She's Back,......September Goals

Summer is definitely not over here in the high plains (no matter what you may have heard, Denver is not "in the mountains"). The next two week forecast is for highs between eighty and ninety although the nights have cooled down enough that no air conditioning is needed.

Still, it's Labor Day weekend. And while it won't be fall for a few weeks, September is upon us. After my completely lazy, non traveling, sit on the swing and nap in the yard kind of summer, I am now ready to head back to something akin to a normal retirement schedule. Whatever the heck that is. Next week, I'll be back to blogging at least twice and probably three times a week. Starting on the 9th, my routine church activities and book clubs and such return post summer. And while I have enjoyed  (both mentally and physically)  the extreme down time, it's time to ramp things up a bit. I mean I know people think that I am running around, but seriously, other than going out to lunch and happy hour, I have been doing almost nothing, nothing I say.

And so, about those September goals. Usually I try and go for a single goal (or no more than two) in different areas of my life. But some of these are ongoing goals that will extend for awhile and are just for my accountability, and some are actually fairly small reminder goals (the if you don't write it down, it won't get done, kind of goals).

And so it goes, my goals for September (I'll also try and join up with the fall goals linkup later on in the month...), kind of by life area, kind of sort of, maybe, in some kind of order.

Money goals:

• Return to the aim of between five and ten dollars a day average casual income. Casual as in no more than an hour spent on the computer researching or whatever and only mystery shopping when I feel like it. 
• Make a quarterly budget
• See if the grocery budget can be tightened a wee bit as we move away from grilling and more to other kinds of cooking 

House goals:

• Get the carpets cleaned  We have carpet in one room on the floor level of the house, but it is the living room that goes directly out on the patio and we have dogs with health issues. So we need this room,  the steps to the basement and my sister's carpets cleaned sometime before we start moving things around for fall and winter decorating.
• Get my bedroom purged and closet organized, a bag at a time.

Family Goals

• Plan an October long weekend trip for my birthday with my sister. This year we are looking at Glenwood Springs or Santa Fe, because of all the smoke anywhere further north.
• Try and see if I can even get a half a day to do something special with my son. He's working forty plus hours a week as a restaurant shift manager, and going to school 3/4 time so this may be easier said than done, but it's a goal.
• Get back to doing something small for my daughter, who I saw in April but will not see again until the holidays because of mutual traveling and the fact that she also goes to school full time in a master's program and works full time.

Social/Community Goals

• Cut my volunteering at the homeless shelter back from one three hour morning to a longer day every other week (I drive a half hour to get there and these allows me to provide staff support and do something with the residents but lessens my "running round" time and energy).
• Cut back my sponsorship and activities in my women of a certain age group to no more than one event a week (plus happy hour or coffee on occasion) if that.. Both because it works for me to cut back (for more nesting and creative time) and because I want to encourage other members to step up on this and suggest things that I might not, like a bike trip or a regular walking group. I deliberately made this a Facebook group so that, unlike Meetup, anyone could suggest anything and members could get together on their own.

Personal/Challenge/Stretch myself/Personal Spirituality type goals

• Get to the pool at least three times per week and plan my cooler weather workout routine so that I can work out at home if it's dreary or cold.
• Complete one online course this month (Great courses usually have anywhere from seven to twenty lessons). Right now I'm looking at a seventeen session on sacred music as the most likely option.
• Read one book that is out of my mystery/whodunit/police procedural comfort level (open to suggestions as long as it's not  romancy or anything Regency).
• Try and blog thrice a week (I'm channeling a stage musical song here). My goal is to move the blog even more to lifestyle stuff  with some frugal creativity and other things thrown in. We'll see how that goes.
• Choose a big project. I have a lot of small, creative and other projects in my life, but I have decided I need a larger, long term project. At this point I know it will probably have to do with writing and/or genealogy, but we'll see.
• Add five minutes of meditation/contemplative prayer to my morning and evening routines.
• Get my mammogram done (oh, Joy!!)

Creative/DIY goals

• Finish one knitted shawl (for a gift), one scarf for the meals on wheels folks, and choose the next project. I knit really fast these days and this is my TV time, so it's an easy no brainer.
• Finish one larger projects (probably a fall quilt) and one smaller project (stll to be chosen!

And there you have it. As I look at this list, it seems like an awuful lot. But mainly, it's more that I am a list girl, and this is my list. And these are all things that I WANT to do, but they are not the type of things that I will cry about if they don't get done. Rather,  I'll either keep moving them onto the next month's list, or decide they aren't worth doing at this point in retirement.

Meanwhile, happy almost September!!