Life Assessment

Life Area	Important	Satisfied
Job or occupation	10	3
Finances	10	3
Friends	7	7
Leisure	4	8
Partner or relationship	10	1
Health	9	6
Exercise	8	3
Living conditions	8	2
Feeling relaxed	9	4
Feeling in control	10	2
Another life area: N/A	0	0

Life assessment reflection

I was in a car accident on 1 November 2024. This has affected all areas of my life, and I have had to not take on any new clients in my backup job as a domestic cleaner. I am not sad about not being able to take on new cleaning clients, but I am sad that it has finally set me back about two years. 

In the early stages of recovery, I was inspired to start with my Crafty Monkey Creations product range of candles and reed diffusers. You can check them out at cmchgd.com; you can buy them if you live in NZ. This has made me realise that I must change how I do things. I need to sell only the products I already have in stock, not those I INTEND to sell. I do better if I pre-make the product and then sell it. There is too much pressure for me to pre-sell something and meet the demand. 

Part of this is that I have a short attention span. I am creative and like to make something once or twice but then get bored or another project catches my eye. 

I cycle through projects, which means making products in bulk to sell via the website or creating products that are set and forgotten. I also need to batch-write blog posts so you get one new post from me daily.

Finances: My finances have taken a hit due to the accident. I have not been able to work at all for a couple of weeks and have been working reduced hours since December. All of my savings have been used, and I have unfortunately had to go back full-time on the benefit. 

Solution for finances: I need to bring home a Gross wage of $700, which will give me an in-hand amount of $547.49. This doesn’t improve my financial situation, but it gives me independence.

Job or occupation: As mentioned above, I am returning to Domestic Support part-time. I have started a home and body product range via Crafty Monkey Creations, but this is a slow build. 

For my passion project, Holistic Goal Detectives LTD, I have started to write a book, Create Your Dream Plan Action Life – Take Your Dreams and Make Them a Reality. I realised I was forcing myself to make a course, and it just wasn’t feeling right for me at this time. Thus, I have gone back to basics and focusing on my writing. And I am committed to writing one blog post a day. Once I get back in the habit of writing daily, I will turn some of my posts into an audio podcast. I just (last night) found out that my web host has a section for setting up a podcast, so look out for that very soon. At this stage, my planners are the final part of Holistic Goal Detectives LTD. I started with The Quarterly Planner, which I updated for personal use. Next will be The Future Plan, which is still in development. I will also make the individual components available for purchase so that you can pick and choose the inserts you want to make the perfect planner for your needs.

The first financial goal for the Holistic Goal Detectives LTD group is $850 per week or $3700 per month.

Friends: I am happy with my interaction with my friend group. It would be nice to have a business friend to bounce ideas off, but that would require me to go to a networking event, so I am not interested in doing it at this stage.

Leisure: While recovering, I have had plenty of downtime. I am happy with the books I am reading and the streaming services I have. OHHHHH and I have started gardening. Rather than failing again at in-ground gardening, I have been trying container gardening and have had some success. It is very addicting, though, but in the long run, it will help with my health because I will eat more fresh fruit and vegetables than snacking on junk food.

Once I have some extra money 

• I would like to start going to the beach more often to walk the girls (dogs). The cost of extra petrol means I can only occasionally go to the beach at the moment, which is about a thirty-minute drive from home. It is a good way for me to de-stress and find peace.
• I want to get a day back and hiking boots and start going on day hikes again. Furthermore, I would like to get a multi-day pack and relevant tools and equipment for several days of hiking. I would like to do more of the Te Aroha track and other Great Walks of New Zealand. It is an amazing way to see the country I live in. 
• To accompany the multi-day hikes, I would like to get a food dehydrator and dehydrate some of the fruit and vegetables that I grow on the land. I would also like to dehydrate my own meals for when I am hiking.
• Once my fitness is better than what it is now, I would like to get a kayak.

Partner or relationship: I am still single; I have been working on myself. As much as I would like a partner, I need to get my financial situation sorted first. By that, I mean I need to get to my minimum wage first. That way, I can feel like I am an equal partner, not a lesser partner in the relationship. I don’t know; this is just how I feel. I miss having a best friend who is a companion, but he needs to be the right person. And if I see a red flag, I need to learn that means stop, not jump in anyway.

Health: Alright, let’s get into it; having to write this section out has held me up writing this post. But here goes. On 1 November 2024, I was driving to Auckland from Whangarei (about 2.5 to 3 hours to get to my aunt’s place from my home). I was driving at the speed limit of just under a few days before I had been given a speeding ticket. I was going straight on the highway, and as I came to the intersection at the Ruakaka turnoff, a car pulled out in front of me. I tried breaking, to no avail. After impact, I tried to get as far off the road as possible.

The impact was on the passenger side bonnet and door. Thankfully, Fluffy, my small white dog, was in her car seat, and I think that cushioned her impact, and she was unhurt. The airbag punched me in the face, but thankfully, I didn’t get bruises on my face. I also suffered from a whiplash from the seat belt and the impact. My injuries were cracked ribs and bent bone in my neck, and I injured my back in new places. I am so very thankful that my injuries were not any more serious. Oh, I did have an MRI after I was ambulance to the hospital. I think it is an MRI, the one where you have to remove all of your jewellery, and you are put horizontally into the machine that takes images of your insides.

Today as I write this, it is Friday, 4 April 2025; my ongoing injuries are my ribs still hurt from time to time, only a mild niggle. My back is excruciating; sometimes, walking is very painful.

I have this week made an appointment with the doctor to see if I can get a pain management plan in place. Because I need some help.

Also, I went from 73kgs to 82kgs.

Exercise: Yeah, exercise. Hmm. My chosen form of exercise is walking. But for a while there, I couldn’t even do that. It was a struggle to walk maybe 50 steps of where my driveway meets the shared driveway. Since “getting better”, I have done a few walks but haven’t done as much as I should. For free exercise, I can walk along the road. There are two problems: I hate walking along the rural road, and my shared driveway is long and narrow. Okay, three points; the third is if my land was shaven, I mean weedeated, then I could do laps on my property. Sadly, it is overgrown with brambles, and I cannot use my weedeater.

Living conditions: Around the time of my accident, I was getting some work done on the lifestyle property: 

• I got my tiny house turned around, and wastewater/septic sinkhole holes were dug
• a flushing toilet was installed and upgraded from a camp toilet
• 10,000-liter water upgraded from 1,000 litres
• To help with all of this, I got some groundwork done.

What’sWhat’s next:

• A proper house water pump
• A vegetable garden that provides 80% of my vegetables from now on
• I need a shed for my laundry to get a proper automatic washing machine with enough space to dry the laundry in winter. And space to operate Crafty Monkey Creations until I can get a building made for my office/crafts/Crafty Monke Creations
• Then, a bedroom pod for when my youngest visits on the weekend.

Feeling relaxed: I am a little tense right now because of everything that is going on. I will feel better once I reach my minimum financial goal.

Feeling in control: For the most part, I am in control of my life. I can’t control when people buy from me, but I can do some marketing and advertising to increase awareness, which will organically increase sales.

Another life area: nothing else at this stage