August's Goals & Intentions

Aug 01, 2023

If you’re new here, each month I share reflections on the previous month, as well as my goals for the following month. These posts allow me to share more personal and intimate details of my life. They’re like a monthly journal or diary for me, and their aim is to keep me accountable on my journey to being debt free, but also to reflect on how I’m doing/ feeling, and what we’ve been up to as a family.

I don’t know about you, but July seemed to have flown by. I can’t believe August is here! How on Earth is there only 5 months left of the year? Have you found that time is flying by this year? If I’m completely honest though, I can’t wait for the final quarter of the year. The summer for me is a very busy time and can be quite stressful, so I am quite pleased that time is passing by quickly in that sense.

Personal Life & Health:

I turned 30 on the 22nd July, but I spent most of it in bed. If you didn’t know, I had a brief hiatus from Substack because I had mastitis thanks to breastfeeding. I’d heard of mastitis before, but had never experienced it personally. I can honestly say that it was awful. Imagine having flu with a high temperature, cold shivers and extreme exhaustion. Just not a fun way to spend turning 30.

I think I was so mad because I’ve genuinely looked forward to turning 30 for the last few months, and I was robbed of that. My husband and children brought my birthday cards, presents, breakfast and a cup of coffee up to bed for me. They all piled into bed and helped me to open them. It was actually really lovely. I then spent the rest of the day sleeping, only waking to take my antibiotics and paracetamol for my fever.

I’m feeling so much better now, and I was chatting to a few of you about having a 30th birthday do over. I’m definitely going to do that! My husband has a week off work in August so we’re planning to do something as a family to celebrate and I can’t wait!

So, that’s my plans for August, a 30th birthday 2.0, and also staying well. I absolutely do not want to be poorly again for a long time!

For my birthday I was gifted such a treat from my husband. I had a Mummy MOT. Have you heard of them before? I hadn’t, but oh my goodness it was ah-mazing!

Basically, a Mummy MOT is a head to toe postnatal assessment. I visited a local osteopath for my appointment, and she was fantastic. I wanted to stay and learn so much more from her.

The appointment lasted for an hour. We spoke about my pregnancy, labour and recovery, and any concerns I had. I’d been getting bad backache, and I thought it was due to how I was breastfeeding. When William was newborn, he didn’t weigh much and I could bring him up to my breast to feed. Now that he’s older and heavier, I find that I’m hunching my back to bring my breast to him as he’s too heavy to carry now. I also suffered badly with migraines and headaches since he was born in February, but apart from that I felt well.

My osteopath looked at my posture, my breathing (yep, I was breathing wrong!), my pelvic floor (I had a slight prolapse), my abdominal muscles, my bowel movements(!), and my diet. She gave me a detailed report and an exercise plan going forward. I’ll be honest and say I haven’t stuck to the exercise plan fully just yet, but I do plan on getting back to it regularly, so that’s definitely my main goal for August.

If you have any questions about the Mummy MOT, feel free to ask away in the comments. Here’s the Mummy MOT website if you’re interested (you can have one years after you’ve given birth, you don’t need to have a newborn), and you can also find a practitioner near you:

Mummy MOT

Work Life:

Work took a back seat while I was unwell in July. Gosh, I felt so guilty, but I couldn’t do anything about it, I had to rest. When I was starting to feel better, I was able to begin thinking about what I want to do when my maternity leave finishes in October.

If you remember, my job that I did before having William had been advertised and it sent me into a stressful panic. You can read more about that here.

I had so many ideas about what to do next whilst I was on my brief hiatus getting better, and the main thing I discovered was that I was going to stop feeling sorry for myself and do something about it.

Being a virtual assistant is a brilliant job, especially when having a young family, and means that I can work around my children quite easily. I wanted to keep doing this. I have the skills, the knowledge and the passion to help other businesses, and so I got to work getting serious about taking on new clients.

I created a new Substack -

Sophie Ingleby VA

- detailing my Virtual Assistant skills and my availability. If you’re looking for help in your business, whether that’s for a few hours, long term, or on a project by project basis, I’m ready to help you. Please head over and take a look. If you’re ready, then please reach out to me to discuss how I can help you.

