Looking Backward, Looking Forward – January 2023

Reviewing my progress in January, setting my intentions for February:

I spent a couple of weeks with my parents at their house in Point Lonsdale. The girls also stayed down until mid-January. My siblings we down with their families for some of the time too. The summer holidays are usually when we spend the most time together.

Daily routines: Start the day with the Lectio365 devotion is happening. I do it before I get out of bed. I’ve wanted to make sure I do my strength exercises more regularly. I think a lot of the problem was that I hadn’t tied it to a particular time of the day, so in February, after I make my bed, I will read a poem from my current poetry book (this already happens) and then do my strength exercises. Most routines are only 10-15mins so nothing major, just enough to keep everything humming. For more intense strength work, I do pilates reformer classes.

Three times a week is a habit: I hit this goal with blogging. For the garden, I hit the goal when I was at home (for obvious reasons, this is a goal for when I am at home), The photography was less successful. I count on getting out my big camera to take photos, edit and back up and also work on the photobooks. Most weeks, I did one of these at least twice, and in the last couple of weeks, I’ve been successful.

Read 52 Books: I finished seven books. Since I need to read just over four books a month, I’m on schedule.

Travel: Our trip to Israel has been postponed to Easter 2024.

Home: I organised the pantry this month, and I plan to finish the rest of the kitchen drawers and cupboards in February. We got seven paintings hung on the walls in January. In February I want to look at our family photos and select our favourites for the gallery wall in the hallway, get some more photos from our travels printed and framed for our travel gallery wall and get our Rone print framed. I also finished planting the garden except for the veggie garden, which I can’t finish until April when the last of the winter crops can go in. In February, I plan to transfer the strawberries to one of the raised beds and plant seeds of year-round veggies.

Photography: I started my garden photo project. I also have a telephoto lens coming in the mail so that I can try some bird/wildlife photography. I’ve almost finished the photobook for our Tasmania trip. In February, I’ll plan to finish this and another one I have partially finished at a different photobook printer that I want to try out.

Round the Neighbourhood: I’ve realised that a 5km radius from our house is pretty large, even though a substantial portion of it is underwater, so there are no streets. I’ll probably modify this to a 3km radius, although I’ll go at least out to 5km along the coast. Initially, I will concentrate on ticking off all of Brighton and Elwood; then, I’ll look at the nearby parts of the neighbouring suburbs. I’m also interested in exploring the CBD. My progress so far, according to Citystrides:

• Brighton: 55 of 276 streets, 19.93%
• Elwood: 7 of 94, 7.45%
• St Kilda West: 5 of 20, 25.0%
• Melbourne (city): 53 of 356, 14.89%
• Middle Park: 3 of 24, 12.5%
• Albert Park: 9 of 89, 10.11%
• Gardenvale: 1 of 11, 9.09%
• St Kilda East: 7 of 111, 6.31%
• Balaclava: 3 of 53, 5.66%
• Ripponlea: 1 of 18, 5.56%
• St Kilda: 7 of 161, 4.64%
• Elsternwick: 3 of 107, 2.8%
• Brighton East: 7 of 229, 3.36%
• Hampton: 3 of 137, 2.19%

Sustainability: This month, I’ve been making it a priority to keep an eye on what’s in the fridge and use it up if it’s getting old. This week I’ve repurposed some leftover BBQ sausages into a lentil, veggie and tomato stew, and today, I grabbed the almost past best cabbage and made some Japanese-style veggie pancakes for lunch. There is also some past its best iceberg lettuce in our fridge that will probably go into fried rice tomorrow. I also made celery leaf gremolata which went on my salad bowls, then in some sauteed mushrooms and a potato salad. February, I’ll continue to make reducing food waste a priority.

Run: I did the trail race, which was on my ultimate dreams list, but I forgot to mention it in my intentions post. I started my half-marathon training plan for the Noosa Half-Marathon in May. I ran 136km this month, which was a bit lower than planned because I had a virus one weekend; the trail run took a bit of recovery, and last week I reduced some running due to vertigo. To hit my goal of 2500km, I need to hit 209 a month, so I’m a bit behind, but I’m not too worried because I’ll hit a lot higher mileage once I start getting deeper into my training cycle.

Swim: I’ve swum once at the pier at Point Lonsdale, once at the Point Lonsdale back beach and twice at Elwood. Three of these have been with my daughter, who likes swimming at the beach. I’m sure we’ll have some more days that are over 30 degrees in February which is what I like if I’m going swimming in the ocean.

Entertain: We hardly entertained last year in our rental, so my intention to entertain more shouldn’t be too hard to hit. Last month we restarted family dinners on Monday nights, had a post-long run brunch and had another family over for a BBQ dinner. For February, I want to keep that going. We have a friend coming for dinner tonight and other friends coming for drinks later in the month, but hopefully, we can do a bit more.

Dentist: Hubby went to a new dentist this morning that he was happy with, so I’ll try to tick off finding a new dentist this month.

Overall I’m pretty happy with my progress in January. Hopefully, I can take that forward momentum into February.