Hobonichi Weeks – Week 23 of 2020

On Monday mornings I like to take the time to reflect back on the previous week. For me, that means sharing the spread from my Hobonichi Weeks, which is where I track my daily/weekly tasks, habits, and time spent writing. I use the left side of the layout to write a few sentences about the day – it can be gratitude, gripes, or anything in between. This reflection and tracking process has been instrumental for my sanity – especially since March!

Waking up has been hard to do over the last week! I keep my alarm on the other side of the room, but I’ve found myself getting up to push snooze and then crawling back in bed for 9 minutes. Repeatedly. Sleeping later has not affected my morning routine so I need to make a decision about my wake up time. I could either set my alarm later or figure out how to get out of bed as soon as the alarm goes off. The downside to sleeping later is that I never know when one or more of the kiddos will get up a bit earlier than usual and I always worry that I’ll run out of time in the morning and then feel resentful. I’d much rather be safe than sorry.

I’m still on my step and daily journaling streaks (60 and 64 days, respectively). I almost missed my step goal a couple of times last week. Having only two children at home has significantly slowed things down, so I walked laps through the house before going to bed at least three times to ensure I made it to 10,000. I expect this streak to end soon because there will certainly be a day when I can’t motivate myself to walk circles through the living room, kitchen, and dining room before going to bed. But the hard part will be admitting here that I’ve broken the chain, which is why I like these Monday morning posts: accountability!

I’m thinking of ways to incorporate healthy eating choices into my habit tracker. I’ve been wanting to transition to a more plant based diet for years and know the best way to do that is with my habit tracker – it’s helped me in so many ways. So I’m trying to formulate a way to use my tracker to phase out my most unhealthy choices first.

My most pressing need is to eliminate fast food from my diet, but then I think of all sorts of caveats. What exactly counts as fast food? Certainly a vegan burrito from Chipotle can’t be compared to a Whopper meal from Burger King? And I’m leaning towards using that as the caveat: not counting a meal as fast food as long as the choice I make is vegan – the most extreme option that significantly limits my choices. Many of you don’t know this, but I love fast food. So taking just this step is scary for me and sounds impossible. It’s a major hurdle that I’ve tried to tackle for almost twenty years.

Here’s my mantra for the week: I am a person who prepares all of her own meals.

Doesn’t that sound silly and basic? But that’s truly my first step.

And to really start off with a bang, every time I’m tempted to get fast food or takeout this week and resist that temptation, I’m going to move $10 into my Corgi fund. I’m calling this Temptation Tracking:

This plan is to just get me started this week and I hope to create a detailed road map in the weeks to come. But first, I have to decide my destination. What am I working towards? Like I said earlier, I’ve wanted to move towards a more plant based diet for years but have never been able to decide what that should look like. I hope to have this more fleshed out by next Monday and I’ll share more with you then.

Until next week – please stay safe. Please stay hopeful. And let’s all keep learning – about ourselves and the world around us.