Stephany Writes

Categories: Goals

Monthly Goals | May 2025

I miss setting monthly goals on my blog. While I’ve still been setting them privately—usually pulling a few from my quarterly goals (which I did share on the blog) and writing them in my planner—it’s just not the same. There’s something about sharing monthly goals that feeds my soul. I know why: I’m an Obliger, which means I thrive on outer accountability. Sharing my goals publicly gives me that extra motivation to follow through. So, monthly goals are back and I couldn’t be happier about it!

I’ve separated these goals into three sections: Intentional Action (these are goal that relate to my bigger annual goals; small progress to make toward those bigger goals), Healthy Routines (small actions I can take on a daily or weekly basis that will help to further improve my bloodwork numbers), and Nagging Tasks (small, one-and-done tasks to accomplish during the month).

Let’s get into it!

Intentional Action

  • Itemize everything in my bedroom – I have made progress on itemizing the things in my bedroom, but I still have a ways to go. I need to figure out how detailed I need to be here. Do I need to list every single piece of jewelry, or just have a ballpark figure? I’m also realizing this is a list I’ll have to audit on a regular basis as new items come into my home and older items leave. Hrmph.
  • Change 5 email addresses – This shouldn’t be a hard thing to do and yet, I keep putting it off. In May, I’d like to change the email addresses for some household accounts: electric, car loan, bank, phone, and gym.
  • Read Stamped From the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi – This will be my 500-page book for Q2! I bought a copy of the book a few years ago and the length has intimidated me too much to start it.
  • Watch Dirty Dancing – One of my goals is to watch four movies that were released during the first four years of my life, and I am already behind on this goal. In May, I want to watch Dirty Dancing so I can catch up.

Healthy Routines

  • Eat fruit with breakfast and a veggie snack, Monday – Friday – Some of you guys are great at eating lots of fruits and vegetables, but even trying to get my five servings is a struggle. I made a goal to get five servings every day in my Q2 goal post, but I was failing miserably so I need to make this goal easier. While I’m pretty good at having a serving of veggies with dinner and typically at least one serving of fruit as a snack, there is a lot of room for growth. So, my new goal is this: I must have a serving of fruit with breakfast and I must make sure I have one veggie snack during the day (I am fruits > veggies, but I need to get better about eating my veggies!)
  • Five workouts at the gym per week – I have a solid four day per week routine at the gym (Tuesday morning spin, Wednesday evening HIIT, Friday morning HIIT, and then a cardio/weights day on the weekend), but I’d like to add one more day of spin or HIIT to ramp things up.
  • Eat a salad twice per week – More veggies! Salads are a diet trigger for me, as I ate a ton of them when I was younger and dieting unhealthily. So every time I make one, I immediately go back to that era of my life. But I want to reframe salads as something good and nourishing for my body.

Nagging Tasks

  • Reorganize the kitchen cabinet with my pots/pans/lids – I bought a lid organizer to hopefully help me reorganize this cabinet so it’s not such a chaotic mess. Just need to get in there and do the damn thing.
  • Reorganize my linen closet – I’ve been lax on keeping this closet neat and tidy. It’s time to pull everything out and reorganize the space, so I don’t feel like everything is going to collapse on me every time I open the closet door.
  • Do a Goodwill drop – There are things in the linen closet that need to be donated and I also have a pretty full bag of items ready to go to Goodwill. So putting this goal on my list assures me that I’ll put in the effort to get it done.

Do you have any goals for May?

Categories: Goals

2025 Goals | Q1 Review

It’s time to check in on my 2025 goals. How are things going? Let’s review!

HOME

1) Itemize everything in my home. No progress made. (I did make a video of my bedroom, but that is all.)

2) Buy a new area rug, coffee table, bookshelf, and throw pillows. I bought a new area rug in Q1 so I’m on track!

3) Move to a two-bedroom apartment. No progress made. My lease is up November 1st so this will be a Q4 goal.

4) Stick to a weekly cleaning routine. Somewhat complete. I’m working on it! I usually tick through the most pressing things on my cleaning list, but I’ve only had a few weeks where I get everything done.

