sticker charts

Motivation has been troubling me for a while now. Not so much in the arena of things I have to do for other people (errands, grocery shopping, classes for Charles, etc.), since there's external accountability where those are involved, and not really in the arena of downtime ... although my downtime pursuits have become a lot more escapist and less intellectual. Mostly, the lack of motivation has appeared in the area of things I need to do for myself that aren't necessarily pure fun. Running; diet; some of my heavier reading; writing. (Including, as you've noticed, this blog.)

Tis the holiday season now, and I'm noticing Advent calendars everywhere (I promise, Your Honor, I'll connect this up!). They're in the grocery stores, the catalogs, heck, I even got one in the mail. Last year at this time, there were none to be found anywhere that I looked, and I had really wanted to do a countdown to Christmas for Greyson. So, lacking an Advent calendar, I made my own. And every day of the Christmas season, the boys picked out stickers, put them in the space for that day, and we counted down to Christmas. After the holidays, both the boys enjoyed putting the stickers on so much that they asked to have another calendar. And I got the bright idea that they would earn their stickers by taking good naps every day. Why is this related to my motivation issue? Because in the last couple of weeks the Advent calendars I've been seeing have reminded me of this and made me really start thinking about how the sticker charts have kept my kids napping. I really believe that without them, we'd have lost the naps sometime last summer ... and I would have truly lost my mind. It's noticeable that whenever we slack off on the stickers—get a week or more behind—the naps get much more erratic.

So I thought, since I was looking for motivation, a sticker reward chart might work for me, too! So I get a small sticker for running every day, working out on the weight machine and/or doing a lot of sit-ups, blogging, and drinking 64 oz. of liquid a day. (I know, it's supposed to be water. But drinking 64 oz. of anything in a day is hard enough for me.) And at the end of a month, if I get enough stickers, I earn a dinner out or a new book or something, depending on how many I have—just like my boys.