A quick note to address the vocabulary choice in the title and throughout the rest of this entry: from here on out, instead of using the word “goal(s),” I plan to use the word “intention(s).” This is to align my actions this year with my overall focus of intentionality. These “intentions” all serve a specific purpose in helping me advance closer to achieving intentionality overall in my life.

Now to the meat of the post

Running
Right now I am still focusing on rebuilding. I noticed almost right away that once I made the goal of completing the daily exercises at least four days a week, it became even easier to find excuses to postpone or skip. That first week I found myself over at Mom and Ellis’ having forgotten the resistance band that I use for some of the exercises and a bunch of snow outside making me stay put. I ended up skipping five days in a row. Not cool. I started noting on my calendar each time I actually got it done. I’ve been more consistent but there is still considerable room for improvement.

I also learned a lot about just how much I need to do before Chicago but that’s for a soon to come marathon reflection post.

Health and Nutrition
For the month of January I will consider the intention of drinking two water bottles a day a success. I think there may have been a handful of days where I drank only a little over one bottle a day but overall I achieve this intention. I have also successfully made brining my water bottle with me to lunch a habit. I do plan to keep this on as an intention because the habit is not quite ingrained.

February rolled around. I failed to set “official” health and nutrition intentions for the month. I no longer had the water drinking intention hanging over my head. I found myself slipping back into old habits.

Before I get to my February/March intentions, I will briefly mention that I successfully achieved my maximum two Ghiradelli peppermint bark bar per day goal. On only two days with the second falling on the last day of the challenge, did I eat more than two.

I have three intentions for February/March: one old and two new. The old is the two water bottles drunk per day. The first new goal has to do with sugar consumption with an added (marginal) financial benefit. Every Friday I have “retro Friday” with my students. I used to give them bite sized candy every time they used the word of the day in a sentence but to keep myself from going broke I retooled it and made it once a week. That means that there is always candy easy at hand, the delicious kind like Twix and Milky Way. As marathon training ramped up I found myself hungry all the time. For someone with a propensity for a sweet tooth that does not make for a good combination. So, I have made this intention as follows. I will not snack on the bite sized candy I have available; I will make sure to have something else handy. (The financial benefit will come with the fact that I will be able to use that candy for the purpose I intended.)

The second new intention has to do with sleep. A big part of health has to do with being able to get regular sleep. While I think my sleep habits are much healthier than my sweet tooth tendencies, there’s room for improvement. I will admit that I almost made this goal two fold but thought better of it. One step at a time. For years, I have gotten away with letting myself push right up until “bedtime” and ended up getting to bed 15, 20 minutes after the time I said I would go to bed. This specific intention is as follows. Unless there are extenuating circumstances (not finishing a journal entry is not one) I will start the process of getting to bed at 9:55 on “school nights” and 10:55 on weekends so that I’m in bed on the hour.

Reading and Writing
According to goodreads, I am six books ahead of goal pace to read 100 books this year. I want to build a little more of a cushion because I am not bringing books to read on my UK trip and probably won’t bring any on the road trip either. Reading for 15 minutes each weekday is one of the four things I added to my new to do section of my day planner. I think under most circumstances 15 minutes is doable.

The writing intention has been a little more difficult to prioritize. As hard as I tried, life has has gotten in the way a few times and I have not been able to journal every day. When I have been able to write, the quality and quantity far surpasses what I used to write as a general habit. I am still working towards accomplishing this intention.

Photography
So far, so good. When an unexpected snow fall changed plans, I made sure to have my camera with me so I could get out and take a bunch of pictures. I have also posted to Instagram every single day except for one Sunday when it completely slipped my mind.

Teaching
This one is hard to quantify. So far I have said yes to all opportunities that have come my way. That means that even recently I have had to pray for a heart change. I have the opportunity to meet one on one for a coaching cycle with the district Title 1 ELA specialists. I won’t get into the details here but I will summarize my initial feeling, dread. No, that will not be my approach. This is a new opportunity that with God’s help, I will embrace.

Phew! That was a lot but so much fun to dig into. I can’t wait to see what the next 6 weeks will bring.