October's Goals & Intentions

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.

So, on to my goals and intentions for October…

Personal Life & Health:

September came and went in an instant for me. The back to school energy was incredible, and I was more creative and proactive than I’ve been for a long time. I exercised regularly, I was eating well, my mood and energy levels were so good, and I managed to balance work and children really well.

But, like everything that has highs, there inevitably will be lows.

Baby William has been unwell with a cold the last few weeks, and this has had an impact on EVERYTHING. This along with teething has meant that he hasn’t slept well at all, meaning I haven’t slept well. I’m talking waking for hours on end during the night, and sleeping for less than an hour at a time. Sleep deprivation is just torture, and I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.

I know I’m incredibly lucky to have a perfectly healthy baby to wake me up in the night, and I know I shouldn’t be grumbling about this when others would love to be in my shoes, I understand all of this, but it is still so, SO hard to experience.

The last few days have been better, and his sleep has improved so much (still not back to how he used to be, but better than it has been). I cannot tell you the difference that having a decent (for me) amount of sleep has had on my mental health. I feel SO much better, and I’m being a better parent and wife and business owner for it.

Getting as much sleep as possible is my priority right now. This means no early alarms for me to hop out of bed and do a HIIT workout. It means I’m napping during the day when baby naps, and I’m going to bed as early as I can to try and get as many hours as possible. Exercise, the housework, other commitments are just having to be put on the back burner right now. I’ll pick them up again when I have capacity and energy.

It’s so hard to see that there’s an end to a particularly bad phase when you’re living it right there in the moment, but there is. This too shall pass, but yeah, October has been a tricky month so far.

I’ve also been looking at childcare for William. I think it would be brilliant for both of us to spend some time apart. Since he was born in February, I haven’t been away from him for longer than 1 hour, and I think it’s time. I’ve never needed childcare before with the older children, so this has been such an eye opening experience! Not a lot of places take babies, if they do they require a minimum of 2 or 3 days a week (which I can’t afford right now), or they’re fully booked up until the middle of next year. I’m unsure what I’m going to do. I think I’m going to have to wait it out until next year, but yeah, arranging childcare is not fun!

Work Life:

September was such a wonderful month for my business. I took on lots of new clients, who are all incredibly talented women. I feel so lucky to be a part of their businesses and see them spread so much joy and creativity into the world.

I’ve been working with

Laura Oldfield

who is just the most amazing person ever, and I feel so lucky to have found her. Laura is a coach, and although I work for her via my VA work, she’s been invaluable to me and my business. If you’re looking for a business coach, I cannot recommend Laura enough.

Laura has helped me shape my business and work through a few tough decisions. I now have a clear plan and I’m beyond excited to bring this plan to fruition. I’m so thankful to have her in my life right now!

In last months Goals & Intentions post I mentioned about my other resources that I was going to bring to Substack. I still have these resources, but I’m in a place of wondering if these are best suited on Substack, or if they’d fit better on a website. There’s a lot of thinking and planning to do about that, but for now I want to remind you of the Pinterest growth session that

Claire Venus

and I created. In case you missed it, you can catch it here:

And lastly, my Simple & Calm Interview Series is going from strength to strength. I’m super proud of it, and a new interview episode goes live on the 1st of every month.

If you’d like to take part in the interview series, you can reach out to me via email and I will send you more details. Please email me at: simpleandcalm@substack.com

Finances:

• Current debt: £10,193.46

• Amount paid off in September: £941.24 (!!)

• Plan of action: Pay £500 towards debt in November

I’m SO pleased to say that I had such a good month in my business that I was able to put lots more money towards my debt journey this month. I was able to completely clear the remaining debt from the washing machine finance that we had to take out last month, which feels amazing. I’ve also finished paying off another finance debt and now I only have the credit card (£921.43) and the car finance (£9272.03) left to go! I’m so pleased that the credit card is now under £1000 as that hasn’t shifted in a long time.

I’m really feeling motivated to continue paying off the debt, but I’ve been realistic and saved some money to start my emergency fund too. This way, we can prevent ourselves from getting back into debt should an unexpected expense crop up. I now have £500 in an emergency fund which just feels so reassuring. I haven’t had an emergency fund EVER so this really excites me.

Although, we really need to get our window fixed in our bedroom before the weather drops as it is so cold, especially now baby William is with us. We will have to use some of the money from the emergency fund to sort this, but this is exactly what the emergency fund is for, and a broken window definitely is an emergency.

Home Life & Possessions:

After the stress of the start of the month, I haven’t even thought about decluttering and organising the house this month. I did tidy away a few bits of paperwork and bills that were piling up in my office, but apart from that, I haven’t done a thing.

I’m being gentle with myself this month, and I just don’t have the energy or time to sort anything else out. I’ll return to this when my energy returns, but right now it’s not a priority for me. I’m in a phase of growing my business and nursing/ keeping William entertained. Those are my priorities right now.

Technology & Social Media:

I’ve been keeping a close eye on my screen time lately which has been an eye opening experience. I won’t go into too much detail here in this post as I’ve written more about it in Lesson Twenty Eight of the Simple & Calm Course here.

Ever since the Substack app update, I haven’t really enjoyed being on Substack. I don’t enjoy using the app, and it’s too much effort to get my laptop and read via the desktop, so I haven’t been doing much of that.

I’m also at the very start of planning to build a website for my VA business, as well as spending a lot of time working for my clients, so I haven’t had much time recently to spend on social media or Substack.

How are you finding Substack right now? Are you enjoying being in the app?

Family & Relationships:

Weaning William is going so well. He’s now on 3 meals a day and growing so much. I’m really hoping that his cold doesn’t last much longer and he can get back to his usual happy self soon.

Harriet has been chosen for the school football team, much to Charlie’s annoyance. Charlie is obsessed with football, but Harriet is really getting into it now too. Harriet is also doing so amazing with her swimming lessons, and is so close to moving onto Stage 6!

Charlie has had a fantastic start to the football season, and his team (under 9’s) are so far unbeaten! Charlie has scored lots of goals so far, and even scored a goal during a friendly match against Leeds United under 9’s! He’s doing well in his swimming too, but he doesn’t enjoy it as much as his football.

I’m just so proud of the older two children. They’re such wonderful kids, and they’re both so helpful with William. They just adore him, even though Charlie has told all of his friends that William has kept him up all night recently!

My husband is having an extremely busy time at work lately, and this is causing lots of stress for him. We’ve been talking about how we can reduce his stress, but there’s nothing I can help him with on the job front. However, we’ve both made a promise to spend our weekends doing more of the things that bring us joy. So, we’re going to start having movie nights again, and spending our Sundays exploring nature (Saturdays are taken up with football and swimming currently) - starting this weekend!

And so those are my goals and intentions for October.

I’m really looking forward to sleeping more (hopefully), William getting better, paying off more of our debt as well as saving more to our emergency fund (I feel so good writing that!), growing my business (so excited for this!!) and most importantly, spending time together as a family.

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

Until next month,
Sophie