5) TBD – still not sure on this goal; will probably be related to my move

ADULTING

1) Change my primary email address. I figured out what my primary email address will be, but I have not changed over any of my accounts yet.

2) Spend 50% less in online takeout from 2024. My goal is to spend less than $100 a month in online takeout. So far, it’s been a struggle:

  • January: $78.38 ✅
  • February: $205.51 ❌
  • March: $173.07 ❌

3) Pay off my LASIK bill. Complete! This was only possible because I got a bonus this year.

4) Save $3,000 in my emergency savings. No progress made. What I need to do is set up an autodraft to my emergency savings account instead of acting like I can make this happen on my own.

5) TBD Complete the “I’m Dead. Now What?” book. I bought this book last year, filled in two sections, and then stopped. It’s not a fun thing to complete, but it is a necessary thing so I’m re-commiting to filling out this book.

HEALTH

1) Improve my posture. No progress made.

2) Lose 20 lbs. I’m down 4 lbs from the beginning of the year so I’m feeling good about where I’m at right now.

3) Move my body every day. Ooh, no. I’m meeting my gym goal (4-5 workouts a week), but I am not going for walks on my non-gym days, which I need to work into my schedule.

4) Work on my daily routines. I feel like I am doing a lot better with my routines, specifically my morning routine. Setting up the Downtime feature on my phone helps with this a lot because I know there’s nothing exciting to do on my phone! I still need to work on my evening routine. It takes me so long and that’s because I take breaks.

5) TBD Be able to do a sit-up without help. We do sit-ups all the time in HIIT class and I just cannot do one on my own (i.e., without someone holding my feet). Everyone else does them just fine, but I have zero core strength to do one myself. It’s something I’m working on in HIIT class and might as well put it on my 2025 goals list.

HOBBIES

1) Read one 500+ page book every quarter. (1/4) In quarter one, I read The Shell Seekers by Rosamunde Pilcher (★★★☆☆).

2) Go to at least 6 Silent Book Club meetings. (0/6) My social anxiety is really wreaking havoc with this goal.

3) Read 125 books. (27/125) I am a few books behind on this goal, but hopefully my reading retreat in Q2 will allow me to catch up!

4) Remove all the spammy links that have been added to my blog. Gosh, there are so many spammy links. I have no idea how they got there, and it’s really creepy, honestly. I’ve gone through my blog posts through 2020 so I’m swiftly moving through this goal.

5) Complete the Taylor Swift reading challenge. (11/25) I’m zooming through this reading challenge. Right now, I can work in what I’m reading (without seeking out specific books) to fit some of the categories, but I know there will come a time when I will need to actually put some effort into finding books to fulfill the prompts.

FUN

1) Watch four movies – one from 1987, one from 1988, one from 1989, and one from 1990. No progress made.

2) Take a Virgin Voyages cruise Take a trip to London. I’m switching out this goal since my mom and I are planning a fab trip to London in the fall! (And yes, I took copious notes from Kae’s recent trip!)

3) Watch the entirety of these series: Suits, New Girl, and a TBD series. No progress made.

4) Repierce my nose. Complete! I got this done early, in February!

5) Do one new thing every month. Making progress!

  • January: Tried mushrooms, decided I didn’t like them
  • February: Visited a romance bookstore
  • March: Went to a new-to-me grocery store, Aldi (successful trip, although there are definitely certain items I’ll still need to use Publix/Target for)

What’s something new you’ve done this year (big or small!)?

Categories: Goals

Quarterly Goals | Q2 of 2025

After today, we’re officially through the first quarter of 2025. (And almost through the first quarter of the new administration, sigh. It feels much, much longer.) So that means it’s time to take a look at my quarterly goals and set some new ones for Q2! Let’s get into it:

Q1 Goals

HOME

1) Buy a new area rug for my living room. Complete! I bought a new rug last week and it should arrive today!

2) Declutter my dresser and buy drawer organizers to keep everything tidy. Complete! I love my drawer organizers so much. It’s so nice to have everything nicely put away in their own spots.

3) Itemize everything in my bedroom. Not complete. I took a video of my bedroom. But I did not itemize a single thing.

