motivation to keep up with my 22 in 22 was insufficient!
When finally three weeks ago I had the occasion to go to a sporting goods store out of necessity for something for a little boy, I looked for one, but go figure, the pedometer I wanted (a little one that can discreetly live in my bra all day) was out of stock.
“Well,” I figured, dramatically, “I’ll never track again.”
But then a short week later I needed to go to a craft store to get brooch pins (for gifts I made for the boys’ teachers, oh my goodness. Those gifts. So so cute), and that craft store was near the sporting goods store. So I made the detour, in and out, just hoping, although doubting, that perhaps there might have been a shipment.
Okay, let’s just stop to recognize the fact that a craft is a significant enough reason to get me out of the house and into a commercial area, but not the pedometer. Priorities, friends.
But guess what? There it was! My little pedometer was back in stock!
So finally, I’m back in the game when comes to the tracking stuff.
Just a side note, I think I mentioned this in the podcast episode, “The One About Our Bodies,” but the purpose of the pedometer, in my mind, is not to “hit a goal” necessarily. What it does for me is creates just a tiny sense of internal competition when I’m up for it. And when I’m not up for it, gives me a little signal that I will ache tomorrow.
It was impossible to back to my “why” in order to get motivated again, until I solved the mystery of the missing pedometer. The very fact of passively tracking the steps makes “Oh why not take a detour?” more likely. Or, “I’ll take the stairs just to round it up to x for the day…”
Yeah, so not a ton of progress in other areas lately, but at least we have excavated a giant stumbling block from the road!
Sing With Your Feet 
Woo hoo!! Crafts for the win! Totally on board the “But a CRAFT is enough to motivate me to”… train!! Crafts are important! Especially for poor, beleagered teachers!!
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