Stephany Writes

Categories: Goals

Monthly Goals | March 2026

I’m very pleased with how I’m knocking out my monthly goals so far in 2026. I didn’t have a 100% success rate in February, but 80% ain’t bad either!

February Goals

1) Book my Airbnb for my reading retreat. Complete! I booked the cutest little house in North Port for mid-April.

2) Visit a thrift shop. Complete! I left with three books and one cat-shaped sign. I’m nothing if not predictable.

3) Buy the girls new collars. Complete! Lila now has the cutest pink book-themed collar, and Eloise has a set of pearls because she’s fancy.

4) Spend five hours working on my novel idea. Complete! It has been such a joy to spend time brainstorming about these characters and the town I’m creating.

5) Figure out my 401K situation. Not complete. I didn’t even start this process.

March Goals

1) Schedule an eye appointment. I had LASIK surgery in 2023, and my last follow-up was sometime in early 2024. I’ve been having some weird blurriness only when I’m looking at the TV or when I’m trying to look at the time on my oven/microwave. I’ve been doing eye drops to see if it’s dry eye related, but not seeing much difference. So, I figure I should do my due diligence and schedule an eye appointment. Hopefully, all is well!

2) Make two new recipes. I’m not exactly in a food rut, but I haven’t made a new recipe in months.

3) Get Lila set up at the new vet. I’ve been waiting to get Lila set up with my new vet since she wasn’t due for an exam/vaccinations until March. I need to schedule an appointment and set up her wellness plan.

4) Complete two character studies for my two main characters and start working on my plot. Last month was all about nurturing this tiny flame of a novel idea, and now that I feel like it has potential, I am all in.

5) Figure out my 401K situation. Rollover goal.

What are your March goals? Any go-to recipe ideas for me?

Categories: Goals

Monthly Goals | February 2026

Spoiler alert: I did amazing on my January goals. That new year, new me energy is coming in strong!

January Goals

1) Develop a list of 25 recipe ideas. Complete! This started easy and got progressively harder, but I now have a list of recipes to draw from when I’m meal planning on the weekends. I used it last weekend, and it was super helpful!

2) Create snack kits for home, my car, and my purse. Complete! I bought the cutest little pouches for my car and my purse.

Here is what I have:

Car snack kit:

  • Glucose tablets
  • Fig Newtons
  • Granola bars
  • Peanut butter crackers
  • Cashews

Purse snack kit:

  • Glucose tablets
  • Peanut butter crackers
  • Fruit snacks
  • Applesauce pouch
  • Granola bars
  • Cashews
  • Protein bars

For home, I keep all of the same snacks on hand, but also have items that don’t need to be shelf-stable, like:

  • Sargento Balanced Breaks snack packs
  • Greek yogurt
  • Apples and peanut butter
  • Carrots and dip
  • Hard-boiled eggs
  • Boost high-protein shakes

A special shout-out to Sarah, who gave me TONS of snack ideas. I’m basically treating myself like a five-year-old. Except I’m also the mom who is keeping the snacks stocked? It’s complicated.

3) Set up my new nightstand and find a place for the old one. Complete! Right now, I have the old nightstand in a corner of my bedroom, and it’s working well as a tech charging station.

4) Keep a symptom log for my rheumatology appointment. Complete! It was super helpful to keep this log in the weeks leading up to my rheumatology appointment. For one, it helped me better understand the most problematic joints (my left ring finger, my left shoulder, and my right elbow) and see the ups and downs of my pain throughout the month.

5) Play around with budgeting spreadsheets to find one I like. Complete! I downloaded a spreadsheet that may work for me, and it has a lot of fancy Excel wizardry to make graphs and dashboards.

February Goals

1) Book my Airbnb for my reading retreat. I’d like to take a reading retreat in either March or April (depending on Airbnb availability). I’ve been favoriting Airbnbs like crazy, but I need to just book the place and make it happen!