ADULTING

1) Set up my new primary email address and link it to my current Gmail account. Change the primary email address of all household accounts. Half-complete. The new primary email address has been set up and I was able to add it to my other Gmail account. But I did not change any email addresses for household accounts, oops.

2) Set up my budget and update it every two days. LOL, no. I was lucky if I did this once a week.

3) Do a Goodwill dropoff. Complete! My car was filled with Goodwill donations and it felt so good to drop everything off.

HEALTH

1) Start using time blocking for my daily routines. Complete! I really like this productivity method. It allows me to schedule my days in a way that makes sense depending on what I need to do, whether that’s working in a therapy appointment in the middle of my day or setting aside time to get my chores done. This method works for me because I have a flexible job where I can work in 90-minute or 2-hour blocks and then take a 30-minute break to handle some personal tasks if I need to.

2) Use a posture app to improve my posture. Not complete. I have looked at posture apps on the App Store and even asked ChatGPT to provide me a list (which was a bust), but didn’t download a single one in Q1.

3) Log my food for a month. Complete! I did this with my dietician and it was a very helpful exercise. It’s not something I want to do long-term, though.

HOBBIES

1) Read The Shell Seekers by Rosamunde Pilcher. Complete! This was one of the first books I read in 2025 and I liked it, but didn’t love it. If it had been 100 pages shorter, I would have enjoyed it more.

2) Go to at least two Silent Book Club Meetings. Not complete. I tried going to a meeting in January but wound up at the wrong brewery! And then I just got lazy about checking on meeting times and making a plan to go.

3) Hang up my floating bookshelves in my reading nook. Complete. I started to hang up the floating shelves… and then I realized I didn’t really like them. The reason I wanted to hang up these floating bookshelves was to hold my Anne of Green Gables collection (I collect all different editions!), so instead, I created a spot on my favorites bookshelf for this collection. I’d love to add some specific AoGG trinkets to this shelf at some point.

FUN

1) Watch one of these movies from 1987: Good Morning Vietnam; Planes, Trains, and Automobiles; Can’t Buy Me Love; Three Men and a Baby; or Dirty Dancing. Not complete. I planned to watch Dirty Dancing but kept putting it off until suddenly, it was the end of Q1. Oops.

2) Watch one season of Suits and two seasons of New Girl. Not complete. I’m halfway through season 2 of New Girl, but I definitely barely attempted this goal.

3) Get my nose repierced. Complete!

Q2 Goals

HOME

1) Buy a new coffee table. I’d like to buy one secondhand if I can find one I like on Facebook Marketplace or Goodwill.

2) Declutter my kitchen. My kitchen is mostly well-organized, but some cabinets need to be decluttered and reorganized, so that’s a project for Q2.

3) Itemize everything in my bedroom and office area. It’s a big goal but I can do it!

ADULTING

1) Go through my file box and shred old documents. Boring adult task that I haven’t done in a few years, whoops.

2) Complete “Admin Days” every Sunday. I’m cultivating a Sunday routine that will allow me to get set up for the week and have all of my ducks in a row. More to come!

3) Change the primary email address of at least one account every week. This feels very doable, even if I’m sure it won’t happen every week. But if I can have a 75% success rate, I’ll be happy with that.

HEALTH

1) Get into bed at 10 p.m. Sundays – Thursdays. This doesn’t mean I need to be asleep at 10 p.m., but I just need to have completed all of my evening tasks so I can be all tucked in bed at a decent hour.

2) Use a posture app to improve my posture. Rollover goal.

3) Eat five servings of fruits and veggies every day. This is ambitious for me, as I typically eat maybe 2-3 servings a day (and way less on the weekends), but it’s good to have ambitious goals!

HOBBIES

1) Read Five Days at Memorial by Sherry Fink. I’m going to read this during my reading retreat next month!

2) Go to a Silent Book Club meeting. Let’s make this easier for me and just try to get to one event this quarter. Bonus points if I attend more!

3) Send snail mail to at least five people. I gathered addresses in November so I can deliver more snail mail to people, and I haven’t really done that, so one the goals list it goes! (And you can still send me your address if you’d like snail mail from me!)

