photo credit: @markusspiske via Unsplash
I haven’t shared any demerits or gold stars in quite a while (as you know, I shamelessly stole this great post idea from my friend Elisabeth, but with proper credit!), but maybe it’s time to take stock again because it’s always smart to look at what is and what isn’t working.
Demerits:
- Complaining. I feel like I am complaining a lot lately (and I am usually not a complainy kind of person). It’s just that so many little things have been piled on other little things until it all becomes this HUGE ball of annoyance and innconvenience. Jon thinks I am also on edge, partially due to the fact that we also won’t be traveling for Christmas (which I admit, could be true). Sigh. I am really working on my attitude.
- Estate Planning. We’re still dealing with my MIL’s estate. Well, my BIL is the executor of her trust and the whole process is very frustrating and I am trying not to get stressed out by it. It is a good reminder that we have to finish setting up our own trust/will. I have started to look into it multiple times, but then never followed through. We need to get on it.
- Screen time is a challenge right now. I am using my phone for distraction and you know what it is? Distracting me from more important things. Why oh why is it so easy to waste time on your phone? Don’t get me wrong, I also use my phone for a lot of productive things, but it’s too easy to also open an app and get lost for
a couple of hourstoo much precious time.
Gold Stars:
- New (old) habits. I’ve been getting up at 5 am every day since my return to work to exercise in the morning and make it to the office at a reasonable time (7:30). I definitely miss my home office. It gave me so much more flexibility. But I used to be good at getting up pre-pandemic, when I headed to the gym at 5 a.m. every morning, so why shouldn’t I be able to do that again?
- Plank Challenge. If you skipped my “Weekly Run Down” posts (I wouldn’t blame you), I am doing a plank challenge this month (30 days of Thanks & Planks) with the goal to hold a plank for 3 min at the end of November. I haven’t missed a day yet and we’re up to 2:15 minutes.
- Patience. I am giving myself a gold star for increasingly staying calm (mostly) while dealing with some very passive-aggressive behavior from a person that I cannot avoid interacting with. It’s challenging for me, but I am trying not to let myself get stressed out by it.
- Baking. I keep “f**king” up with my bread baking recently (using the wrong flour for the levain, overproofing my dough), but still get rewarded with beautiful loaves. I mean, at this point, I don’t even know if I want to stick to my recipe anymore. Haha.
- Excel wizardry. I created a Leave Tracker template in Excel for work to keep track of my leave hours. We used to have a “leave account” to charge our vacation/sick/holiday time, but they’ve taken that away and now we have to charge leave hours directly to our projects accounts. It might not sound like a big deal, but leave hours are proportionate to the budgeted hours for each project that we work on each fiscal year, and we usually are not fully funded at the beginning of the year, so the hours in each account might change throughout the year. It’s not a problem, if you have enough funding or get additional work hours on a specific project, but it becomes kind of tricky when budgeted hours are shuffled around, or worse, might be taken away. I am bracing myself for some chaos in the next few months until our admins get a better handle on this, but hopefully this automated spreadsheet will help me keep my own head on straight in the process.
Any demerits or gold star moments you’d like to share?
I am doing NaBloPoMo this month. 30 blog posts in 30 days. Come join me. #nablopomo2025 Happy writing!
Birchie
November 26, 2025 at 1:29 pmBravo for the gold stars! On the demerit side, speaking from experience, you will feel so good when you get your will set up, so that’s my vote of where to focus your energy.
Tierney
November 26, 2025 at 2:24 pmI want to start my 5 am workout routine again- it would be so convenient. But I am going to bed about an hour too late usually due to…my phone! This may need some New Year energy to get off the ground but I am committed (just not right now!).
Michelle G.
November 26, 2025 at 4:02 pmYou are 100% justified in any complaints you may have. Not a demerit in my book. You’ve been through the wringer this year. Your gold stars are amazing! I can’t imagine being able to do a plank for one second, so I’m very impressed with your time! I’m sending you a second gold star!
Martha
November 26, 2025 at 6:13 pmNo demerits, you’ve been going through a lot lately, give yourself a break! You deserve every gold star, and another one for not only hosting but being a very gracious host for NaBloPoMo. Thank you!
Allison McCaskill
November 26, 2025 at 6:24 pmWow, if you can mess up at baking and still produce good bread that is quite an accomplishment. I always think of cooking as more of an art and baking as more of a science (I am better at cooking lol).
I think venting can be good, but I know what you mean about getting stuck in it. I’m finding NaBloPoMo useful this month because many nights I sit down and almost start to write “I’m tired and achy and I don’t really feel like doing this”, and then I chuck that in the bin and start fresh and usually end up cheering myself up.
