Mojo

So it's been a few weeks now, and I'm still loving my Erin Condren planner (or, as my friend Laura keeps calling it, the Aaron Carter planner). I could go on, but the video pretty much says it all.

The ironic thing here is that now that I don't have a job, I'm finding that there isn't actually a lot to plan each week. Most of what I put into my planner is health tracking stuff, organizational projects I'm working on, and like, the one social thing I do each week (shout out to Hermit Lyfe, what!).

Anyway, let's have some real talk. 

Motivation is really key to anything that involves you getting out of bed. The whole reason I started organizing my life was that I lacked motivation. You should have seen my apartment back then - I didn't even take "before" photos when I first started this whole thing because they were HELLA DEPRESSING. Maybe I just didn't want to confront myself with how bad things had gotten, whatever. After about twelve thousand anxiety attacks, I decided that I needed to make small, successful changes to my life that would keep me going and get me into a routine that changes my lifestyle.

Here's what I learned about this process:

1. It's a PROCESS.

So here I am, two years after making the decision to organize my life and home, and I'm nowhere near as far into this as I thought I'd be. I thought by now, I'd be in a place where I feel comfortable having people over. I thought by now, I'd be getting into organzing OTHER people's lives! I thought by now I'd be way better at this than I am.

This shit is REALLY slow going.

Everyone goes at their own pace. Anytime you're making a change to your lifestyle and you want it to stick, the change is really slow to happen. Too often, we want to have a major change right away, and we go from zero to 60 immediately. The first little bit goes great, but then you essentially exhaust yourself and slip back into your old ways - and you give up. There you are, berating yourself because you didn't keep up with this huge (and frankly, unrealistic) task and you're kind of like,"Well, I may as well give up. Aw, man! I don't want to start all over again. I'm going to lie on my couch on watch Netflix for the rest of my life."

When I'm at this point, I remind myself that this isn't the end of a failed endeavor - this is part of the process. It's not always going to look perfect. There will be times when I cycle out of my routines and times when I cycle back in. Those times will get fewer and far between as life goes on, and it's important to look at what I've actually accomplished instead of how much there is left to do.

2. Anxiety brain likes to fuck with you.

Almost everyone I know has some sort of issue with anxiety and/or depression. I spend a lot of time sitting around thinking, and sometimes that's not always good. I'm learning to recognize anxiety brain vs. real brain. This is what that looks like, to me:

Real brain: Hmmm. The project that I'm dreading the most is cleaning out under the kitchen sink.

Anxiety brain: LOL That's gonna be SO GROSS, yo! Probably it'll take you like three hours. You got that kinda time?

Real brain: What? It's not that bad. The cupboard just needs wiping down, and then I just have to figure out what I want to keep under there. I already have the bins for a basket system.

Anxiety brain: HAHAHAHA you dumb bitch, how come you can't just keep your shit together like everyone else? You should probably just go back to bed, you're never gonna be good at this bullshit anyway.

SERIOUSLY, THIS IS WHAT IT'S LIKE! It's like having some terrible friend with you all the time that just wants to fuck up your shit. 

3. It's important to celebrate small successes ALL THE TIME!

The trick to motivating yourself is to make time to celebrate your successes, even if they're just little ones. This week, my small success I'm celebrating is that I've done both my morning and evening routines every day for five days now. The week before, I only did my full evening routine once, and the only part of my morning routine I did was make coffee. 

The more small successes you see, the more you want tomorrow. And it keeps you going - pretty easy!

4. It's important to stay challenged.

The most challenging thing for me in life is health. I hate being healthy - specifically, exercise. I know I'm supposed to do it so I don't drop dead of a heart attack at age 40, but OH MY GOD SWEATING EW NO. I decided to try Zumba, which is my sister's favourite activity. My sister hates exercise as much as I do, so if she can do this regularly for two years now and still enjoy it, I'm willing to try it.

And I have to do SOMETHING, because I'm getting older, my joints are starting to get creaky and I notice that I'm out of breath after climbing one flight of stairs. That's scary! And, you know - part of the bargain when you're an equal partner in a relationship is that you do what you can to keep yourself healthy and living for your other half. So for Stephen's sake and the sake of my family who, for some reason, enjoy my existence, I embark on Project Fitness. I'm trying to do 30 minutes of Zumba every day for 30 days, at the end of which I'm hoping that it'll be so integrated into my routine that I won't even think about it.

 Post-workout. I am so fucking sweaty that I fogged up the camera on my phone just by holding it.

I'm on Day 6. And a funny thing is happening! It's giving me ENERGY for other stuff. I'm sleeping through the night! My neck and back aren't sore every day! My quads are sore, but apparently that goes away. And like, this is HARD. But it's so hard that I'm interested and fascinated by all the other things that get affected. 30 minutes of exercise every day and I feel really good because it's this huge, difficult thing for me to get into and keep up with.

All of this isn't rocket science, I know. Everyone already knows these things. It's just stuff that I'm starting to understand the importance of, because I'm living it instead of thinking about it.

Shut Up And Take My Money, Erin Condren.

I have lost my mind and fallen into the life of a Planner Person. It can't be a good thing to buy into the consumerism of my own need to control everything. 

You know that feeling you get when you discover something new and there's so much to learn and you're really into it? That's how I am about planners right now. I DID NOT KNOW THAT PLANNERS AND AGENDAS HAD SUCH A FOLLOWING. If there's anything I am forever grateful to the internet for, it's for showing me that for every weird thing I'm into, there's a whole bunch of people who are also into it, and they don't fuck around.

When I was in high school, we got agendas every year and I'd have the best fucking time putting in all my classes and assignments. I didn't care so much about attending class or doing the assignments, but by god, I knew when that fucking project was due and I knew just when to start panicking about not having done it. The kids in my high school decorated their planners and  used them as scrapbooks - I thought this was particular to my school, but apparently this is a global phenomenon. Using Your Planner As A Chronicle Of Your Life.

 Colour-coding: the Foreplay of the Planner Community

Mine contained concert tickets, programs, song lyrics, pictures cut out of magazines (in grade 10, it was all about Drew Barrymore from YM magazine. By Grade 12, it was any photos of Trent Reznor I could get my hands on from NME), cartoons and some exceptionally bad poetry. I kept using a planner after high school, because I always needed a way to keep track of my shifts at work and my spending, but I didn't realize that decorating or colour-coding my agenda wasn't specific to me until I watched a YouTube video where a girl talked for twenty minutes about how she organizes her planner. About then is when I figured out that other people are also crazy about planners and agendas, and I'm clearly not the only one who decorates hers.

Enter the Rolls-Royce of agendas: The Erin Condren Life Planner.

 Stephen downloaded a Hallelujah chorus app onto his phone so he could play it when I opened up the box. I forgot to mention that this was his anniversary gift to me this year. My gift to him was a special Lego set. This is what happens when two nerds find each other.

Erin Condren is this woman who made agendas into her goddamn career. White people, man. They're fucking amazing. If you go to her website, you can see why these things are such a big fucking deal, but if you're a lazy asshole, here are the basics:

1. You can customize the cover and pretty much everything else about the planner.
2. It was obviously designed by someone who has spent an unholy amount of time thinking about this shit.
3. If you get a friend all worked up about these things, they can use your referral code for $10 off their first purchase, and then you get a $10 credit when they buy stuff. YAS.

So I received my new planner last week, and I've been unable to talk about or think about anything else since. Below is the video of my unboxing and first impressions. For those of you on the edges of your seats, I'll have an actual review of the planner and how I'm using mine because SERIOUSLY PEOPLE MAKE VIDEOS ABOUT THESE THINGS.