Now that June is almost upon us, it’s time to debrief my spring bucket list and see what I was able to accomplish.
As a reminder, here are some of the things I was hoping to do (and what I was able to check off my list) from March to May:
- Visited the newly renovated downtown library. The Denver Public Library downtown location recently went through a lengthy renovation and I hadn’t had a chance to visit since it re-opened. The location is within walking distance of my office, so I took a quick walk over a lunch hour to visit and it was super fun to see the updated renovations.
- Ate more greens. Spring is the perfect time to dive into more salad making. During the spring season, I prepped salads as my lunches each day at work and it was a great way to get more greens into my diet.
- Closed out this academic year. For me, this academic year has felt like two years instead of one. We had a lot of change at our institution, including several leadership transitions. It was a relief to close down the academic year and to transition into the summer months where my schedule slows down a bit.
- Made more protein ice cream (and experiment with other recipes). I recently purchased a Ninja Creami and it’s been really enjoyable to make tofu-based protein ice cream. I can definitely see how I’ll continue this experimentation into the summer months!
- Added at least three brand new releases to my TBR pile. I often read a lot of backlist fiction and nonfiction that is not published super recently. This spring season, I read some new releases including Heartwood, You Killed Me First, and Tilt.
- Turned in our edited collection manuscript. My co-editors and I had a May 1 deadline for our edited collection on coaching in higher education. While it’s been a bit of a lift for all of us to fit this project into our busy schedules, it felt really satisfying to submit it to our publisher and move on to the next stage of the publication process.
And now that I’ve wrapped up my spring bucket list, it’s the perfect time to put together a new list of must-do items for the upcoming months of June through August.
Here are some of the things I’m looking forward to:
- Transition the new leader into my current interim role. After 18 months in an interim leadership role, we have (finally) hired the person who will take on that role permanently. I’m looking forward to onboarding them and welcoming them to our leadership team.
- Launch a series of working groups at my job. Our new chancellor has announced some working groups for this summer and I have been working with an operational team on getting them prepped for launch. It will be exciting to see what they can accomplish in the coming months.
- Get back to 10k steps a day. For about six weeks, I have been recovering from a tendon injury in one of my hips. It’s required me to do regular PT and I’ve had to decrease my walking (and do no running) and shift to cycling workouts. I can walk about 5-6k steps without pain, and I hope to increase back to my 10k+ daily step distance over the summer.
- Fit in some hammock time reading. Now that the weather is getting warmer, I’m ready to get back to some hammock reading. I’d also like to read more physical books this summer since I’ve gotten into the habit of reading mostly audiobooks and ebooks.
- Wrap up book publication tasks. Now that the edited collection has been turned in, we’ll have more book publication tasks like working through the proofs, finalizing the index, etc. I’ll be working with my co-editors to complete these tasks in the coming months.
- Complete my restful July ritual. For several years now, I have taken July off of content creation for my blog and podcast so that I can focus on a creative project or do some planning for new components of my business. While I plan to keep up my workflow videos all summer, I’m looking forward to logging some time on a new product I’m building in the month of July.
What’s on your bucket list for the upcoming season?
