Stephany Writes

Categories: Goals

January Goals

I’m structuring my goals a bit differently this year. I’m setting 10 goals every month: the first five will relate to my yearly goals and the rest will be more of a “to-do list” of sorts. Those will typically be one-off goals I want to accomplish in the month, simple things I can check off easily. We’ll see how this new goal-setting structure works for me. It may be too much! But it’s an experiment of sorts.

1) Drink water every day. This is my healthy challenge for January, something I want to carry with me throughout the year. I’ve recently learned that I’m chronically dehydrated because I just don’t drink enough water. There are some days when I don’t drink any water. (I KNOW. Believe me, I know.) It’s easy to recover from chronic dehydration: just drink water! That’s all I need to do. It will help me have more energy, feel better, sleep better, and, well, without getting too TMI here, have better digestion. I have my trusty YETI tumbler and am aiming to finish one full tumbler of water every day.

2) Write 10,000 words in my novel. It’s time to get back to that novel of mine. 🙂 My goal is to finish the first draft during Q1 and I believe I have about 30,000 words left to write. So, you do the math for how I came up with this magic 10k number. I wrote 50k words in November so 10,000 should be a breeze, right? Riiiiiight.

3) Work out 13 times. This is the magic number I need to hit every month in order to mark off my “150 workouts” goal. I’d love to stay on track every month so I’m not scrambling to finish at the end of the year.

4) Read Nasty Women: Feminism, Resistance, and Revolution in Trump’s America. The Unread Shelf Project challenge for January is to read any random unread book on our shelves, so I picked this one. I bought this book years ago, right around the time it was published, and have let it sit on my shelves month after month. The beginning of this election year seems like a good time to finally crack it open.

5) Start meditating. This is my “do something new” goal for January. It took me quite a while to figure out exactly what new thing I wanted to try this month, as January is going to be a busy one for me and I wanted to set myself up for success. Enter: meditation. Meditation is something I’ve been wanting to try for a long time because I know how good it is for those who struggle with anxiety. I’m using a 30-day “how to meditate” challenge via the Calm app and I hope by the end of it, meditation will be a normal part of my life!

6) Switch over my files. It’s that time of year! I want to move my 2019 files into my bigger filing box and set up new files for 2020. I also want to reorganize my filing box and shred any bills/paperwork that are seven years old. This process is starting to feel outdated now that just about all my bills/paperwork are digital (or can be easily accessed online) but there are still some hard copies I need to file away and definitely lots of papers from 2013 to shred.

7) Schedule an eye appointment. I haven’t had an eye appointment in about two years. I was waiting to run out of contacts, which happened in early December but that’s also when I maxed out my FSA. Ha. So I will schedule my eye appointment this month now that I have a freshly replenished FSA. I’m debating if I want to get new glasses this year… depends on how much my prescription has changed, I think!

8) Cancel my “checking plus” account. I was “bullied”* into adding this “checking plus” feature to my checking account a few years ago, and as far as I know, it doesn’t have any real benefit for my checking account. It’s time to cancel it – that’s $7 down the drain every month!

*Okay, by bullied, I mean they mentioned it to me one time when I had to call about a checking issue and I pretended to be really interested in it because I’m SUCH a goddamn people pleaser and then had it added to my account. 

9) Play with the cats for at least 15 minutes every day. I really need to get better at playing with my cats. They are lovable and playful little ladies but I can get very lazy sometimes. I have some fun toys that I keep hidden (like teasers and a laser and a robotic toy) that I need to bring out every night. I love playing with them and they always make me laugh – I just get lazy about it!

10) Check my bank account every night. 2020 is the year I get strict with my budget. I’m calling it here! I have gotten very lazy because I’m finally at a place where I don’t really need to worry about money. I don’t live paycheck-to-paycheck and I can always count on money being there. Buuut… I’m also in credit card debt, should have a helluva lot more money saved, and get a little too “spendy” at times. So, I’ve given myself a shiny new budget to follow and am going to get very strict about checking my bank account nightly and making sure to keep up with my budget day-to-day.

Categories: Goals

My Goals for 2020

Let’s talk about 2020 goals! Woohoo! I love setting yearly goals, even if I find that I don’t complete a majority of them and/or find my attention waning as the year goes by. They’re still fun to think about and dream up! This year, I’m setting 10 goals, although you’ll see that many of them have additional components to them so I’m cheating a bit.