2) Visit a thrift shop. I can’t remember the last time I went to a thrift shop, which probably makes Elisabeth clutch her pearls (if she wore them). But there’s a great one near me and I want to visit it sometime in February to see if I can find furniture/decor for my apartment.

3) Buy the girls new collars. My girls have lived a collar-free life until December, when I had to put collars on them for their microchip feeders (the microchip hangs off the collar). And now I am desperate to buy them much cuter collars because the ones they are wearing are a boring beige collar, and they deserve something a lot prettier!

4) Spend five hours working on my novel idea. I have the teeniest, tiniest bud of a novel idea percolating right now. I haven’t had any sort of writing inspiration in half a decade (at least), so this is very exciting for me! In February, I’d like to spend a few hours nurturing this idea and seeing if there’s anything there.

5) Figure out my 401K situation. I truly do not want to deal with this because money stuff makes me very anxious and overwhelmed. Basically, our organization was bought by another company, and they have a different 401K provider. I need to move the money in my old 401K to this new provider, and it seems very complicated. It’s not something that I have to do immediately, but I’d rather just get it all situated now and not have this task hanging over my head.

Do you have any goals for February?

Categories: Goals

My Habit and Goal-Setting Routine for This Year

This year, it’s crucially important for me to get into a great routine when it comes to my daily/weekly habits and my goals. I want to set up my life in such a way that I can make progress on my goals while also keeping tabs on some of the habits I’m tracking this year. I feel better when I have a structured routine for tracking goals and habits, and so I took some time at the end of the year to figure out exactly how this should look for me. I wanted something that would be fun but not too overwhelming. And I wanted to be able to notice trends—which goals were a struggle, and how could I adjust my expectations to better meet my needs?

With that in mind, I have three categories of tracking my goals and habits:

  • My paper planner
  • A goal-tracking spreadsheet
  • My gold star reward system

Let’s get into the nitty-gritty of each, shall we?!

My paper planner

I spent a lot of time scrolling through Amazon, Google, and Instagram to find my ideal planner for 2026. For me, a paper planner is a place to list weekly/daily goals and keep tabs on my habits. I write down appointments and such, but I mainly use my Google Calendar to track things like that, and then I cross-reference when I’m setting up my weekly spread in my planner every Sunday.

Eventually, I landed on the Curation planner from Saint Belford. While it’s not perfect (I truly do not understand why the monthly layouts are bunched at the beginning of the planner and not spread out), I do love that it allows me to do a lot of different kinds of tracking. There are two weekly layouts: an overview page and then a more traditional weekly layout where you can track habits, set daily goals, and list out appointments/plans/etc.

Here’s how I’ve been using the overview page:

I love writing down my gratitude from the week before, and then I paste in a habit tracker that I printed out. I use the other page to list out a few weekly goals, and then there’s my favorite part: the personal tracker. (I could make this a drinking game. “Take a drink every time I say track or tracker!” But you guys would be completely toasted by now.) There are so many ways to use this tracker, and I’m sure I’ll change what I’m putting in this section as the year goes on. Right now, I’m using this section to write down how many apneas I had the night before, my sleep total, and what movement I did. (Movement is very hard for me right now with all my joint pain, hopefully this will improve once I’m in treatment!)

At the end of the week, I tally up my percentage totals on my habit tracker (more on this later) and use a highlighter to tag any days I had 5 or fewer apneas (the ideal number of apneas per night), got more than 7 hours of sleep, and did any movement. That way, when I’m looking over this overview page at the end of every month, I can quickly see my progress (or lack thereof).

On the weekly layout, I write down a few other types of habits (these are more fun habits to track for now, nothing too serious, although I may move them over to my bigger habit tracker if I’m inspired to do so) and then notate what I’m doing that week. Every morning, I sit down and write down 6 goals in the space next to each day. Usually, I give myself a few cleaning chores and set some easy goals, like making a call or doing an admin task. (Obviously, as you can see, these goals roll over from one day to the next quite often. And sometimes I forget to write down daily goals, which happened on Tuesday. Not the perfect layout to show you, ha.)

