2017 Goals: January

This year, instead of doing a monthly life update, I have decided to do a monthly goals update.  This is mostly to keep myself accountable.  At the end of the post I may also post any big life changes, but for the most part this is all to make sure I'm making progress on my goals for the year.

1. Switch to a Vegan Diet

This is going fairly well, actually.  The only meal that I think is going to be hard for me is lunch.  I always have a cheese sandwich with mustard, so I need to find something to substitute that with.  Breakfast has been a bit harder than I thought, mainly because I'm lazy in the mornings and the smoothies and oatmeal bowls I want to make take some effort.  Dinner, which I thought would be the most difficult, was actually the easiest!  I didn't realize how many of the foods I ate for dinner were actually vegan!  So, I have pretty much switched my dinners to being 100% vegan, and as I said in my original goals post, most of my snacks were already vegan.

2.  Focus on my Health 

This was a really broad goal and I fully intended to write a separate post with all my health and fitness goals but I never did.  Honestly, right now my main goal is to find a routine.  At the beginning of the month I was really bad about getting to the gym and really bad about my bed times.  In 19 days, I had only been to the gym 3 times!  One week, I had an excuse, I took kick boxing and I was extremely sore for about 4 days afterwards.  I am all about listening to my body and I was not about to push it.  Other than that, I've just been lazy, which is no excuse.  Part of my issue is that I've been going to bed around 1 or 2 in the morning and sleeping in past class time at the gym.  A friend recommended Sleepytime Tea, and I've been drinking that right around 11pm each night and it's been helping.  I want to start waking up no later than 7am, so I want to start getting to sleep around 11.  This is definitely a work in progress.   Though I am happy to say, I have made it to the gym at least three times per week for the last 2 weeks.

3.  Focus on Bolt's Training

This has been a major fail!  Actually, we've been having some issues with him and I think we're going to have to see another professional trainer.  All of a sudden he has started resource guarding.  He never growled at me until about mid month.  I gave him a treat (same treats we've been giving him for months) and when I walked past him a few minutes later he growled.  I thought maybe I just scared him because he'd never done that before.  However, I experimented the next day and it wasn't a fluke.  He did it to Josh a few days later.  I don't want to screw up fixing this, so I'm looking into professional training which is totally not in our budget right now, but with Josh leaving so soon, I can't have this dog getting aggressive with me.  I really wish I knew what started this, it came out of nowhere.  He knows his commands but only listens when he wants to, so I really need to work on asserting myself and getting him to listen to me when I speak to him.   I'm currently reading Cesar's Way and it's actually helped a bit.

4. Photo 365 on Instagram

I have only missed three days so far!! I'm really happy about this one because I honestly thought I'd do really poorly since life is pretty boring right now.   I really want to keep up with this one so that I can look back at the end of the year at all of the photos and remember everything we did this year.  If you follow me on Instagram my hashtag for this is #JLRich365!

5. No Spend Year 

This was a major fail this month and I really don't want to talk about it.  Josh and I haven't sat down and really looked at our budget.  I think part of the problem was that I since I am in charge of finances, Josh really didn't have any idea what I was working with.  This was huge mistake.  Hopefully I'll have better news on this goal for February.  Also, I have a job interview today, so keep your fingers crossed.  This job is better paying and more in my chosen field then the job I'm currently working.

6: School: Go Back and Maintain a 4.0
I really have no news for this.  I'll be filling out my FAFSA here soon (and Josh's) and plan to take advantage of the MyCAA program.  I won't be starting classes until either summer or fall depending on what classes are available in the summer.  I'm really looking forward to going back to school and getting a degree that I really want. 

7.  Finish the 50 States Reading Challenge
So far, I haven't made any progress on this.  I'm a little sad about this and I wish I'd read more this month but I've been totally vegging out in front of the TV rather than reading.