#oneword2019

Good morning colleagues! Welcome back to 2019!

For the last two years, I've picked one word to be my focus. I am planning on doing the same this year. The word that I am choosing is habitual. I am picking this word, not for my professional life, but for my personal life. This is an individual goal to me because I've found me telling myself, over and over, that teaching is what I do... it is not who I am. It is part of me, but it can't be all of me.

WHY do I need to be habitual? Most of my friends here in the Springs are teachers. When we get together, we talk about school. After a while, that gets old. There is more to us than being a teacher. We all have lives outside of the building, and we most certainly have more to us than teaching (or at least I hope so). Two years ago, I chose self-care as my word, and I've been preaching self-care ever since. I've done a great job of breaking apart my two worlds, but I need to be better about my personal, non-professional life.

Over the last year, as my job slowed down tremendously, I realized I still had an imbalance. I was still tired all of the time and spent all of my free time watch tv and/or lounging on the couch. I was in a funk and was practicing some bad habits. I didn't like that I was a couch potato, especially since I'm more than just my lousy TV habits.

HOW will I be habitual? Last year, I tried to pick up bullet journaling, but I went about it all the wrong way. I didn't have the right tools to make it enjoyable, and I didn't have the right frame of mind to be successful. What I knew of bullet journals is that they were pretty. I don't have time to MAKE MY BULLET JOURNAL PRETTY! So I went into this with a different frame of mind... it had to be what I needed it to be.

My sister was SO excited when I asked for bullet journaling supplies for Christmas. She bought me the stuff that she thought I needed (she did a good job!) but then kept asking me if I was going to use my bullet journal as a planner. The answer was definitely "NO!" I don't need a planner. I'm tied to my phone, and I live and die by Google Calendar. I'm really good at putting in reminders and dates, and I have notifications pop up consistently throughout the day (both on my personal phone and my school computer). So I knew that bullet journaling would become a pain as a planner.

I decided that I wanted my bullet journal to become a habit tracker. I didn't want a digital habit tracker because I didn't think it would keep me accountable. I need to write out my ideas and look at the trackers every day.

1. The first page of each month is a calendar. I highlight important days (no school, birthdays, hockey games, etc.) which match to their respective color on my phone calendar. It's just a visual reminder that I have something going on. I also have a goal list for the month and a to-do list for the month (make a car appointment, buy a birthday card, etc.)
2. The second page is my habit tracker. I have seven habits that I want to keep up with consistently: take pictures, practice handwriting, read for 30 minutes, post on Instagram, practice the ukelele, color for fun, and exercise. I've listed out the days of the month and then color in the box for the day if I practice the habit. 
3. The third page is a cleaning tracker. I love to cook, but hate all other household chores. It's also embarrassing when my husband tells people how he keeps the house clean... not me. So similar to my habit tracker, I've listed out the days of the month and color in the box for the day if I clean. I've listed out the following "chores": dishes, sweep and wash floors, pick up clutter, do laundry, put clothes away, vacuum downstairs, clean my bathroom. 
4. The fourth page is a mood tracker. Sometimes my mood swings wildly from morning to afternoon, so I want to track how I'm feeling (to better understand why I might be feeling a specific mood). I have a key with a color equaling a particular feeling, and I track AM and PM how I'm feeling each day. 
5. My last page of the month is a gratitude log. This is what I started doing last year but tried to get all fancy with it. Instead, it's a short and quick reminder of good things that happened that day. Even on a bad day, there's always a positive. 

So how is bullet journaling going? Not bad. I still have bad habits that I'm trying to break, but as James Clear mentions, I will again go back to bad habits for some time. It doesn't happen overnight. Bad habits occur because of stress and boredom. Now that I'm back in school, I'm stressed, but then I find myself bored. What do I do in those instances? Play a stupid game on my phone that I'm ridiculously addicted to for no good reason!

I do have my phone notifying me twice a day to check my bullet journal, so that is holding me accountable for looking at it every day (making it a habit). I also put app timers on my phone so that I don't spend all of my free time on Ramsay Dash, Reddit, and Twitter. My husband told me to leave my ukelele and coloring books on the couch, so they are in my face when I'm a couch potato. 

I'm hoping, by picking habitual as my word of the year, that I will have more to talk about when I'm with other people. I can talk about the new photos I took last weekend and can show them the final versions on Instagram. I can use coloring as a destresser after an unusually long day. I can tell people that I can play the ukelele which makes me seem "cool and interesting." And, of course, my final hope is my house will be clean because of me!

I know this post was incredibly personal (and not really related to education at all), but I appreciate you making it to the end. Thanks for reading! I'll see you next week :)

- Rachel

@historicalipad
My Teacherspayteachers website