Many famous Make Money Online blogs, such as JohnChow.com and BloggerExperiment.com, post monthly income reports on their blogs. Inspired by this idea, I have decided to post monthly life balance reports onto CreateaBalance.com. I have been trying to determine the best way to quantify my life balance success and decided, for now, that it will be more instinctual and less mathematical.
Here are May’s Results:
TOTAL SCORE: 7.8
(0 = completely lost focus, 10 = intentionally practiced life balance)
EMBRACING MY SELF – 10!
Travel: I took my annual vacation without any friends or family. I traveled to Lenox, MA, stayed at the Kripalu Yoga and Health Center, and visited a great friend in upstate New York. I also looked into travel dates for my annual February family vacation.
Blogging: I give myself a 10 in this category for two reasons. First, I now have 9 people subscribed to my RSS feed. That may not seem like a lot, but at the end of April I only had 2. So subscribers to CreateaBalance.com skyrocketed 450% in May. I think that deserves a 10! Second, I started sharing my blog with friends and family. Click here to subscribe to my RSS feed.
NURTURING RELATIONSHIPS – 10!
Children: I continue to spend quality time with my boys. The challenge is to balance my time between them and important adults in my life. Some highlights for May with my boys were playing tennis, swimming, flying kites, visiting the botanic gardens, reading, laughing, going to the zoo, biking, and celebrating birthdays.
Husband: I give myself a 10 in this subcategory because for the first time ever my husband and I found a babysitter for our two sons and went on a date. Finding the right babysitter has not been an easy task.
Creative Community: This has been something I have been lacking my life. Thanks for SARK’s Juicy Pens Thirsty Paper workshop at Kripalu, I was blessed to spend 4 days with SARK and an incredible creative community. I am staying in touch with my new creative community and intend to find a local creative community to join during the month of June. Click here for information on SARK workshops!
Friendships: I went to a concert with one of my oldest and dearest friends, I went to the zoo with friends, and I traveled across country to visit friends.
MONITORING WELL BEING – 7
Exercise: My intention is to exercise 6-7 days a week. In May, I have drastically increased my movement and have been walking around 10,000 steps a day since May 23. I also reactivated my gym membership and have been walking on the treadmill 2-3 days a week (I still hate the treadmill, but it gets the job done).
Yoga: I won a lot of brownie points since I spent my May vacation at a Yoga center. Let’s see how well I do in June.
Weight: I went to 3 Weight Watchers meetings and lost 0.6 pounds this month. My goal is to lose 4 pounds in June.
MANAGING MONEY – 7
In May I began learning more about investing charts to find the right mutual funds for my retirement portfolio. Things like SMA (3-line), RSI, Optimal Controls, and Moving Averages are a little less scary and foreign to me. I have been using Fidelity’s tools to learn and MarketWatch’s Virtual Stock Exchange to practice.
STAYING ORGANIZED – 5
I rearranged my living space to create more zones for my children. This has made a huge improvement in our quality of life and has also created a toy-free zone in my family room.
I gave myself a 5 in this category because with all of the excitement and momentum in my other categories…I neglected my laundry routine, had messy kitchen and bedrooms, and gave into T.V. this month instead of cleaning up toys and putting away dishes. I did give myself 5 solid points, however, for outsourcing housecleaning and grocery shopping throughout the month of May.
Since this is the first time I have shared a monthly life balance report, I’d love to hear your feedback on this post. Thanks!
I like the concept of this post. It actually inspired me to write my own life balance report for the month of May. Afterwards, I created a new list of what I want to focus on in June. And what a terrific photo of you and SARK!!!
Keep them coming. It’s nice to know others struggle with balancing the routines of running a family with their own interests and needs. Hmmm….I’ll have to think about going on a vacation all by myself. Do I dare?