# Scarabaea's beeminder journal **URL:** \ **Category:** Life\ **Created:** [September 1, 2024, 11:43am UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/scarabaeas-beeminder-journal/11894 "2024-09-01T11:43:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 96
**Author:** ![scarabaea](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forum.beeminder.com/scarabaea/32/5475_2.png) [@scarabaea](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/scarabaea)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2025, 6:25pm UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/scarabaeas-beeminder-journal/11894/96 "2025-12-31T18:25:27Z")
This was the first year that I decided to participate in the monthly resolutions challenge. That was a fun way to try out some things for just a month. Of the 12 monthly goals, there were a few designed to last for a month or several - for a specific deadline; some were things I could do indefinitely but ended up deciding I don’t need to, and 5 were something I have kept for the remainder of the year. Specifically: **January** ⏩ submitting checklists to eBird, to discourage long pauses when I am not on exciting trips — did for the entire year, was fun and not too overwhelming (250 checklists in total!); still deciding if I want to continue next year **February** ✅ 7 daily portions of fresh fruit and vegetables — saw I can do this easily and probably do on most days by myself, so discontinued to avoid the burden of logging. Similarly, in **November** ✅/❌ I tracked the amount of consumed protein — while this worked on practice, I stopped early to avoid the overwhelm of logging during trips. **March** ⏩ whittle down for total pages on my (purchased, ARCs and library copies) TBR, with exponential increase of weight as a book “ages” — kept a version of this for the entire year, will continue; this was pretty effective for restricting my uncontrollable book acquisition and for encouraging tackling the older ones. In **June** ⏩ I added a do-more for pages read pulled from storygraph, to have an idea of having done something when the previous progress is instantly negated by the new additions; also a keeper. **April** ❌ **May** ✅ **July** ✅ were all versions of goals focused on writing drafts of certain deliverables for my postdoc project — those based on pomodoros, with a list of caveats for what counts, ended up the most effective; will repeat as needed **August** ⏩ regular checks if anything in (non-primary, university assigned) email needs attention — worked well to reduce the anxiety that I might have missed something; will use the strategy again in the future **September** ✅ do-less on requesting new ARCs — worked for the month, the effect didn’t stick **October** ⏩ the trial run for what will be my next yearly challenge, reading books from countries I haven’t previously read anything from — I like how this has been going, I am discovering so many interesting things, definitely will do the entire challenge now **December** ✅ drafted posts for year-summaries on birding and reading — generally, worked, but I assumed I will have three shorter summaries, while I ended up writing two longer ones, never getting to any summary for my beeminding for this thread. --- _[View the full topic](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/scarabaeas-beeminder-journal/11894)._