We hit a bit of a rough patch not too far into the year. Do you know how Melissa’s family visited earlier? Well, Melissa got a nasty stomach bug at the end of their visit. I took care of her for the worst part of her bug, but guess who else got it! If you guessed me, you get a gold star ⭐️. (The rest of Melissa’s family also got the same bug, so if that was your guess, you can also have a gold star ⭐️).

I got the chills around noon on Friday. Just an hour later my temperature was 99 degrees. Trying to sleep that night was rough. Both ends were flowing and my fever hit 101.6 in the middle of the night. I didn’t eat anything by jello and ice chips all weekend. During this time, Melissa was still recovering. She was trying to get back her strength from not eating for multiple days. We were a mess. I’m just glad that our onset was staggered enough that we weren’t both throwing up at the same time. But the situation was less than ideal.

Being sick threw a wrench in some of my intentions for the new year. I haven’t been able to stay on top of these posts as I had hoped, and I spent close to a week laying on the couch doing my best to stay alive. The only thing I have been able to stay on top of, if not way ahead, is my reading goal. At this point, I have finished eight books. My Good Reads 2022 reading challenge goal says I am “five books ahead of schedule.” I am not sure if this is just a product of reading a lot while driving places with Melissa’s family, or when I was sick. I don’t know if I will continue to go at this speed for the rest of the year. However, I am looking forward to seeing what my reading looks like at the end of the year.

It is hard not to feel discouraged, being a month into the new year already, and not having made much progress on my personal goals. But two things are keeping me going: 1. There has been a reason for these intentions to fall by the wayside; 2. Missing a couple of days at the beginning of the year does not mean the rest of the year is destroyed. Guilt will do nothing to get me back on track. I hope if you have had a rough patch to start the year, this encourages you to keep going. We are not perfect, and that is okay.

A couple of days after we were feeling better, we reset the house. It brought back a sense of normal and control back into my life. This gave me the motivation to work on my goals. I built some new systems to help make these intentions easier to maintain in everyday life.

This year started with a little rough patch, but I am back on track.