FUN

1) Watch Dirty Dancing and one of these movies from 1988: Rain Man, The Thin Blue Line, Bull Durham, Heathers, or Working Girl. Okay, friends: It’s once again time to weigh in on the movie I should watch. Which one?! I’m leaning towards Heathers, but willing to be convinced to see one of the other options.

2) Watch one episode of Suits during lunch Monday-Thursday and watch three seasons of New Girl. Another ambitious goal for me, ha. I think I can get through three seasons of New Girl in Q2 since those 20-minute episodes go quickly. And we’ll see how I do if I make Suits my lunchtime show this quarter (previously, it was Brooklyn 99.) Fingers crossed!

3) Buy a new swimsuit. I need a new swimsuit because the ones I’ve been using for a few years are getting threadbare. I just need to find a supplier I like since my swimsuits were previously from Amazon. Time to do some research!

Do you eat five servings of fruits and veggies daily (or more?!)? Weigh in on which 1988 movie I should watch this quarter!

Categories: Goals

Quarterly Goals | Q1 of 2025

Three posts about goals in three days. I promise this is the last of the for a long while! Today, I wanted to post my quarterly goals for Q1 of 2024. I’ve kept the main categories that I used for my yearly goals, and have three goals for each one. Some of them relate to my yearly goals and some do not. It’ll keep things fun and interesting, I think!

HOME

1) Buy a new area rug for my living room. I have a few area rugs saved on Wayfair, so I just need to measure my living room to make sure I’m getting the correct size and push that purchase button. I will be so happy to replace my current rug. It’s faded so much and is a bit threadbare.

2) Declutter my dresser and buy drawer organizers to keep everything tidy. I’m ready to have a more organized dresser. Right now, I tend to just shove things in a drawer and close it quickly. But then that becomes a nightmare if I’m searching for a specific item. I want to take everything out and declutter the dresser, and then organize everything nicely using drawer organizers.

3) Itemize everything in my bedroom. One of my yearly goals is to itemize everything in my home, and I’m going to start with my bedroom.

ADULTING

1) Set up my new primary email address and link it to my current Gmail account. Change the primary email address of all household accounts. Ughhhh this is such a boring goal. But it must be done.

2) Set up my budget and update it every two days. Again, adulting sucks.

3) Do a Goodwill dropoff. I have two bags of stuff and a handful of items that need to be out of my apartment, so to Goodwill they will go!

HEALTH

1) Start using time blocking for my daily routines. I’m going to experiment with some time management techniques to figure out which one works best for me. In Q1, I’m going to attempt time blocking (scheduling each hour of the day for specific tasks). If it works, great! If not, I’ll try something else in Q2.

2) Use a posture app to improve my posture. There are a few apps that will send you gentle reminders throughout the day to sit up straight, and I’m hoping that will help me gradually improve my posture. I probably also need to look into how to ensure my desk/office chair are set up properly so I can maintain good posture, so that’s another goal for Q1.

3) Log my food for a month. I don’t want to do this, but I know I need to do it. My dietician has an app I can use where I don’t have to see the calorie count of foods (a trigger for me), but we’ll be able to review it and see what areas can be improved. I’m not sure I’ll continue a food journal after one month; it all depends if I feel it’s useful to my weight loss journey.

HOBBIES

1) Read The Shell Seekers by Rosamunde Pilcher. This is the first 500+ page book I’ll be reading for my goal. The paperback I have is 632 pages so it’ll be a journey for me.

2) Go to at least two Silent Book Club Meetings. It’s a lot harder to make it to SBC meetings during football season since they meet on Sunday afternoons, but they also do Thursday evening meetings once a month that I can usually make it to. I’m hoping to get back to going at least monthly, so hopefully I can surpass this goal!

3) Hang up my floating bookshelves in my reading nook. I meant to do this in December and I did not get around to it. I need to get my beautiful Anne of Green Gables collection displayed!

FUN

1) Watch one of these movies from 1987: Good Morning Vietnam; Planes, Trains, and Automobiles; Can’t Buy Me Love; Three Men and a Baby; or Dirty Dancing. Help me choose! I’m leaning towards Dirty Dancing, but I can be convinced to try another one of the movies on my list.

