You may remember that I have set myself some goals for 2018. Well to force myself to actually do something about these goals, I have obligated myself to write several updates this year…

March 1st today… we’re two months into the new year, so time for a first update. How have I done so far?? Read on to find out!

First of all, I will share the link to the blogpost in which I tell you all about my goals and why I have chosen these goals in particular. You can find that post here.

And now (drumroll…): did I actually take action to do something about these beautiful words I have written during the final days of 2017?!

Exercise

The first goal I mention in that post was to start exercising again. I have been suffering from a bad back for so long and this often prevented me from exercising. From September until December I had a two-hour therapy twice a week to make the muscles of my back stronger again and when this therapy ended, I really meant to start exercising on my own again… wasn’t it for a some nerves in my neck that were inflamed at that point so the aches and pains continued as 2018 started… preventing me from exercising once more!

But once my neck was better (by the end of January), I had no excuses anymore 🙂

You might remember I was talking about taking up ballet. But as the ballet lessons take place in the city centre of Antwerp, it would take me double as long to get to my ballet class and back than the ballet class actually lasts! This would take up too much time so I decided not to start ballet.

Then I thought about starting to swim, but I got the shivers down my spine by the thought of having to jump into the cold water! So that was a no go either…

And then finally I decided to go to the gym. It literally takes me about 5 minutes to get to the gym after work and I’ve got a fab deal because the department of sport of my work chips in to pay the subscription!  Mind, I only started last Friday but I intend to go to the gym once a week to start with and I hope to take that up to twice a week, perhaps even by my next update 🙂 I’ll fill you in in a couple of months!!!

Drink and eat wisely

I have definitely started off well concerning this goal! The first week of January was still a week of festivities, but from January 8th onwards I really started to eat healthy!

I have also been drinking wisely during these first two months. In January I only drank alcohol during the weekend and in February I intended to quit alcohol entirely as I had entered the national challenge ‘Tournée Minérale’. This is a challenge which makes you promise to set alcohol aside during the month of February.

I had 5 events to attend to during this short month and I didn’t drink a drop!! I must admit though that I had 2 glasses of wine during a daytrip with my best friend so I didn’t entirely make it, but I can tell you that participating made me aware of the times you actually want to reach out for a glass of alcohol!! So actually I am quite pleased with myself that I only had those couple of glasses on that daytrip!

I also cut down on eating cake, crisps and sweets and I tried to eat low-fat whenever possible.

It wasn’t my main goal to lose weight, but just by being more aware of what I ate and drank, made me lose 4 kilos during those first two months of 2018!

Start saving for my Australia trip

Oh, my sweet, lovely, pink Miss Piggy… Her belly’s already filling up 😀

Everytime I’ve got some coins in my purse, I put it in my piggybank. I  usually don’t bother about the small change, I mainly put coins of 50 cents, 1 and 2 EUR in Miss Piggy or when it’s been a while, I sometimes put a 5 or 10 EUR note in my piggybank…

I really hope that when I finally get to break her, there’s a considerable amount of money to be found in her little belly so that my trip to Australia is one step closer!

Read 12 books

Books I’ve read so far:

1.’Het Smelt’ by Lize Spit (review)

2.’The Nightcircus’ by Erin Morgenstern (review will follow in a couple of weeks)

started reading: ‘Eat, pray, love’ by Elizabeth Gilbert

Quality time with friends and family

Well I certainly didn’t fail on this one either!

There’s a long list of activities I’ve done with my loved ones these first couple of months of 2018: a New Year’s diner with my hubby and kids, a games afternoon (that lasted until 9 pm!) with my family and my brother in law and his partner, an at home tapas night with my hubby and kids, a couple of afternoons with my mum and dad, date night with the hubby, a day out with my best friend, a bookclub gathering, a bowling night with part of my husband’s family, my godson’s birthday party, my dad’s birthday,…

So you see… heaps of quality time… yip, definitely scoring in this department!

My good, fab and lovely blog

Still blogging away nicely I guess… I have worked on my blog very hard, especially during the last week of December and the first week of January when I had a couple of days off.  I made heaps of drafts then on which I can still fall back upon now and I have slightly altered the menus.

Keep watch over my stress level

Believe me… it’s been very hard to watch my stress levels these first couple of months as there is so much going on at work. We’re facing a lot of changes, which of course brings a whole lot of insecurities, anxiety and stress. I try to deal with it the best I can and during the evenings and weekends I try to put this aside for a while! I don’t always succeed I must admit, but last week I made an important decision which makes dealing with these changes a lot more bearable!

I work at the HR department of the local council. Part of my job is working on the policy of presence and making sure our employees work on their resilience. In January and February I had the opportunity to follow a couple of workshops: two about burn-out (how to avoid and what to do to help others facing one) and one about boosting your energy. These workshops are very useful for my job, but they are so beneficial for myself as well! It makes me put things into perspective and at the ‘boost your energy’ workshop I got heaps of tips… might do a blogpost about that topic 😉

During these first two months of the year I have listened to my body… I’ve had problems with my neck and also with a tooth :-(, but I didn’t ignore the signals my body was giving me, so I went to the specialist, to the dentist and to the physiotherapist to make sure everything was looked after. I’m glad to say most of those physical problems belong to the past… for now 🙂

Another thing that springs to mind is that I have accepted help when it was offered. Most of the time, when someone offers help I say ‘it’s allright, I’ll do it myself’, but I did manage to say ‘yes’ just a couple of times… it felt a bit awkward I can tell you that, but afterwards I felt relieved!

Just like that time I said ‘no’ to a work party! I just felt so tired that week and I really didn’t feel like going, but I felt obligated. I was complaining about it to a colleague and she said “on your blog you said you’d say ‘no’ more often, so why don’t you just say ‘no’ to this party?” How fun is that, that a colleague of mine had to remind me of my goals 😀 Thanks Greet… I didn’t go to the party and I had a fabulous night at home… on my couch… under a blankey… sipping a glass of wine… watching ‘The Crown’!!!

And that’s it for this first update. Not bad I must say! I’m really glad I have commited myself to writing updates. That way I won’t forget about the goals I set. These updates will definitely keep me on track!

How are you doing with the goals you’ve set? Still on track??

Love, Kathleen