July Goals | 2020

May was a month that brought good times as well as some frustrating times. I deliberately set quite simple goals for May, that would also be helpful when it came to my well-being in various ways, and I'm pretty pleased with how I did. 

During June however, I didn’t even get round to writing up any goals for that month. June was the month I was supposed to get married, which left me feeling quite deflated and not really up for posting much. Rather than trying to force myself to write something I really wasn’t interested in I decided to let myself have the break instead. Now that I feel like I have the energy and motivation once again, as much as it’s a little late, let’s have a look at my goals for May and see how I did with them; 

Keep up the water 

I've started to implement the rule that each time I have a cup of coffee, I must also have a large glass of water, and let me tell you, I drink a lot of coffee. It's been working pretty well, and with all the extra liquid to consume means I've actually been having less caffeine and more water in its place, which is great. I've also been working green tea into my day to further cut down on the coffee. 

Do some online training 

Working from home has given me so much more time, even within the same working hours. I can structure my day so much better now that I can control and remove distractions. I've managed to hop on a few mental health and well-being training sessions as well as a few insurance related training sessions. I’ve got a few more set up for July as well, and my manager and I have started discussions around my company funding me next set of insurance qualifications, which is great. 

Cover more miles 

I managed to walk just over 80 miles in the month of April so I'm pretty pleased. I've been going on longer and longer walks and finding all sorts of new places. I actually did less miles in June, but that was because I had started Couch to 5K so was running instead of walking.

Flexible working 

My formal request is in for permanent home working! In a rather promising move, my company sent a questionnaire to all employees to test the waters and see what we wanted in terms of flexible working, 80% of us want an option for home working so hopefully this means we'll have something in place in the near future. 

Plan some date nights 

We've had a couple of date nights or days, especially as we've had a week off recently. It's been lovely to spend time together and have time dedicated just for us. 

Send some letters 

I brought myself a new writing set which arrived in the middle of last month so I sent a friend a letter with some photos and a couple of seeds that I kept back from my red sun flowers last year. I'm getting regular updates on the happy plants that she's now growing in her conservatory, and she loved getting a few nice photos of us and all our friends in the post out of the blue. 

As I said, I'm pretty pleased with how I did with my goals in May, even if I didn’t actually write about them at the time. 

Now, let’s have a look at my goals for July; 

Keep up Couch to 5k 

You may have seen in some previous posts that I’ve decided to give the couch to 5k a go. So far it’s going quite well, and I want to keep it up through July – although I think I may need to move my runs to cooler parts of the day! If only I was a morning person! 

Shift some weight 

If you’ve read my June look back you’ll have seen that I’ve gained a little bit of weight since lockdown began. A lot of it has shifted already since I’ve started running 3 to 4 times a week but I’d like to take a little more off. I don’t want to be too focused on ‘scales weight’ as that isn’t really important so I’ve invested in some ‘smart scales’ which I’ll be posting about once I’ve used them a little longer – so watch this space! 

Find some new backdrops 

Something I’ve been slack on of late is blog and Instagram photos. I’m struggling to get back into a groove with it. I’ve not purchased anything new for my images in a while so hopefully some new props, and especially backdrops will do the trick. 

Write some more content

I have loads of half written posts sat in my drafts folder. I want to finish and publish at least 3 of them this month. Not just to get them out of my drafts but also to get some new posts out. I feel like I haven’t done a product review in ages despite having loads of half written ones that really wouldn’t take that much to finish. I also want to get a few new posts together from scratch, especially given that I feel like my blog is mainly Couch to 5k and look back posts at the moment. 

SEO & Traffic 

Over the past few months I’ve been slowly working to improve my Domain Authority (DA) and have started to see it slowly creep up. I’d love to get it to double figures, which I’m currently on the cusp of so I’ll be trying to do some odd bits and pieces to improve it. In addition to that, my views took a massive hit as we entered lockdown, mainly because I wasn’t really posting or promoting. That too is starting to creep back up so my goal is to try and get back to my pre-covid views – and then beat them! It’s probably a good idea that I get on top of my comments too. There are a few pending approval, and a few that have published that I’ve not got round to replying to. I really do appreciate each and every comment so I really do need to get caught up with these. 

 Do something different with my hair 

Those of you who know me will know that I had vibrant red hair for a long time, and then switched back to my natural brown a few months ago to give my hair a break. I want to work my way back to the red, but there’s a few colours I want to try out first, so deciding what I want and doing it is a goal for this month. 

Check my credit score 

It really doesn’t feel like that long ago since we moved in, but Mike and I are looking to re-mortgage towards the end of the year. My credit rating has always been pretty good, so I’m not particularly worried about it but it feels like a good idea to check it now rather than when there isn’t any time to improve it if it happens to be lower than it should be. Better to be safe than sorry right? 

Do some baking 

I haven’t done much baking in the past few weeks, despite it being something I really enjoy. I want to make sure I set some time aside to do cook up some culinary treats! This is perhaps slightly conflicting with my second goal… but it is my birthday this month so the calories don’t count on that day right? 

 That just about rounds up my goals for July. There’s a fair few in there, but given I have a whole month for them it should be very achievable. 

 What are your goals for this month?