1. Move to a new apartment. This is my most exciting goal for 2020, as I prepare to move out of my shoebox apartment and into a larger place where I will have room for a kitchen table (!!). I’m so excited to have more space!

2. Pay off my credit card – and keep it paid off. I’m not proud of this and I feel like, by now, I should have learned my lesson of how to properly use a credit card. Hopefully, I can get this paid off in Q1 but it may take a little longer than I’m expecting.

3. Complete 12 monthly health challenges. Kelsey of The Girl Next Door podcast fame did this in 2019, and I love the idea of tackling one small health goal every month. I’ve started making a list of some of the challenges I’d like to attempt in 2020, like not eating any fast food, eating two servings of vegetables every day, not eating anything processed, etc. I’ll reveal my January challenge next week!

4. Do one new thing every month. I attempted this goal a few years ago but didn’t really follow through with it. I’m determined to make it happen in 2020. This can be as small as attending a yoga class to as big as going on a solo vacation. I’ve been keeping a list of ideas and I’ll pick from that list at the beginning of every month!

5. Go on 24 first dates. This feels like a really big goal, even though it only amounts to two dates a month. But I went on three dates total last year (and zero the year before, as it was my year of no dating) so 24 sounds like a lot of dating. I feel like it’s time to give dating the effort it deserves and see what happens when I really invest in it.

6. Make at least three “green” changes to my living environment. I’d like this to be a goal I do every year, slowly eliminating habits I have that contribute to waste. This year, the changes I’d like to make are switching out single-use makeup remover wipes for reusable wipes, switching out the single-use cotton rounds I use for my toner for reusable pads, and moving from tampons to a Diva Cup.

7. Work out 150 times. I was unsuccessful with my 150 workouts goal last year, but I’m blaming it on my ankle. I’m trying it again this year and I hope that having a gym to go to will help me stay on track.

8. Finish my novel and get through one round of revisions. I want to spend the first quarter of the year finishing my novel (it needs at least 30,000 more words) and for the rest of the year, I want to work through the first round of revisions. Then, it might be ready for beta readers in 2021! That’s really exciting to think about.

9. Complete the 2020 Unread Shelf Project. This is a really easy, low-key reading challenge that I wanted to attempt last year but kept forgetting about. Each month has a prompt and you pick out an unread book from your shelves to read. If you don’t read the book in that month, you have to give it away. The pressure!

10. Get my third tattoo. I’ve had an idea for my third tattoo for over a year now and I think that putting this as a 2020 goal will ensure I get it done. The tattoo is to commemorate my grandparents (I still need to figure out some of the artistic details but it will be a small cross with a butterfly) and I want to have it tattooed right behind my right ear.

Did you set goals for 2020?

Categories: Best Of, Goals

Best of 2019 | Looking Back on My Yearly Goals

Happy 2020, friends! I can’t believe it’s here. I love the promise that a new year holds! There’s just so much anticipation in the air. I don’t know what will happen this year, but I dearly hope we will elect a new president, I will find love, and everyone I know will stay healthy and happy.

I’m nearing the end of my “Best of 2019” posts (two to go!) and for today, I’m taking a look back at the yearly goals I set and reporting on how I did. Let’s get into it:

1) Read 100 books. Complete! I read 130.

2) Complete the A-Z Instagram reading challenge. Complete!

3) Reread the Anne of Green Gables series. Complete! I read the first four books in the series, deciding I wasn’t interested in reading the rest of the series (I tried to read the fifth book and I was bored). I’m giving myself a “complete” for this goal.

4) Dye my hair purple. Complete! I did this in July.

5) Save $1,000 in an emergency fund. Complete! I have a fully funded emergency fund. It feels so good to say that! (Of course, I want to have more than $1,000 saved in my emergency fund and will continue adding money to it in 2020, but it won’t be the biggest focus of my finances next year.)

6) Get something on the walls of my living room. Complete! I have a very fun gallery wall. It makes me happy every time I see it!

7) Take control over my dermotophagia. Not complete.

8) Redo my bathroom. Complete! I did this in March.