2) Watch one season of Suits and two seasons of New Girl. I might be setting myself up for failure, but maybe not? I can do this!

3) Get my nose repierced. I’m hoping I can wear a stud and my CPAP mask won’t bother it too much. That’s the goal.

What’s something you’d like to do in January?

Categories: Goals

My 2025 Goals

It’s tiiiiime. Making my yearly goals is one of my favorite traditions. It all gets started near the fourth quarter of the previous year when I start thinking about what I want my life to look like at the end of the next year. What are the big things I wanted to accomplish? How do I want to feel in November 2025? What are some fun goals that would make my year a little more magical? I start making a list of ideas in my Notes app as they come to me. Some of these goals make it to my official list and some do not. It’s all about visualizing and making a plan.

This year, I have five goals in five categories: Home, Adulting, Health, Hobbies, and Fun. I’ve also done something I’ve never done before: I’ve left a few goals TBD. I’ve seen other people do this and I don’t know why it has never occurred to me to do the same. I was struggling to think of a fifth goal in some of these categories so I just decided that I’d leave those blank for now. Hopefully, inspiration will strike at some point in the year and I’ll add a goal to that fifth spot. But if not, that’s okay, too! I don’t want to make a goal just to make a goal, which is what I’ve done in years past. This way, the goals on this list are ones that I feel strongly about. (Well, at least right now. I reserve the right to change them if needed!)

So, without further ado, let’s get into my 2025 goals!

HOME

1) Itemize everything in my home. I’m not always going to live in a third-floor apartment, so it’s a good time to make an itemized list of everything I own just in case I need to submit a claim for water damage/hurricane loss/etc. I’ve watched two friends go through this disaster scenario in 2024, and the itemization process is so arduous! I’d rather have the majority of it done before I need to worry about it.

2) Buy a new area rug, coffee table, bookshelf, and throw pillows. Once a quarter, I’d like to make one bigger household purchase, and these are the ones I’ve chosen! Each will cost between $100-$200 so these aren’t HUGE household purchases, but they will take some budgeting and planning.

3) Move to a two-bedroom apartment. Third time’s the charm? I’ve had this on my list for the last two years, but I am committed to making it happen in 2025.

4) Stick to a weekly cleaning routine. And maybe I’ll even make myself a sticker chart because nothing motivates me more than “If the whole chart is filled out, you can buy a new book!” Listen, I’m 37 and sometimes need to treat myself like a 7-year-old. It is what it is!

5) TBD

ADULTING

1) Change my primary email address. I’ve been using my blog’s email address for all of my personal emails, and it’s a little cringe to say it out loud to people. They’re always like, “Oh, are you a writer? What have you written?” Sigh. I’ll keep my blog email for blog stuff, but for things like bills, medical accounts, and things like that, I want to have a more professional-sounding email address. It’s kind of a hassle to change an email address for certain accounts (my mom just did this, and it’s not as seamless as you would think!), so making it a goal will ensure I get ‘er done.

2) Spend 50% less in online takeout from 2024. It’s well-known on this blog that I am a super consumer of Ubereats and other online takeout providers. Originally, I had a goal to go cold turkey from online takeout in 2025, but I think that’s just setting myself up for failure. Instead, I want to spend 50% less than I did in 2024, which would be a massive improvement. (I need to figure out the actual number I spent on online takeout in 2024, and once I do, I’ll have a concrete number to measure this goal by.)

3) Pay off my LASIK bill. I need to pay it off this year so I don’t start incurring interest!

4) Save $3,000 in my emergency savings. I’m going to gamify this for myself and use this challenge chart. There are 52 squares on the printable, so I’ll print out three of them and hang them up, then randomly choose one square from each sheet every week!

5) TBD 

HEALTH

1) Improve my posture. I’m not sure what this will entail yet. Everything I read online about improving posture talks about stretches to help strengthen the muscles that cause bad posture. So maybe some stretches. Maybe a more supportive office chair or lumbar pillow. Maybe it’s being more mindful and doing regular check-ins on my posture via an app or something? I’m not sure but I’m open to ideas!

