Life Renovations

Since my horrible stomach virus, I've been making a lot of changes in my life. Trying to be healthier and get into better routines and habits.

First, I changed my diet, as discussed in the post all about my IBS and stomach viruses. I've stopped eating out as much and stopped drinking as much. This cut down on a lot of my spending. I go grocery shopping about 3 times a month to buy healthy things to eat for lunch at work and prepare dinners more often than I ever have. This goes to say that I've been getting into cooking more. Not a whole lot, but I've never cooked anything more than my occasional spaghetti.

I bought a Sonicare HealtyWhite electric toothbrush which I was doing really good at using multiple times a day. Lately I've drifted from using it as often as I'd like because it takes a least 2 minutes to brush my teeth and sometimes I need to be out the door faster than that. I will say that this toothbrush has been a very worthy purchase, I wish I had gotten it sooner for it makes my mouth feel cleaner than it ever has.

I was doing great with my sleeping schedule once school started, but now I'm back to my old habits somewhat. The first few weeks of school I got adequate sleep every night, went to bed early and got out of bed fast at a very timely manner. I don't really go out on weekends anymore so I don't stay up nearly as late so it doesn't mess me up as much. But sometimes when I do stay up a little later its effects are immediate. I honestly actually have difficulty staying up, which is essentially a good thing. Although I am not up super late on weekends, I still wake up on Monday mornings with very limited sleep or none at all and spend the rest of the week catching up. Still working on that. A lot of it stems the stress of the upcoming work day which keeps me up later than I'd like. Working as an in-home caregiver over the summer still required me to wake up early, thus retain my schedule, but due to the lack of professional environment, I don't stress the amount of sleep as much, making me fall asleep faster. As a result, working at a school, stresses me more and keeps me up. See my cycle?

I'm still trying to treat myself with massages, although I am in need of one currently. These help a lot because I build a lot of tension in my body from my jobs both through stress and physical exertion. I came upon a recent realization that driving is a very tense situation for me. I feel my body stiffen up, no matter how relaxed I may think I feel sometimes. It's very hard for me to calm that down, so perhaps I should research what I can do to help. Or just drive less...pff!

Finally, my spendings. As mentioned above, I'm working on that due to staying in more. My usual spendings have been on vacations, groceries, and frequent visits to hookah lounges. I check my bank account daily and map out all my earnings per month and try to control my spending. I put away a goal amount each month into my savings that is going towards moving out. All of this is constantly in the forefront of my mind that I'm actually obsessed with it. I feel I'm finally actively working towards something and it has me excited but also very anxious. Anxious because I want time to fast forward so I can finally get to the point that I feel comfortable financially to be on my own.

Overall, my lifestyle has been undergoing renovations.