Goal-Setting

April 3 in 30: Keeping Up

April 15, 2012 by Carey Jane Clark

I’m getting there with my goals. My biggest challenge at this point is that the amount of activity during the day is so much greater here than when we were back in Canada, that I’m not making the time to have “office hours” because there’s always something unfinished to do elsewhere.

Then it’s hard for me to keep my online activities relegated to the part of the day where they belong. Just in the last week, I made jam, froze a bunch of strawberries and mulberries, made homemade granola and homemade almond milk, baked two loaves of gluten-free bread in my toaster oven, started a batch of sauerkraut and a batch of kombucha, in addition to making and cleaning up three meals a day! Oh yes, and laundry–it all has to be hung out. There are no driers here.

I realize a lot of this is setting-up activity. I won’t have to freeze berries every week, nor will I have to start sauerkraut or kombucha. These are things I’m doing to get set-up in our new home. I’m also getting closer to a meal plan, so I can simplify my market-going.

I’m plugging away, and I know it will get better soon. Slowly, I’m getting into a routine.

My goals for this month are:

Work through Simple Blogging: I’m making my way through. Most of the tips are simple–things I can incorporate smoothly into my life. One challenge I’ll pass on: If Facebook is a time-waster for you, consider your goals for using it. Wow. I’m still thinking about that one. I want to stay connected to friends and family back home. That’s definitely one of my goals. But with Facebook’s new format, I find I’m often hearing about the trivial a lot and missing important events in some people’s lives. Is there a better way?
Get into a proper routine. I’ve been doing better at starting the day right, but I must confess, there have been mornings this week when the computer was on my lap when my kids woke up. I want to change that, and it means keeping to office hours in the afternoon. (Refer to the challenge mentioned earlier.) I do feel that the rhythm of things is getting better, and it will resolve as I work on it over this month.
Get Hold the MSG posts on a better schedule. The kids and I expressed our desires about this, but didn’t bring it into reality last week. With the kids and JavaMan pitching in, we’ve managed to think up several innovative posts for the next few and hope to get some material built up so that we can be ahead of the game. I’m also planning to set up subscription for Hold the MSG so people can be notified when the post is up, and we don’t miss out on readers, even when we don’t get the post up “on time” as planned.

Things are coming along. My overall goal this month is to bring life into a proper balance. I think I’m getting there.

- Carey Clark

April 3 in 30: Simplicity

April 8, 2012 by Carey Jane Clark

I’d like to be able to declare that all the bins are unpacked, my house is completely organized, and I am on top of it all.

In reality, it’s been a whirlwind since we arrived, with jet lag and the cold. We are furnitureless. We had houseguests approximately two weeks after our arrival and since they left, JavaMan has been in Korea addressing a visa issue. He returns on Wednesday. I’ll be so glad to see him.

I was so tired tonight, I sat down to watch the end of a movie with my kids and fell asleep on my bed fully clothed, with a sweater and an apron! THEY kissed ME goodnight, and I woke around 2:30 a.m. bewildered at what had transpired!

However, the homeschool room is looking like and functioning as a homeschool room, we’ve been posting weekly at Hold the MSG (Mandarin lessons for kids), and the kitchen is up and running. In fact, I’ve been downright experimental there. I’m determined to make gluten-free work here, since we’ve seen such benefits for Sweetpea. So far, I’ve located recipes for and/or experimented with:

pizza dough – nailed this one. It’s so good, and yes, I will share very soon
bread – found a simple recipe with easily accessible ingredients and tweaked it–the mix was slightly wet the last time, which with gluten-free results in a fallen loaf (although it wasn’t too bad). But going to take another run at it tomorrow and see what we can do to perfect things
dumplings! This is a huge coup! We’ll still end up in situations where we’re at someone else’s house or at a restaurant and can’t avoid it, but if we can make our own dumplings at home, gluten-free, it will go a long way.
crackers – yes indeed, homemade gluten-free crackers
matzah – this won’t be something we’ll eat every day, but it came in handy over the weekend for our traditional Seder dinner

I’ve continued to work on freezing strawberries and mulberries so we’ll have berries to eat for the rest of the year, and I even located a simple pectin-free strawberry jam recipe so I can deal with some of the strawberries I’d rather not throw away, but aren’t good enough to keep for eating. Today I figured out how to get my hands on jars for the jam.

