Hello everyone! Phew, what a long title! But it is descriptive as I’ll be checking in on my year 30 goal to create peace!

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So, every year for my birthday I set myself a new goal. It’s sort of a resolution I suppose! Since my birthday is in May, November is the half-way point!

I have to say, I’m so proud that I’m so active with my goal. In the past, I would forget about my goal until November and then scramble to “catch up” on working on that goal. But I think the fact that I talk about it every month for my Coffee Chat really helps keep it top of mind.

In case you missed my post back in May on My Year 30 Goal: Create Peace, I’ve linked it for you there! If you want the short version of it though, I wanted to bring more slow and intentional living into my life to counteract the crazy busy lifestyle I’d had a few years leading up to the pandemic. Like many people, I reflected on what was important to me during the quarantine of 2020 and found that a quiet home and mindset was best for me. However, with the world opening up again in 2021, and the fact that I had finally found employment again, I knew I had to make it an intentional mindset going forward.

I did go back and review the initial post in preparation for writing this one. I couldn’t believe how I struggled to find the right goal since I’m so used to it now and it fits so well.

Here’s how it’s been going!

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How I’ve been Creating Peace

So when I created the goal I said I wanted to have peace at home, in my mind, at work, and through social media. I will say it’s a little funny to me that I’m super annoyed as I write this because of something another member of my household did today (although at the time you’re reading this it’s been a few days) so already that’s not a great start to this reflection. But honestly, I’m already (mostly) over it.

Anyway, I’ll try to focus on one aspect at a time. At home, it’s been pretty peaceful (besides today’s frustration!). I will say that adding a dog to the mix was not exactly peaceful, so this part of the goal hasn’t been as easy as I thought. I will admit that adding in the barking, non-housebroken dog and the overabundance of stuff I own have been the least peaceful things of my home life, in addition to my parents who are not very mindful of the fact that I work from home. I have been working on all these things though! My dog is in training now and is learning not to bark as much, and I make sure to take him out frequently. I have been working hard on decluttering, but I have such a long way to go because there’s so many things piled up. As for the parents, I love them but they truly are dreadful roommates sometimes. For example, my dog freaks out and wants to greet anyone who comes back home. While they don’t do it intentionally, both parents somehow manage to ONLY come home thirty seconds into a meeting, or right in the middle on one, so the dog freaks out and gets annoyed if I don’t let him out to say him. But since he’s not house trained then I can’t let him run free as my parents won’t pay attention to where he is or what he’s doing. Of course, it’s not their job to care for my dog but it’s frustrating that they coincidentally come home when I’m busy and can’t bring the dog down to say hi. I mentioned that I was annoyed today and it’s because my dad parked behind my car, left the house in my mom’s car, and took his keys. I had registered to attend a local event and ended up missing it because I couldn’t get my car out in time. It was so frustrating! For the most part, living with them is fine, but they just aren’t very mindful of things like my schedule (example: they want to eat “lunch” at 10am and don’t understand that I sometimes am busy in a meeting or with work at that time) and it does annoy me. Most of the time I let things go but I have to be honest that they are a big source of frustration in my home life. Luckily, the frustration is small overall, so it’s ultimately not a huge deal! In the next six months I hope to continue to work on my dog’s training so we don’t have so many accidents or freak outs. I also want to continue to work towards not having so much stuff and getting rid of more. I’ve done pretty well in not bringing in more but I still have way too much that I don’t need or use. As for the parents, I’m not sure what to do about that! I could move out but I am saving a lot of money so I do think it’s worth putting up with for the most part.

I’ve also been working on a peaceful mind! I specifically wanted to focus on kindness and positivity and I’ve been doing well in those! A lot of it does have to do with the fact that I have a great job and earning more, so I’m not stressed about the lack of income anymore. The negativity of my toxic job pre-pandemic really put me in a flight or fight mode, which wasn’t helpful in working towards kindness! But luckily I’m not in that place anymore and it’s been so much better for me. I think that something I could work on more is setting aside more time for personal reflection. I just find that I don’t reflect as much now that more of my time is dedicated to work and I do miss it.

This leads to bringing peace to work! I recently blogged about ideas for bringing in a more peaceful mindset to work, and I do stand behind those tips! But I will say that it can be challenging. For example, at my previous toxic job, it would have been pretty impossible! The only thing that kept me same there was knowing that I didn’t deserve all the harassment that was being directed to me when the managers were having little power trips (it’s honestly how we all coped!) and knowing I was on my way out. At the university it was difficult because I hate working on phone queues and we were expected to be on queues for several hours a day. I did cope with that by relishing the non-queue hours and trying to balance out that time. At my current job, I’ve just recently started to get busier so I make sure to take breaks, which the dog will not let me skip even if I wanted to! I’m also encouraged to take on projects that I really enjoy, so that’s pretty helpful too. I do think that I want to continue to focus on building good relationships with my co-workers and continue to work on projects I like.

Trying to bring in peace via social media can be a bit rough though. So much of social media is about drama or living lavish lifestyles and so on. I have found a corner of the internet focused on slow living and other similar lifestyles, and I’ve tried to focus on those. When I follow someone now, I do look for positive messaging in their posts, how often they post, and their general vibe. If it’s too chaotic, I don’t follow. It can still be difficult, especially when TikTok shows me videos of Karens or Twitter shows me tweets of politicians I don’t agree with, but I try to scroll past when I can, and move on quickly. I think I would like to work harder on getting better at scrolling past the negative on social media specifically though.

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So that’s how I’ve been doing in bringing in peace into my life! I have six more months to go, so I’m excited to see what else I can accomplish.

Thanks for reading!

Pamela

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