I’m back! I needed a hiatus but I hadn’t been forward-thinking enough to plan for one. Or, maybe, I thought I could just be superhuman and do it all. Between preparing the house to rent, signing a lease with the new apartment, splitting up our things (what was going in storage, what was coming with us—typically don’t couples get to go from the smaller apartment to the bigger house, not the other way around?), and finally getting moved, I didn’t have  much time left to sleep let alone pursue any creative activities.

And then there was Morph: Our perfect puppers had completed his duty of seeing us through our post-college transition years and succumbed to his lymphoma in March. We like to make light of a very sad time by saying he heard about the tiny apartment with no backyard and 100 other dogs living in it and said, “No, thank you.”

When you go through serious upsets like this—moving not just homes but cities, saying goodbye to friends and family, going from a hybrid work schedule to fully remote, losing a beloved pet—you have to give yourself a lot of grace and a lot of time to find your balance and “new normal.” (I have to remind myself all the time that there’s never a “back to normal,” there’s only forward; life = change.)

I am not good at this. Not only do I rely on my routines to keep me sane, I like to push and push and push myself to try and regain normalcy as quickly as possible. For example, the guilt of not updating this site ate away at me week after week. And as much as I tried to tell myself that it was okay, I still felt like a failure.

And then there was the 2024 Goals list: I had wanted to go on another personal retreat in May with my Wrapped in Stillness book, but, wow, was that so not in the cards when all my weekends had to be spent on housework or packing that month! For such a careful planner, it’s almost embarrassing to admit that I didn’t realize how much time and attention those things would need.

So I cracked open my goals journal in July and REALIZED I HADN’T MADE ANY UPDATES IN IT SINCE JANUARY!

Luckily, mid-year resets are a thing. I was introduced to this concept last year through some of the productivity accounts I follow on Instagram, and I couldn’t use one more than right now. Here’s how I reset my focus for 2024:

I began by writing down all the things I had accomplished this year already.

I didn’t organize them by months (gasp). I didn’t overthink anything I wanted to include in the list. I simply wrote until I couldn’t think of anything else: one big list of personal and professional accomplishments for February through June 2024.

I realized there were some things on that list that I had, in fact, set out to do.

If you remember my New Year’s post, I had set out to 1) Get all my friends’ birthdays on the calendar 2) Try new places, foods, or things and 3) Donate or throw out old clothes. I’ve actually done all those things. Amidst all the chaos, my top three priorities for the year have been accomplished.

I bit off only what I could chew by planning for the next 3 months, instead of the next 6.

The August to October months are my favorite time of year. I always feel very refreshed and energized (holdover from the new school year always starting at this time maybe??) and ready to tackle some goals that were going to make me feel like I had it together again.

So I asked myself, what do I want to have accomplished within the next 3 months? In the spirit of giving myself a lot of grace and a lot of time, I told myself that one of the goals was simply to find a new routine I liked. Trying new habits out each week, shaking up what time of day I did certain habits, finding new walking routes in my new area, etc.

The other goal was to catch up on my reading. At the beginning of the year, I had set out to read 75 books, and I was well behind at 27. By October, I wanted to be back on pace.

Finally, the last goal was to continue to plan new adventures (new places, new food, new things). Honestly, this is one goal that moving made way easier on me—everything around me is new now!

In My Convalescing Era

To convalesce is to recover health and strength gradually after sickness or weakness (thanks, Merriam-Webster). I’ll add, “after sickness or weakness or a total life disruption.” No one is setting goalposts for my recovery from the first half of this year except me. I have, traditionally, set those goalposts too ambitiously, too, dare I say, harshly.

Merriam-Webster said gradually recover, Liz.

I’m getting closer to balance, to the new normal, every day. My mid-year reset helped me refocus my goals down into things I needed to do for me.

If you’re like me and you’re not sure how it’s already August 2024 when you were pretty sure yesterday was November 2023, I highly recommend some sort of reset exercise. There’s always plenty of time to set goals, and accomplish them. Just, you know, make those goalposts reasonable for you.

-Liz