Queue up “Fly like an Eagle” by Steve Miller Band please because I have been having some issues with time lately. I barely even thought about Q2 and goals until like a week in, oops. I have been, as the title suggests, distracted.
Baking and cooking are huge things for me, both as recreational activities and as stress relief. I find having a stove top full of hot dishes all going at the same time to be less stressful than going to my local meadery on any given day, and boy that says a lot of about me. Stepping back into baking, and specifically with bread, has been just such a mental treat for myself!
Bread making is one of those things that is both really easy (when you know what you’re doing) and really hard (if you’re not sure what you’re doing). I’ll totally admit, I LOVE the recipes from King Arthur and I’ve bought baking supplies from there often (it’s not cheap!). But I lucked out when one of the more recent catalogs came in the mail with this No-Knead Everything Bread recipe and I just knew I had to make it. Thankfully I had some high-gluten flour at the time (why, I don’t remember at this point), and I made it one Friday into Saturday, hauling myself from bed at 6am so I could transfer my dough from my bowl where it had rested overnight to the dutch oven it would be baking in. This is an easy recipe, it is not a quick recipe. It’s a chewy loaf! But it was perfect with a hefty smear of cream cheese and cold smoked salmon for breakfast.
The second time I made it, I only had bread flour. It was still really good, but I found it wasn’t as chewy and the crust was much more crunchy than it had been with the high gluten flour. I ended up buying myself more high gluten flour, seasonings and some other mix ins to try on a third loaf next weekend. I’m really into bread baking right now, which has been a bit of a pleasant ordeal as I’ve been going through a lot of stuff personally. Nothing serious, but it’s been pretty emotionally/mentally draining, so turning to something like baking has been relaxing.
I was also lucky enough to live in the path of totality during the April 8th solar eclipse, and let me tell you. If you ever have a chance to see an eclipse in totality… it’s insane. It was an incredibly humbling experience and it was pretty emotional for me. I was kind of shocked to have found it so moving. I mean, it is incredible, but I just wasn’t expecting it!
But anyways…
Q1
I wrapped up Q1 in my Plotter earlier this month and I didn’t get as much done as I wanted, but I also have been trying to learn to be more okay with that. Although I have goals, I also want to remember life happens. My SO and I were both pretty sick in March, me for one week, and him the week after. It sucked, but it happens. So I didn’t get as much walking in as I would have liked.
We had financial goals that got shifted around to Q2 as well, and that’s okay. I also ended up deciding to wait to go through my clothes until Q2 when we started doing some spring cleaning throughout the house.
I also spent a lot of time contemplating, but not committing to coming up with a low-oxalate meal plan, as well as working on listing like common things we eat and portion sizes. Both are important, I know, but they’re also so incredibly intimidating. In the meantime I just aim to drink more and eat less. We’re generally pretty smart/healthy eaters, but there is always room for improvement.
Q2
April, May, and June are getting into our busy months. Holidays, birthdays, travel, possible vacations… Although I have plenty I could be putting on my quarterly goals list, I opted for the “less is more” approach. A lot less (well sorta).
Getting back into walking or biking in the evenings is important. It’s good, easy movement, and it gives me time to de-stress from work either by playing music or listening to a podcast. However, I find breaks in my routines absolutely destroy my ability to get back into things, so this is going to be a bigger struggle than it sounds.
Over winter I sat down and wrote up a massive room by room checklist for spring cleaning to be done in the second quarter. Although I only wrote “spring cleaning” on my goal list, it’s actually a three page google doc checklist. We’ve decided to take one room a weekend and clean it. So far we’ve managed to complete 3 rooms and are halfway through a 4th. Body doubling is key for us both when cleaning, and having a checklist to keep us both focused and organized helps so much. Some rooms are also a lot easier than others, and that’s always a good motivation boost.
Like I said, we moved some Q1 financial goals to Q2 as we’ve had some (happy) changes in our finances. I anticipate there being a lot of conversation between us when we start into this. Yay adulting!
After that… I put a lot of “me” projects, and by “me” projects I mean… playing Apothecaria more, finishing up the last two routes I have to complete in Fire Emblem 3 Houses, doing the Final Fantasy XIV x Final Fantasy XVI crossover event (say that three times fast…), and poke at my “diamond painting” project I started in like November. At this point, I worry the poster is going to lose it’s sticky…
I’m pretty happy with how Q2 looks on paper, but I’m under no illusion any of it will be a snap to accomplish. My motivation is incredibly mercurial at times and I can get a lot of stuff done or do basically nothing and it’s really hard to anticipate which it will be. Still, as both my SO and I have been doing more mental/personal inventory of ourselves, we’ve been slowly figuring out what works for us to get us to be more present and active in our goals and chores. We’ve been slowing finding a happy rhythm.
And that’s where things are at. I’ve not been writing as much as I would like lately, a product of having appointments stacked on holidays stacked on appointments. Oops. It’s okay though, I’ll get back into it soon enough. For now though… hmmm Bread…
Casual Crossings 