A goal-tracking spreadsheet

This idea came to me from a link that Sarah shared on one of her posts near the end of the year. It was a goal-tracking spreadsheet, and I was all about it! I customized the spreadsheet to suit my own purposes, and only update it weekly (it’s part of one of my weekly admin tasks). There are two tabs in this spreadsheet: resolution dashboard and weekly review.

Resolution dashboard

This has all of my annual goals, separated by category. I have a notes column for just some of the goals, like keeping tabs on what my current sleep average is and how many pieces of snail mail I’ve sent. And then at the end of each month, I’ll review each goal and notate my progress. The dropdown (currently only showing up in the January column, but I’ll have it in every column by the end of the year) is where I list my progress. I can choose:

  • On track
  • Mostly on track
  • Inconsistent
  • Paused
  • Struggling
  • Completed

The middle three categories are where my focus will be during my monthly review: inconsistent, paused, and struggling. For example, right now, I would say my goal of closing all of my Apple Watch rings is firmly in the “struggling” category. And that’s because I can’t exercise right now (even going for a walk longer than 10-15 minutes is painful, sigh), so I’m definitely not hitting my movement and exercise goals. But I knew I would struggle with this goal in January, as I await that first rheumatology appointment (SIX DAYS!!!!). So nothing really needs to happen there. I’m also struggling with my hydration goal, and that’s an area where I can think about how to make this goal easier for me.

Weekly Review

The weekly review is a pared-down version of my goals, only tracking the goals that are daily habits or new routines that require a bit more attention to ensure I stay consistent. On Sundays, I use my planner to jog my memory and then input the totals into the spreadsheet. I also have the same progress categories, and you can see where I landed with these goals last week!

P.S. It’s because of last week’s review that I decided to be a little kinder to myself this week. My whole body feels like one big inflammatory flare, and I need to prioritize rest and listening to my body. I’ve paused the goal of “tracking my macros” for the time being, and I’m paring down the goal of “close my Apple Watch rings” to “meet my stand goal every day.” That’s much more doable for me right now, and hopefully, in a few weeks, I will be in a place where I can be a little more aggressive with my healthy living goals.

My gold star reward system

Last but certainly not least, it’s my gold star reward system! What is going to motivate me to be consistent with my goals? Prezzies! At the end of the week, I get to dole out rewards and punishments based on my progress. (For this system, I am only tracking the goals that are listed in the printout I’ve pasted into my planner). Here is my system:

  • 7 out of 7 days complete: two gold stars
  • 6 out of 7 days complete: one gold star
  • 5 out of 7 days complete: $10 into a special savings fund (right now, I’m saving to replace my office chair) + a night off from cooking
  • 4 out of 7 days complete: $5 into a special savings fund + a night off from using my CPAP machine
  • 2 or 3 out of 7 days complete: $5 into a special savings fund
  • 1 day complete: nothing

And any time I get 0 out of 7 days complete, I have to give myself a slightly annoying punishment. For each habit I didn’t mark complete at all during the week, I have to choose between (1) no Happy Color for one full day; (2) no social media for one full day (including Reddit!); or (3) no ChatGPT for one full day (I hate that I’m so addicted, but I use it so much to get guidance on my chronic pain!). These “punishments” are annoying enough that they motivate me to try to do better the next week without feeling like I’m punching myself in the face for not meeting my goals.

Whenever I get 10 gold stars, I get a prezzie! I can choose something from a wishlist (either on Etsy or Amazon), one book, or one item of clothing. I may move this up to 20 gold stars if I find collecting gold stars is easier than I expected, ha, especially since I’m tracking so many goals! But it’s the right pace for me right now.

Was this whole post completely overwhelming to you? Or are you also completely neurotic about goal-tracking?

