Happy August!

Well, July is done. At the beginning of the month, I told you about my mind and body challenge. August is a new month, so I'll focus on the positives and where I want to go from here.

1. Exercise: In July, I did 44 miles on the elliptical. That's more than any month except January, when I managed 53. Seven and a half months into my fitness journey, and that's something worth celebrating. It's also worth noting the pitiful 2 miles I put in during the entire month of June helped kick start the fitness part of this challenge. Every day I worked out, I did 3 (or more) miles. I'm proud of that. Here's what I'm not proud of: I haven't been to the gym since July 16th. 
2. Reading: I have my reading mojo back. I read fourteen (!) books. And I have less than an hour left in my audiobook, so if we didn't have houseguests, I would have finished fifteen books. Did I read for an hour each day without looking at my phone? Not after the first week. It turns out that's easier to do when I'm home alone. But I read for more than an hour most days. I re-prioritized reading in ways that feel sustainable. 
3. Drinking: The first half of July I did really well at what I thought might be the hardest of the these three challenges. So I'm excited about the progress I made, even if I fell into summer habits the second half of the month. 

It turns out July was a hard month. On July 13th, my grandmother died. It was expected and in many ways a blessing. She would have turned 97 this fall, and that's a lot of life. And yet emotions are unpredictable, and her death hit me in ways I wasn't expecting. More than once, my response to deciding to go to the gym or not have a second glass of wine was "fuck it, enjoy yourself!" And I did, and I'm okay with that. I worked out more, I read more, and I drank less. Those are three things worth celebrating, even if I didn't meet my challenge.

Here are my goals for August:

1. Exercise: I want to do 60 miles. Realistically, that means 20 trips to the gym, with 3 miles each trip. I think that's doable. And it will be the most miles I've done since I started working out in mid-December.
2. Reading: I want to read every day. I hope to read at least 10 books, but I have two chunksters I hope to read (Ducks, Newburyport and The Most Fun We Ever Had), so I don't want to focus on number of books. And for many good reasons, some days I read more than others, so I don't want to standardize my different types of days.
3. Blogging: I want to write 10 posts.

Fingers crossed for August and my 60-10*-10 challenge!

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