My Year of 30-day Challenges

 I finally got through all the Black History Month topics on the Discover Our Glory page.  I learned a lot - about events, people, and movements I was either fully unaware of or had heard about in passing, but definitely didn't know as much as about as I should have.  I'm really glad I did this and hope to review it each year and add more to the list and to my knowledge.   Black History Month

 For the month of February, my challenge was to learn some piece of Black History each day. I was not good about it. Turns out adding something like that to your day is very easy to procrastinate on. 😕 I’m not proud of it it and I am catching up. I have a few more topics to search up and learn about but I am determined to finish up. This is important to me and I want to keep to my challenge that made to myself. Must try better with my other challenges!!

Three days left. I wasn’t really sure how I’d feel after this month. Would it be totally eye opening?  Not such a big deal?  What kind of things would I notice?  Would I miss it?   I think it was eye opening. I realized what a crutch my phone and social media had become. It was my default. I couldn’t focus on work or watching tv or anything without also checking my phone. On breaks, during commercials, etc. I find after this month, I’m less inclined to pick up my phone while watching tv. I definitely don’t need it open during work. I’m much more focused although I did spend a bit more time on a message board I frequent just for some connection to people but that board is so so much better than Facebook.  I said before but I really do feel like I am sleeping better at night so I’m definitely going to continue not using my phone before bed. I’m going to continue not having Facebook open during work. I think I will limit my time on Facebook to 15 or 30 min a day. I am not sure what to do

 I can't believe it's almost the end of the month.  This has definitely been a good break for me.  It's gotten to the point where I don't really think about it (meaning Facebook) -which I was in the beginning, more than I was happy with.  Now I'll think about it when I'm sitting watching tv or when I don't have much to do - just like, I want to do some mindless scrolling.  I'll get that urge to check it and I normally would have, but now instead, I'll check the news, or just put my phone down and really watch tv without any other distraction.  I feel like not looking at it right before bed has been really good for me.  I feel like I've slept better, but man I've also been having crazy dreams!  Maybe I'm having more deep sleep?  I have no idea what that means.  Overall, I think I'll go back to Facebook, but maybe unfollow some people to keep it limited.  I'll continue to not look at it at night and also at work.  It was a huge dist

 So something that I've noticed is that I'm now more inclined to read the news and actually read the articles - all the way through!  Before, I would visit a news website and browse the article titles, but not really click on anything and even if I did, I'd read maybe a quarter of the article and then click out of it.  My attention span for reading articles was nil.  But now that I'm not getting splotches of news from Facebook, which sadly was what was happening more often than not, I'm finding I'm actually reading articles to get my information.  Gasp.  How crazy, right?!  Sigh.  Just another signal to me that taking a break was the right thing to do and hoping I pick up some better habits out it.  

I'm seven days in and noticing some things.  I'm definitely still thinking about what I might be missing out on on Facebook, but more like info that is shared on my local neighborhood groups or from local friends.  I definitely think I might cull down on some of the people I follow that I don't know, and instead just focus on people I do know.  I do kind of like that I'm getting used to not multi-tasking all the time - checking Facebook while working, or while watching tv.  I feel like I'm more focused on tasks (maybe just a little bit at least).  I still find myself checking personal email or DCNR or the news while working, but I am going to try and do that less and less as well.  Maybe focus on getting one task done before I do that, or focus for an hour and then take a break.  That's a whole other hurdle though.   I do find that I'm reaching out to people via text more.  I texted a funny article to a group of friends instead of sharing it on Facebook, and