If you have any questions, or you’d like to know how a virtual assistant can help in your business, feel free to ask in the comments below.

"The simple things are also the most extraordinary things, and only the wise can see them"

Sophie Ingleby and Alicia M. Rodriguez

July 30, 2023

Read full story

If you’d like to take part in the series, I’d love to interview you! Please email me at simpleandcalm@substack.com and I’ll send you all the details.

Finances:

Current debt: ?
Plan of action: Pay minimum amounts to debt in August

July has been the first month in a very long time that I haven’t tracked our income and expenses. I think I’ve been burying my head since I found out about my job loss, and then I was unwell, so I haven’t thought about money for a while. This is so unlike me, and I really need to go back over the month and update my spreadsheet.

I don’t know what my current debt is, but I do know that we haven’t added to it in July. Something that I’m quite proud of to say we both (my husband and I) had birthdays in July.

Now that all of our family birthdays have finished, the next goal is to save for Christmas. Yep, I know, I’m sorry for mentioning the C word in August, but it’s coming around quickly. Still kicking myself that I haven’t managed to build a sinking fund for Christmas this year, but we’ll work hard to save as much as we can now until November.

In the meantime though, we have quite a lot of expenses due out. The summer holidays are always expensive I find. Having the children home for 6 weeks and trying to keep them occupied is not easy. Although, we are really good at having free or low costs days out such as exploring the local woods, the play park and going for walks around the nature reserve.

There’s also school uniform and supplies to buy ready for September. I’ve managed to sell my children’s outgrown uniform on Vinted, so that may be an option to buy uniform and keep costs down at the same time.

Home Life & Possessions:

William is outgrowing his clothes so quickly at the moment. Luckily, I have a relative who is expecting a baby boy in September so she’s been making good use of William’s hand-me-downs in preparation for baby’s arrival.

I’ve managed to keep the house tidy so far during the school holidays, which has helped massively with keeping stress levels down. I find it so much easier to clean the house when everything is tidy and put away, don’t you?

Because it’s the holidays right now, I’m not putting too much pressure on myself to stay on top of the housework. There’s bound to be more toys and blanket forts, and that’s fine.

Goal for August: survive the holidays, try and stop the house from being completely destroyed.

Technology & Social Media:

I am absolutely loving being away from social media. I have maybe checked Instagram twice throughout the entirety of July, and that’s only been for 5 minutes at a time. I’m just not bothered for it anymore, and my mood has improved significantly since my blip in June, no doubt thanks to no social media.

I have used Facebook more, but only to check Marketplace. I haven’t properly used it for years, and I can’t tell you when I last updated my status or commented on a post. In fact, I have a Google Chrome Extension called News Feed Eradicator and it is amazing! It removes the newsfeed and replaces it with daily positive quotes. It’s so much better when I want to hop on to search Marketplace and not see what everyone is up to. I’d highly recommend it.

Note: I think the extension also removes Twitter feeds, but I’m not sure as I’ve never had Twitter.

Family & Relationships:

Both older children are doing so well with their swimming lessons and football, and baby William is almost ready to start weaning! We’ve bought his highchair and we’re going to start as soon as he turns six months in August. It’s been a long time since I weaned a baby, so if you’ve any tips I’d love to hear them!

We didn’t manage our beach trip for our birthdays in July, so we’re going to go in August when my husband has a week off from work. We are all so excited, and we really need a fun day away with no work/ activity club distractions.

August’s goals are to spend good quality time together as a family before the children return to school in September. And also weaning the baby, wish us luck!

And so those are my goals and intentions for August. I’m really looking forward to spending time with the children, preparing my VA business, and also enjoying sharing more episodes of the Simple & Calm Interview Series. I’m trying not to wish the summer away, even though I am really looking forward to the last quarter of the year.

How about you? What are your goals and intentions for August? Join me in the comments to chat, or tag me in your own goals and intentions posts, I’d love to read them.