Categories: Goals

Monthly Goals | January 2026

I’m keeping things simple when it comes to monthly goals this year. Since my 2026 annual goals are quite ambitious (and I have developed a fun way to track them all, which I’ll talk about soon), I wanted to keep my monthly goals set at five simple tasks. Some of these will correlate to my annual goals, and some will not. It’s all about the things I want to accomplish in January, big and small!

Here are my goals for January:

1) Develop a list of 25 recipe ideas – I get stuck in food ruts all the damn time, and that’s because I a) hate meal planning and b) hate grocery shopping. Thank god I do not have a partner or children I’m trying to keep alive because it’s a struggle just to feed myself on a daily basis. I want to develop a list of 25 tried-and-true recipes that I can keep in one document and work from when I’m trying to come up with meal ideas every week.

2) Create snack kits for home, my car, and my purse – The car snack kit will be the toughest to create because I need something that can handle being in 100+ degrees come summertime. I’m thinking Fig Newtons, hard candy like Lifesavers, trail mix (minus any chocolate), and glucose tablets for those times when my blood sugar is dropping fast. I’ll also have to change out the purse I’m using since right now, I have a belt bag that doesn’t hold much. I’m excited to get these snack kits figured out so I can finally feel more prepared for hypoglycemia episodes.

3) Set up my new nightstand and find a place for the old one – The nightstand I originally bought during my move in October is quite small and barely holds my CPAP machine, a water bottle, and my phone. I needed an upgrade, so I have a new nightstand coming next week. My goal is to put it together in January and then find a place for my old nightstand. Maybe on the other side of my bed? In my walk-in closet? In my office? I’ll figure it out!

4) Keep a symptom log for my rheumatology appointment – I have a rheumatology appointment scheduled for January 27th (so far away, and yet, better than I expected for a specialist appointment!). Until then, I want to keep a symptom log, so I know exactly how to explain my symptoms and the pain I’ve been experiencing.

5) Play around with budgeting spreadsheets to find one I like – I still prefer to do all my budgeting myself, rather than relying on software. However, that means I need to track all transactions coming out of my bank account closely. I think I want to try to find a different budgeting spreadsheet for 2026 so I should probably start that search soon since we’re already five days into the new year!

Do you have any goals for January?

Categories: Goals

My 2026 Goals

Here we go! It’s 2026, which means it’s time to set some intentions for the year ahead. This year, I’ve gone about this list in a different way. I have chosen four overarching goal categories and within each category, I set five goals for myself. Then, because I am who I am, I also set 10 FUN goals to accomplish, the stuff that didn’t exactly fit into any of the previous goal categories. I’ve left three of those 10 goals as TBD.

Here are the goal categories:

  • Take better care of myself – I need to treat my body better. I need to have snacks to stave off hypoglycemia episodes. I need to drink more water and get more sleep and take my goddamn medications no matter what. It’s doing the unsexy, sometimes annoying things because I’m an adult, and this is how I stay functional.
  • Get a handle on my health conditions – As we’re all aware, 2025 was a shit year for my physical health. Each goal in this category corresponds to one of my health conditions: prediabetes, scalp psoriasis, (undiagnosed) psoriatic arthritis, sleep apnea, and heart disease risk. Let’s hope 2026 is the year my physical health is finally on an upswing!
  • Be a more involved friend – I want to be a better friend in 2026. It’s not that I think I’m a bad friend. I just think I can get stuck in my hermity nature and not make plans or reach out as much as I should. I don’t need to be a social butterfly, but I do need to make more of an effort in my relationships.
  • Create better daily routines – I’ve struggled a lot with daily routines since working from home, and 2025 might have been the year I was the worst at it. I’m going to make a concentrated effort to work on these routines by creating a schedule for myself and checking in on a weekly basis to make sure this schedule is working for me. If not, it’s time to try something new!

Okay, that was a lot of preamble! And this post is going to be a monster. Now, let’s finally get into the meat of this post: my 2026 goals!

