February's Challenge

I didn't realize how hard would be to think of a challenge to do this month - something that wasn't going to be simple to do, but not something impossible to do either.  So, I thought about what hasn't been going quite right lately and I came up with this - Stay off all electronic devices (iPhone and iPad mainly) after 8:30 pm every night.

My reasoning?  Where does the time go after the boys go to bed at 7:30 and when I go to bed, usually around 10:30ish?  I feel like I never have any time to do things, but in reality, that is 3 solid hours to do stuff.  What do I usually catch myself doing?  Catching up on Facebook, Instragram, message boards and blogs I read, playing "Words with Friends", "Scramble with Friends", "Bejeweled" - you name it - any app on my phone and iPad suck up my time after they go to bed.  So, how to I make time to do the things that I really want to do?  Take away what is sucking up my time.  I will allow myself to check emails if necessary or respond to a text message as that is a quick thing to do, but no mindless game playing/social media to take up my time.  There are plenty of other hours in the day to do that.

So, last night, when the boys went to bed, I honestly wondered what I was going to do.  I already did my math homework for the week, I didn't bring home any school work, I didn't have a book I was currently reading because I "haven't had time" to keep up with one, and I already watched all of my shows that were DVR'd during the week, earlier in the week.  So, I thought about things I always said I wanted to do "when I had time" - start running again, catch up with my Project Life album, find a new book to read, etc.  What did I end up doing?  I rearranged some of the toys in the basement to set up the treadmill and went for a 15 minute run (long enough for the first time running in literally 5-6 months), finished a week of my Project Life album, and then Troy found me a book in his collection that I might be interested in, and started that.  After all that, it was only 10pm!! I know it doesn't sound very exciting for a Friday night, but there was nothing exciting on TV, no movie that I wanted to watch and Troy was reading a new book he had.  No excuses to do these things more often - have time for me and the things I always try to get to, but usually fail to do.  We'll see how long the motivation lasts.  And hey, even if I'm not productive every night after they go to bed, I can't blame it on checking everyone's status for the n-th time that day and playing just one more game on my phone.