2) Lose 20 lbs. Listen, I’m not happy to have a weight loss goal on this list, but the truth of the matter is that I do need to lose weight because I am unhealthy at this weight. The sleep apnea diagnosis, the sciatica, the blood work do not lie. This equates to losing 5 lbs every quarter, which is entirely doable and small enough that I don’t feel like I have to completely overhaul my diet to make it happen.

3) Move my body every day. My goal is to make it to the gym five days a week (two HIIT classes, one spin class, one yoga class, and one cardio day using the machines) and then fill out the other two days with walks around my apartment complex.

4) Work on my daily routines. I really struggle with my daily routines and that’s because I live alone and work from home. I have a lot of flexibility built into my day and sometimes I take that too far. I’d like to work on having a solid morning and evening routine each day so that I can start my workday around 8 a.m. and get to bed at a decent hour (ideally, 10 p.m.).

5) TBD 

HOBBIES

1) Read one 500+ page book every quarter. I tend to shy away from longer books because I’m afraid of getting “stuck behind them” (aka, not finishing any other books for weeks because the longer book is taking me so long to read). But there are a few doorstop books on my TBR I’d love to finally read this year, including The Shell Seekers by Rosamunde Pilcher, 11/22/63 by Stephen King, and Fall of Giants by Ken Follett. Just need one more book to round out this quartet!

2) Go to at least 6 Silent Book Club meetings. I stopped going to Silent Book Club meetings sometime in early 2024. I just got out of the habit and then kept forgetting to put their meeting schedule in my calendar. Hopefully, having this goal will help me get back to SBC! I love being around other bookish people and having a concentrated hour to read my book.

3) Read 125 books. This will be a stretch goal for me and I don’t technically need to set a numeric reading goal, but I like to do so anyway. It’s okay if I don’t reach this goal, but I’d like to try.

4) Remove all the spammy links that have been added to my blog. My blog got hacked sometime in 2023 and it was just in the last few months that I noticed that all of these spam links have been added to some of my blog posts. I don’t know the best way to do this other than manually. (I may be able to use Google Search Console, but I just set that up a few days ago and I’m still waiting on the data to be processed.) This will be a big blog goal for 2025, in any event!

5) Complete the Taylor Swift reading challenge. Bri clued me into this reading challenge and I am… ready for it! Tehehe. This looks like a super fun reading challenge to complete!

FUN

1) Watch four movies – one from 1987, one from 1988, one from 1989, and one from 1990. I don’t know where I got the idea for this goal, but I have decided that I’d like to watch one movie from every year I’ve been alive. But since I don’t want to set myself up for failure, I’m only going to challenge myself to watch four movies this year (from my first four years of life!), so one per quarter. That feels doable!

2) Take a Virgin Voyages cruise. My mom and I are dying to try our first Virgin Voyages cruise. We have heard nothing but rave reviews, so it’s something we’re hoping to do to celebrate her 60th birthday this year.

3) Watch the entirety of these series: Suits, New Girl, and a TBD series. I have the first seasons of both Suits and New Girl under my belt, but I need to watch the rest of the series. I am not great about watching series TV (give me strategy reality competitions any day!), but I would like to be. I’m hoping to finish another TV series while I’m at it, but I’m not sure which one I want yet. Suggestions welcome!

4) Repierce my nose. I mentioned yesterday that I had to remove my nose ring when I started using the CPAP because my mask was irritating it. I’m hoping it was just due to my face getting used to the mask, not because one cannot have a nose piercing and use a CPAP mask. I want to get my nose repierced this year (once you remove a nose ring, the hole closes up quick).

5) Do one new thing every month. This can be anything I want it to be but I want to challenge myself to spend more time outside the four walls of my apartment and do some new things in 2025. It could be visiting a new-to-me bookstore, going to a new-to-me brunch spot, going to a painting class, taking a new workout class. I just want to do one new thing every month! (Side note: I hope I’m not jinxing 2025 because this was a goal I had in 2020 and, well, we all know how that turned out.)

What’s something you’re hoping to accomplish in 2025?