Take better care of myself

  • Create snack kits for my car, purse, and home, and restock them weekly – There is no reason for me to have hypoglycemia episodes. I should always have snacks on hand to fend off these blood sugar drops! Sometimes I have to treat myself the way I would a child, so I want to create snack kits that I can have in my car, in my purse, and at home, so I am never without snacks when I need them. Plus, sometimes I can get lost in what I should eat as a snack, so this takes away any decision-making (especially crucial when I’m at home). I don’t need to think about what I’m going to eat as a snack. I just get the snack kit and I’m good to go!
  • Drink at least 50 oz of water per day – This feels like a stretch goal, but I can do it, right? I’m not counting seltzer as part of this goal, even though I have been told that it counts as hydration. I really want to focus on actual plain water.
  • Close my Apple Watch rings – This is going to be challenging in the first few months of 2026, as I’m still dealing with joint pain, which limits my exercise/walking time. But hopefully, once I have a diagnosis and treatment plan, I can get back to my normal workout schedule.
  • Average 7.5 hours of sleep per night – Hopefully, my average is higher, but I don’t want to set myself up for failure. I need to get more sleep, and this will be especially true if I’m diagnosed with a chronic autoimmune condition like psoriatic arthritis.
  • Take medications every morning – I’ve gotten a lot better about taking my meds every day, but I can easily get out of the habit.

Get a handle on my health conditions

  • Start tracking my macros (prediabetes) – The last time I got blood work, I was still in prediabetes and the next time I get bloodwork, I want to be out of the danger zone. I don’t want to track macros, but I do want to improve my blood work, so here we go.
  • Work with my dermatologist to develop a flare/maintenance plan for scalp psoriasis – My scalp psoriasis is still not fully under control, which is frustrating. Even just a few days without treating the spots and I’m in a huge flare. Ugh. It appears that the treatments I’m currently using are better for maintenance, but not effective enough when I’m in a flare. So I need to figure out a better flare management program with my derm.
  • Be compliant with my CPAP every month (sleep apnea) – I was not very compliant with my CPAP in 2025 and that is no bueno!
  • Schedule an appointment with a rheumatologist to figure out my joint pain – I wasn’t sure what to put for this goal, so it may evolve if I am diagnosed with psoriatic arthritis. For now, I need to get established with a rheumatologist to figure out what is causing all of my joint pain.
  • Lose 20 lbs (heart disease) – My heart disease risk is still on the high side, although not alarming. (And a lot of my numbers came down to the normal range after making changes to my diet in the first half of 2025.) There are many ways I can work towards lowering my heart disease risk, but I do think losing weight will be key. So let’s try to knock off another 20 lbs this year, yeah?!

Be a more involved friend

  • Text two friends every day – I was astonished one day when my friend Mikaela went down the list of everyone she texts on a daily basis. I can sometimes go entire days without texting anyone but my mom. I want to be better about keeping in touch with people and reaching out. Hopefully, this will become more of an ingrained habit as the year progresses and not something I need to track so closely!
  • Make plans with friends once a week – I love my hermit-y existence, but I also recognize that my mental health is better when I’m seeing my friends regularly. This is a simple goal, and I don’t need to overcomplicate it. It could be dinner or a walk or just going over to their house to help with the kiddos when their partner is away.
  • Organize a girls’ weekend – We haven’t had a book club getaway since before the pandemic! I really want us to plan a fun weekend away, even if it’s just somewhere driving distance from us.
  • Send three pieces of snail mail every month – Who wants to get snail mail from me? Here’s my open form for addresses, so you can look forward to postcards and such throughout the year.
  • Schedule a standing monthly date with at least one friend – I have a few ideas for this! More to come.

