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Dear Adventurers, there’s no more guesswork about it—sometime during this challenge I’m going to give birth to my child. It could happen in the zero week, it could happen in the third. It doesn’t seem like the time to make challenges, but I fear if I take a month off I may get swept away and never return…. As much as I want to lie around (and likely will do so quite often), I still need to take care of myself, my gardens, and my home and hearth. Adventures… well, they’ll be more of the “exploring new experiences” variety than “exploring new locations”—at least for this challenge. Most tasks are stated in the “before” timeframe. What happens “after” is yet to be determined, but there will likely be spillover. Note: I tend to find life unpredictable, and I’ve found a lot of success in the “spirit” of a goal rather than the cold, hard, and often arbitrary, metrics. As such, for each goal I put down, I’ll put down example tasks that fulfill it, but I will remain open to new and altered ideas that fit the spirit of the goal. Keep on Wandering: This has certainly been a struggle of late, I don’t expect it to improve before. I will continue to get in as much daily movement as I can without overdoing it. This includes short walks, local errands, caring for the house, and other light physical activities. And I will rest when I need to rest and not feel guilty about it. Home and Hearth: Compile a list of one-time home tasks that need doing. Create a list of regular maintenance tasks to keep the house comfortable and functional Create a household task calendar based on this list 15 minute daily tidies Cooking: bettering and expanding my menu Decorating/the photo project Inviting people over/fostering community Alter all of my household plans to incorporate a baby when reality hits me Tend My Gardens: Protecting My Psychic Landscape: There are outer worlds and inner worlds. Psychic landscape (or sometimes psychic space) is how I view my inner world. Sometimes, I let it get too cluttered with rampant-growing bindweed from the outside world. Sometimes I’m better at controlling this. I want to be consistently better. Journaling/developing nonfic projects Revisit my fiction project, brainstorm, add to it Reading Minimizing screen time (including computer, internet, TV, etc.) In the outer world, my “garden," is more literal. We don’t have much gardening space available to us in our London home, but we have some: a left-to-wild edging around our back patio (which, sadly, gets no light), and a shared garden (ornamentals) with a neighbor. I prefer growing food to flowers, but in past 2 years I have enjoyed being able to take cuttings for the table in the spring/summer. (Also, we have a tar seepage issue in our area that doesn’t thrill me about trying to grow edibles straight in the ground.) But I miss growing edibles, so I’m focused on creating an edibles garden on our tiny balcony, which gets the most sunlight. I have seedlings for strawberries, sweet peppers, mint, parsley, and basil already going that need continued nurturing and eventual transplanting into pots. We already have a flourishing batch of rosemary, and a bay tree that somehow keeps on going despite our neglect. I can’t do much about taming the patio or shared garden until “after” as I’m just not bendy enough I’d like to get another batch of seedlings going, particularly with the strawberries Pick out pots from our pile on the patio Acquire potting soil (I don’t drive; will probably have to order it) Begin transplanting the seedlings to pots and acclimating (“hardening”) them to the outside world Once I have those sorted, I will decide if there’s room on the balcony for more Consider fairy lights for the patio to make it more magical to sit in in the evening Check in and storytelling: Check-ins once or twice per week, experiment with narration. If I vanish for longer you can guess why…. This is a really long post for a token challenge >_>

Hi friends! INTRO (if you were around for my first challenge, this is literally copy and pasted from previous. Feel free to skip) A brief introduction about me: I joined Nerd Fitness last year and was active on the boards for a few months until I got pregnant when I had zero energy for anything besides the bare necessities. I am a chemist by trade. I love reading, podcasts, hiking, and binge watching shows. My personality is a cross between Leslie Knope and Linda Belcher. I have a broken sesamoid bone in my foot that makes some exercises difficult, and I'm working on finding exercises I enjoy that don't exacerbate the pain. I love sugar toooo much. I'm a hyper emotional person, made even more so by all those new-mama hormones. I struggle with trichotillomania, which means I sometimes pull out my eyelashes when I'm anxious. Basically, I have a lot to work on. I have a tendency to use a lot of gifs and memes from whatever show I'm watching at the moment. Currently, it's Bob's Burgers. I organize my life via bullet journal. And I apologize in advance for how much I talk about my baby, cuz I'm low-key obsessed with her and all her baby-goodness. This is my second challenge post partum, and I wouldn't count my last challenge as a total loss...but it was a rocky start. I have a very different outlook for this challenge. I'm going to focus more on the root of my health struggles, many of which amount to decision-fatigue and going too fast and being too busy to focus on the most important things. I really want to be aware of the choices I'm making in regard to my health in hopes of reverting some bad habits. I don't usually like having soft, amorphous goals like this, but I'll get into specifics week by week. Over-specification and broad strokes have been my downfall in the past. OBJECTIVES Post daily on an Instagram account something I did for my health (@durfette.nf please follow me!) Check-in with my bullet journal each day (example on Insta) Log onto the Nerd Fitness forums once a week (cuz this community is bomb, but I can't drop in as much as I'd like) And then on top of that, I will evaluate each week and make an appropriate plan based on the following: PRIORITIES 1. OHANA MEANS FAMILY. If you followed my previous challenge, you'll recall that my schedule got very hectic, very quickly when I started back at work part-time. My husband and I are sharing baby duty, so when I'm at work 3 days a week, he's with the babe, and when he's at work 4 afternoons / nights a week, I'm with the babe. We have these narrow windows when we see each other where we basically high-five and play hot potato with the baby while we each try to accomplish chores and use the bathroom. Spending time with my husband and baby fill me up, and I'm happier if our relationship is in a good place. And happy people don't shoot their husbands make better health choices. 2. NUTRITION IS 90% OF THE BATTLE Eating healthy is probably the hardest thing for me, and a lot of it comes down to making the time to meal prep and plan accordingly. 3. EXERCISE CUZ YOU WANT TO I miiiiiisss working out and I miiiiisss feeling strong. Fortunately, I have a husband who supports me and a sister in law who loves my babe who is willing to watch her so I can go workout. I have already asked my husband and SIL for help. Each week I will evaluate my schedule and my goals for the week and set forth from there! ______________________________________________________________________ WEEK ONE goals (in addition to the three objectives listed above) -Read scriptures every day -Eat healthy snacks first (both at home AND at work) -Go on walk with Baby Girl (BG) 2x (Monday and Thurs/Fri, when hubs is home) -Exercise at gym 30 minutes, 2x (Thurs/Fri and Sat, when SIL visits) Alright, best of luck friends! I'll only be checking once a week (I'm shooting for Sundays, since I count that the last day of my "week") so I'll see you then!