A demerit for me for skipping over the Excel paragraph. I can’t do it. I can’t. Spreadsheets make my head hurt.
J
November 26, 2025 at 7:46 pmThe excel paragraph made zero sense to me, though I tried. Ack! I use a spreadsheet to track my PTO, but yours sounds a lot more complicated.
I’m impressed by your bread skills.
Plank challenge…good job! I think about that sometimes, but can’t get much past 30 – 40 seconds. Maybe my starting goal is too much?
Estate planning. Bah. We have a will, but need to set up a trust, and that is more complicated and we have not gotten around to it. This is supposed to be something we get done by YE 2025. Time is running out. My cousin’s step mom recently died, and AGH, probate is a pain in the ass. (Note – you may not need a trust, California recently passed a law that means your estate has to be more than $750k or so, and I don’t think they include retirement funds or life insurance, but we need to discuss with a lawyer to be sure I am understanding that correctly.)
Melissa
November 26, 2025 at 9:59 pmGetting up at 5 am every morning sounds like hell, to be honest so I think that deserves about 100 gold stars. The plank challenge is amazing too! I think my best is about 1 minute.
coco
November 27, 2025 at 1:44 amYou went through a lot in recent months so complaining is way to process emotions. hopefully those days are gone.
kudos for baking bread! It’s quite rewarding.
Lisa’s Yarns
November 27, 2025 at 3:58 amWow that is a complicated approach to leave! Yikes! I hope it all works out but it sounds terrible. I have unlimited PTO but need to work on taking more of it next year.
My gold star is, at the prompting of therapist, asking my parents to ask my siblings that we not discuss politics at Thanksgiving. We had a crappy situation last year and I cannot repeat that this year, especially since my nervous system is totally shot from PTSD. I hope everyone behaves. I also give myself a gold star for making leaf-shaped GF sugar cookies for the boys to decorate with their cousins today as a sort of birthday activity to celebrate Taco’s 5th bday. It was a PITA to make them because GF dough is terribly sticky. I may have been swearing under my breath during the process. But they are done and I can check ‘experiment with GF sugar cookies’ off my 25 in 25 list.
Demerit is continuing to eat the boys’ Halloween candy. I can’t wait for it to be gone. I’ve also ordered more take out than usual, typically for lunches when I WFH. But we still have $900+ of grub hub gift cards from my accident so it’s not costing me anything fortunately.
Nicole MacPherson
November 27, 2025 at 4:50 amI feel like you have a right to complain, with the year you’ve had. Big hugs, friend.
Yay for early mornings! Maybe we’ll “see” each other on the Peloton!
Planks are so good for the core, I used to teach them to my ladies and tell them bad jokes to pass the time.
Noemi
November 27, 2025 at 9:12 amDitto what Melissa said about 5am wake ups! All the gold stars! And if complaining, and excessive phone use, are your biggest Demerits, after the year you’ve had, well then that seems like it should be another gold star.
Jenny
November 27, 2025 at 5:19 pmWho knew bread baking was so random? Seems like you’d have to stick to the rules, but apparently not! Nice job on the planks. I remember vaguely thinking I was going to do them along with you, but then I forgot all about it… oops.
I agree with some other commenters that you had plenty of reasons to complain this year- but in the end it just doesn’t make you feel good. Now that you’ve identified it as a demerit, maybe you can turn it around. That’s why we give ourselves demerits, right?
I hope you had a nice Thanksgiving!
Tobia | craftaliciousme
November 28, 2025 at 10:30 pmWhy oh why is it so easy to waste time on your phone? -> Amen sister. Can someone take a way mine please. So many times I pick it up to do something and the put it back 30 minutes later just to realize I never did the thing I intended to. Sigh.
All the gold starts to you. Getting up at five? Programming that excel things sounds like hard work but with great results. Also very impressed with that plank challenge. I have been sick again and been slacking in my exercise department a bit. Now I don’t feel like moving and just want to cozy up.
Stephany
November 30, 2025 at 6:26 pmMy mom was the executor of my grandfather’s estate and he had NOTHING prepared, so it was a big mess (especially with EIGHT PEOPLE on the will). She made sure to get everything figured out on her end once she dealt with that since she didn’t want my brother or me to go through what she did!
I just reorganized my phone to remove apps that allowed me to waste SO MUCH TIME from the home screen. My goal is to open my Kindle app whenever I feel the pull to be on my phone, so I’m at least making my screen time productive!