9) Visit Ireland. Complete! We went in April/May. 🙂

10) Visit Washington DC. Not complete.

11) Build a necklace collection. Complete! I love my little collection of necklaces and want to continue building it.

12) Pay an extra $500 towards my student loans. Not complete.

13) Go to a movie alone. Not complete.

14) Work out 150 times. Not complete. I finished with 121 workouts. I would have gotten this done if I hadn’t broken my ankle on December 1st. Womp.

15) Lose 40 lbs. Not complete.

16) Give Eloise a sibling. Complete! I adopted Lila in February.

17) Start saving for a new apartment. Complete! I have $300 saved so far.

18) Do a spending freeze once a quarter. Not complete.

19) Develop a daily water-drinking habit. Not complete.

20) Buy two bigger bookshelves. Half-complete. I bought one and that’s all I need right now.

21) Complete Project 365. Complete! (Oh heavens, I am so happy to be done with daily photos.)

22) Develop a skincare routine. Complete. I’m in a great routine now and it feels really good!

23) Start a vitamin regimen. Not complete. I did well with this in the first half of 2019 but completely fell off the wagon in the second half.

24) Replace all of my underwear. Complete. Next up: replacing all of my sports bras!

25) Write my novel. Not complete. I made it about 80% of the way there.

26) Try 10 new foods. Not complete.

27) Track my money on Mint. Not complete.

28) Get all of my skin tags removed. Complete! This was done in January/February.

29) Sign up for a paid dating service. Not complete.

30) Visit five new-to-me parks around the area. Not complete.

So, at the end of the year, I completed 16 of the 30 goals I set for myself. A little more than half! That’s not a great result, haha, but it’s all good. 30 goals is a lot of goals to focus on in a year, which is why I’m planning on simplifying them for 2020. (Stay tuned!) But I’m proud of the goals I did get complete, especially saving more money, reading great books, adopting another cat, and visiting Ireland.

How did you do on your 2019 goals?

Categories: Goals

NaNoWriMo 2019 | Week 4 (Days 22-30)

Hello, friends! At this point in time, I am on my birthday cruise and, most likely, having a grand time. 🙂 But I didn’t want to leave you hanging about NaNoWriMo! For those that saw my Instagram update, I hit 50,000 words on November 27 – a nice pre-birthday present to myself. Here’s how the whole week went down:

Day 22

  • Goal: 2,000 words
  • Actual: 2,051 words

Ooh, I actually had a lot of fun writing today! It was nice to have an easy writing day after so many days when I felt like I was just writing utter garbage. The scenes I wrote were a bit unexpected, too, as I hadn’t included them in my plot outline but it all just came out in the writing. How fun! I needed this easy, fun writing day because I was getting worried about motivating myself to finish this challenge and worried I was losing momentum. Apparently not! I’m excited to get back to my story tomorrow. 🙂 That’s a great feeling!

Day 23

  • Goal: 2,000 words
  • Actual: 1,711 words

Oof, today was just a hard day of writing for me. I had a fun scene to write but it was such a struggle to get the words down. Today was also a pretty bleak mental health day for me, one of the first days in a while where I felt the pull of darkness wanting to drag me down. My mental health has been fairly stable and serene for months so it’s hard not to get worried that this one day will morph into multiple days… then weeks… then months. Tomorrow is a new day, though, right? I think I’ll take myself to the gym first thing to get some endorphins flowing and cross my fingers that help lift this cloud of gray fogging up my head.

Day 24

  • Goal: 2,000 words
  • Actual: 1,675 words

While I didn’t meet my word count goal for today (I’m growing less concerned with hitting that goal since I’m so close to finishing!), I’m happy with the progress I made today. And I wrote these words in the morning, not in the evening like I have been doing on Sundays. This means that when I come home after a day of watching football at my mom’s, I can just R E L A X. Woohoo!

Anyway, the writing itself went well and was much, much easier than yesterday. I think it’s because I went on a beautiful morning walk before sitting down to write so I was feeling a bit more connected to myself, and because I am going to spend today with my mom, my brother, and my older nephew, which ALWAYS puts me in a better mood.