But as more and more time gets consumed by living–not to mention that this week we slipped back into the homeschool routine–I’m feeling the need to simplify my online activities. So this month, I’ve joined the 3 in 30 featured challenge: Simple Blogging.

Here are my goals for April:

Work through Simple Blogging – This involves reading a set number of chapters per week of the eBook and incorporating changes into my blogging life. For the most part this week, I felt pretty good about what I read, although I confess to allowing myself to succumb to online distractions when I’ve sat down with the intention of blogging–what the author, Rachel Meeks, calls “productive procrastination.” At some points, I was able to pat myself on the back–for having a clear purpose for my blog, for example, or for using Evernote for organization–and at other points, I felt a gentle wrap on my knuckles for things I know to be doing and don’t do enough–like planning posts in advance. I tend to keep mental notes, which clutter up brain space and can be easily lost! I have begun to implement some of these suggestions, but still have work to do.
Get into a proper routine – Because our days are exactly the opposite to North America (12 hours ahead means I’m sleeping when most everyone I know is active), it’s very tempting to check email and Facebook first thing in the morning. Did so-and-so get back to me? Are there blog comments? What are my friends and family up to? However, this doesn’t work well with our family, and means my kids greet me in the morning with a computer on my lap. Not okay. It can also delay getting breakfast and homeschool started. I am determined to get back to a proper morning routine. We live here now, and if people have to wait longer to hear back from me, or I have to wait longer to hear back from them, so be it. My family is more important.
Get Hold the MSG posts on a better schedule – There’s quite a bit involved in posting the weekly posts. It takes 3 hours via VPN to upload the posts to YouTube, for example, and after a little meeting with the kids last week, we decided to break up the work into segments, so it’s not too much all on one day. We’re planning and working on the next post right after the last one is live. The great side benefit to this is that our kids are focusing much more on their own Chinese learning, and much more motivated to practice.

What does April hold for you? Are you spring cleaning or making any goals?

- Carey Clark

Carey is a homeschooling mother of three and author of the contemporary inspirational novel After the Snow Falls. She blogs here about the many adventures of her expat family.

March 3 in 30: Culture Shock?

April 1, 2012 by Carey Jane Clark

I’m a bit frustrated at the moment. Bear with me. I guess I’ve forgotten just how much energy it takes to live here. Like crossing the street. When we lived here before, I had Sprout in a stroller, and each of the older two children firmly grasping a handle. Crossing the street here is an extreme sport, but clumping together and staying organized helps. You have to outwit the drivers. A green “go” signal for pedestrians means it might be safe to begin crossing, but be sure to be on the lookout for cars, nonetheless.

Gluten-free is a bit more challenging, and so is using the Internet. Things are slow and sometimes unavailable. And today, because they don’t trust my location (and don’t read their emails), Paypal has locked down my account for the second time in two weeks. Thanks so much.

It’s also become cold again.

I’ll be okay. I’m aware a lot of this is probably culture shock, and I just needed to vent. (Thanks for that.) It likely doesn’t help that JavaMan is gone for the week to Korea, squaring up an issue with his work visa.

Onward: March goals.

I’m doing all right. I’m actually psyching up for April’s goals because I’m craving things like routine, a return to homeschool and a menu plan. But first, let me report on March. My goals for the month were:

Sleep well before and after the move. I did okay before the move. Since then, I’ve allowed Paypal and the complete disappearance of my new vlog site, HoldtheMSG.com to rob a few hours when it was daylight back in North America. I need to let it go. I live here, and things take longer. I had made that mental adjustment when we lived here before; I need to get back into that place again. It’s much more restful.
Maintain a healthy exercise schedule on both sides of the move. I did okay before we left, and have been itching to get back since we arrived, but I need to buy a couple of things before I can make things happen–we’re using my exercise mats for a little extra padding right now. While JavaMan is away, I’m considering stealing the one from his side of the bed to begin my Pilates routine from Bodylastics. To get back to the other workout, I need to buy a pair of 5 lb. weights. I had planned to do that today, but readjusted my plan about five times because dragging three kids on multiple buses and train connections (standing room only) and walking around carrying heavy bags full of goods from the market in addition to said 5 lb. weights gives no joy. We decided to go to IKEA/Sports store (they’re side by side) later this week. IKEA because we need one of those thingies you can stack multiple toilet paper rolls on. Sprout can’t reach the wall-mounted one and keeps calling out for help with the TP every timeshe uses the bathroom. That can’t go on forever! On the plus side, as you can tell, I’m doing a lot of this running around on foot. In addition, the other day, we climbed “our” mountain, so the month hasn’t been without exercise, just not the kind I’d hoped to be doing.
If you look real close, you can see our home from the mountain top.
Packing/unpacking. My goal was to have the homeschool room in order by the end of March. I made this goal without seeing the volume of books JavaMan brought from the south. We had inherited bins of books from other homeschooling families who’d lived in that city previously. Two bins had my name on them (although I don’t recognize a lot of things in them) and JavaMan grabbed another one in a moment of ~~madness~~inspiration because it had a bunch of really great classic books in it. So can we be charitable and say that the homeschool room is a work in progress? Until the furniture arrives, we don’t have enough shelving to accommodate everything! Pumpkin helped today to get things organized enough that we can start slowly back to homeschool tomorrow with a skeleton schedule: Chinese lessons, Math and History. We’ve also resumed our nighttime routine of read-alouds/games (alternate evenings) and quiet reading.
How are you doing with your goals this month? Don’t have any? Consider hooking up with Ashley Pichea’s 3 in 30 motivational program!

March 3 in 30: Getting There

March 25, 2012 by Carey Jane Clark

3in30 I’m feeling not too bad about March’s goals. Despite the massive obstacles this month, I think for once I managed to make some realistic goals and so I’m actually getting somewhere with most of them.

Sleep well before the move and beat jet lag as quickly as possible after – I was not doing well in this department and started to fight a cold due to the lack of good sleep. Then a dear Chinese friend came through and showed me where I could buy a custom made cotton-filled duvet (for less than department store prices, mind you). Oh. My. Goodness. It is divine! For two nights now, we have slept in a little cocoon, completely oblivious to the temperature. And whaddaya know? I feel better. I have more energy. I can climb mountains. Well, possibly not the last one, but we plan to soon, since there’s one in our backyard. Seriously.
Maintain a healthy exercise schedule coming into the move so I can get back at it as quickly as possible afterward. Okay, more hefting of heavy bags, more walking up and down the hill to the market. (Actually tonight I ran, since I was trying to make it before they closed.) But no actual exercise. Before we left Canada, we bought a Bodylastics system, and I have every intention of getting into a routine with the Pilates portion of the program, but my exercise mat is doubling as a sleeping pad right now, since we still have no furniture, and I’m feeling it is more important for it to fulfill that role at the moment. I want to get back into using my new favorite exercise video, but I need two five-pound weights. At the moment, we have more important priorities for our spending than that (like a cozy duvet). We also had a bit of a problem. When we moved into this apartment, the hot water in the shower lasted 3 minutes. That’s barely long enough for one person to take a shower! And with the coolness of the apartment, it just didn’t seem like a good combination. I really had no desire to get sweaty and then have only 3 minutes to get unsweaty again. So I avoided sweat. However, the landlord installed a wonderful new hot water heater on Saturday–so wonderful I was able to take a nice hot bath! I’m promising myself that this week I’ll pull out the mini-trampoline and get something accomplished that actually qualifies as exercise.
Finish packing before the move, unpack and organize the kitchen, bathrooms and homeschool room after the move to get things up and rolling ASAP. Did my best at this goal. Still not completely packed, but the homeschool room is looking more or less put together (minus the missing furniture) and the kids each have a bin now with their own clothes inside, in lieu of drawers or closets. I assembled some small shelves so they could organize their belongings and their room actually looks quite lovely. (They’re all sleeping in one room right now, until furniture and heat arrives.) I have begun to sort through my clothing as well, and the kitchen is 90% there and quite functional.

Are you accomplishing your goals this month?

- Carey Clark