Summer goal check-in

I thought I'd check in with some of the progress on my summer goals:

First, for those who are wondering how it's going with the Clarisonic Mia 2: In a word, better.  Switching the brush heads worked. I'm no longer getting weird lines of blemishes.  I don't think this is quite the miracle that people seem to think it is, but it does improve skin texture.  My skin feels soft, and I have less blackheads. I still get a few blemishes, and it doesn't take away fine lines. I guess that expecting a facial cleansing brush to wipe out all of my skin problems might be expecting too much, though because of the price, my expectations were very high.   I will keep updating as I have been using it longer for the curious.

I updated my original workout calendar to show the actual workouts I did.  If I did not do a workout, I used the strikethrough font. If I added or significantly changed a workout, I put it in bold. If I did it as planned, I left it in plain text.  It strikes me that I skipped a lot of running and ab workouts. I hate doing crunches, and a lot of times the run was the second workout when I didn't have a lot of energy. I'm going to work on bringing my actual closer to the plan, but I think I'm doing well. Yesterday I did an open water swim in a very nice quarry.  I biked there and back, too.  Then I played in the pool with my cousins for a long time, which was fun. On Thursday, I bagged my planned workout and did a couple of hours of gardening.  That was a good switch, I think, because it not only got me active, but also served a real-life function. So far the scale is not showing a loss, but my body fat percentage is improving, and I feel like I do look leaner and firmer.  I am hoping that I will start burning through some of my fat stores soon. I'm putting more throught into planning meals, not just to lose weigh tbut also to save on our grocery bills and stop wasting food because I didn't get to using it fast enough.


I just started doing Artist's Way twelve-week recovery program for "injured artists." I think it fits.  I bought this book years ago and never used it. I don't have a writer's block so much as a writer's terrifying monster in the closet, so I am taking it slow and working through the exercises.  One of the things I'm supposed to do is an "artist's date," a solo activity to inspire creativity and fun.  Some ideas I have: Visiting the botanical gardens, going to the art museum, going to an art supply store, starting back up with my watercolor lessons.  Any ideas of fun and creative (especially cheap) activities are most welcome in the comments.  I almost talked myself out of doing the "morning pages" today because I didn't get to them first thing and I wanted to start off "right." I then reminded myself that starting off by not writing was the most wrong way to start possible, and did it anyway.  Three pages of longhand, stream-of-consciousness writing a day is supposed to help all artists clear away the mental clutter and get to a place where they can start to create. We will see.

I am doing less well on my work goals, but I purposely took a break from work activities, other than working with the students whose projects I'm mentoring. The latter have been getting first priority treatment.  I will catch up with the other work soon.  I just needed a bit of a mental break at the end of the term.

My house still needs work and I also need to work on ways to have fun and not spend too much money.  I am still trying to figure out how I'll find balance when school starts up again.  Most of all, I'm still working on finding my why. That's probably the biggest project of all.