Create better daily routines

  • Develop a regular morning routine before my workday begins – I have struggled with my morning routine ever since I started working from home. It’s just easier to hop onto work and then worry about the morning routine later. In 2026, I want to have a solid morning routine before stepping into my office for the day. And I want to take the time to play around with my routine until it works perfectly for me.
  • Do my hair and makeup and put on real clothes on days when I have meetings – I have become very lazy about my hair and makeup routine since all my meetings are video calls and I can use filters to enhance my appearance. In 2026, I want to actually do my hair and makeup (and by makeup, I mean slathering on some tinted moisturizer, drawing on eyebrows, and swiping a little mascara) on the days when I have meetings so I feel a bit more put together. I also want to wear real clothes! I don’t have meetings every day, otherwise this would be an overwhelming goal for me. Ha.
  • Create an evening routine that includes reading time – Every year, I read a little less than I did the year before. I’m not going to continue that trajectory in 2026! I think the key will be setting aside at least an hour every evening for reading time. My goal is to add this to the end of my evening routine, so I’m winding down with a book, which is what I used to do but definitely got out of the practice.
  • Do some form of movement every day (stretching counts!) – While I can’t do as much movement right now as I will hopefully be able to do later in the year, I do still want to move my body daily, even if I’m just doing stretches or going for a short, 10-minute walk.
  • Get outside every day – This should be a simple goal, but there are days when I don’t leave my apartment. (Like yesterday, ha.) There’s no reason for that, so I need to make a point to get some fresh air every day.

10 fun goals

  • Complete my self-created Unread Shelf Challenge – I miss the Unread Shelf Project. I loved it because it was a low-key reading challenge that focused on reading books I had already bought, so I knew I wanted to read them. So, with the help of ChatGPT, I created my own Unread Shelf challenge for 2026 and I’m excited to get started.
  • Schedule a solo reading retreat weekend – I did something similar last year when I had to be out of my apartment for a few days while my tub was getting refinished. Only I had to bring my cats with me and that did not make for a restful reading weekend. This year, I want to find a cute Airbnb within an hour or two away from where I live and spend the time reading as much as possible!
  • Try four novels from the Zero to Well Read podcast – I’m enjoying Zero to Well Read, a podcast from Book Riot where Jeff and Rebecca deep dive a “classic” book (or really, all of the books in the cultural zeitgeist that have stood the test of time). They talk about so many books I’ve never read or even considered in my own reading life, so I want to choose one per quarter to read. (“Try” being the key word here, as I’m absolutely fine DNF-ing any books I’m not enjoying.) From the episodes they released in 2025, the books I have my eye on are Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, The Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler, and The Secret History by Donna Tartt. Hopefully, I’ll be able to round out this list with a book from their 2026 episodes!
  • Take one picture every day and do weekly roundups on the blog – I’ve done Project 365 a few times and I always post a picture to Instagram, but while I wanted to get into a habit of taking a photo every day, I didn’t feel like putting each one on Instagram. Instead, you’ll get a bonus post from me every weekend with a roundup of my pictures from the week. You’re welcome!
  • See a Miami Dolphins game at Hard Rock Stadium – I’ve only seen my beloved Miami Dolphins once and it was a preseason game in Tampa. I’ve always wanted to take a long weekend in Miami to see a game and enjoy the stadium. This will be an expensive trip because stadium tickets are hella pricey, but it will be worth it!
  • Decorate my patio – I have a patio I can use! Right now, there’s not much, just the zero-gravity chair that I got for Christmas. I ordered a rug, which will be here next weekend. And beyond that, I’m not sure what else I want for my patio! Maybe a small bistro table and chairs? Maybe some cat towers so the girls can enjoy lounging in the fresh air? Maybe some plants? This shall be a fun project!
  • Visit somewhere new – I don’t know where this will be (my mom and I have been noodling over a trip to Vermont in the fall) and it may end up being somewhere in Florida I’ve never been, but this can be as low stakes as I need it to be.
  • TBD
  • TBD
  • TBD

What’s one thing you want to accomplish in 2026 – big or small!