Day 25

  • Goal: ?
  • Actual: 1,296 words

Since I’m so close to the end of the challenge (3,500 words to go!), I’m not setting daily word count goals anymore. I’m trying to write two pages a day until I reach 50,000 words. Then, my plan is to take a break until Dec. 9th and get back to writing daily until I finish my novel. Here’s hoping I’ll be motivated in December to get it done!

Back to today. I had a really fun time writing these two pages, although I may have screwed myself royally because I wrote the scene as if my two characters had an entirely different reason to be together. While I love the change I made and I think it’s going to add an extra emotional layer to the story (that it needs, to be honest), it does mean I’m setting myself up for way more revisions than I intended.

I had a hard time getting started today because I kept thinking about the next few scenes in my novel. It’s time to start wrapping things up (I’m predicting I have 5-8 scenes left) and I have no idea what the dark moment is going to be. It’s completely up in the air! The dark moment is so crucial and I read so many of them in romance novels that make me roll my eyes. I don’t want that!

To sum it up, today was a good writing day but internally, the day from hell. Ha.

Day 26

  • Goal: ?
  • Actual: 1,307 words
  • Things researched: top of a mountain in georgia

Goodness gracious, I had such a fun time writing today! The change I made yesterday seems to make my characters feel so much more real and alive, and their chemistry seems palpable. Even though this change will cause some massive rewrites, I think it’s so perfect for the story and will allow me to work through some things in my own life through my character. (Which I know for a fact is something many authors do.)

I’m so close to the end, I can’t believe it! This challenge has been so much fun to complete and I’m just praying I can keep the momentum up in December to finish the story.

Day 27

  • Goal: ?
  • Actual: 2,185 words

I did it! Today, I hit 50,000 words! I am so very proud of myself and pleased with the way my story is turning out. I’m closing in on 80,000 words in the story, which is mind-blowing to me considering where I was at not even a month ago. But now it’s an actual story! Almost complete!

I am going to discuss NaNoWriMo as a whole in another post so let’s focus on today’s writing session. It was a very good writing session – felt easy and fun. Before writing, I knew I needed around 2,000 words to get to 50,000 so I made that my goal. I will say that the last 500 words felt like a slog, haha, but I think that was just because I knew how close I was to that magic 50k number.

And now I’m done! For now, at least. I’m going to spend some time outlining the rest of my story (since I have a better idea of how it’s all going to turn out, although I’m still unsure of the dark moment) and then come the second week of December, it’s back to writing so I can do the thing I’ve been wanting to do for years: finish a novel. Eeks!

Final word count for NaNoWriMo 2019: 50,159 words

Categories: Goals

NaNoWriMo 2019 | Week 3 (Days 15-21)

Another Friday, another NaNoWriMo recap for you! As expected, I took a day off from writing this week and while I’m glad I did that because I most assuredly needed it, I do feel like my momentum has shifted a bit and it’s making me a little wary about how I’ll handle motivation in December. My goal is to spend December finishing up the novel (I’ll likely have at least 30k more words to write), so here’s hoping I can make that happen!

Anyway, onto week three! Here are my recaps:

Day 15

  • Goal: 2,000 words
  • Actual: 2,040 words

As an Enneagram 9, one of the things I really struggle with is inertia. Mostly, it’s hard for me to get started on a task. Once I’m immersed in it, I’m fine and it’s hard to drag me away… it’s just the getting there that’s hard. Procrastination is the name of my game. I felt this inertia problem hard tonight as I worked on my writing. I had to really force myself to pick up my laptop and write. But I did it, in two 30-minute time blocks (and I took a break between them to make cookies, which was an A+ decision). I’m happy with what I wrote today, too. It was a good scene and fun to write! Let’s hope the rest of my writing week is just as much fun!

Day 16

  • Goal: 2,000 words
  • Actual: 2,052 words
  • Things researched: real estate development

Another pretty great writing day! As always, I struggled with the novel at the beginning of my writing session. (Lots of, “Ugh, you’re fooling yourself if you think this novel could ever be published” thoughts.) But I pushed through the self-doubt and mean thoughts and wound up having a lot of fun with one particular scene.

I feel so motivated to get my word count done, even if it does take me some time to actually do it. I went to a fun event this afternoon and afterward, my mom invited me out to dinner but it was nearing 6 p.m. and I hadn’t started writing yet. I knew the more responsible thing was to go home, eat something quick, and get my words done. So that’s what I did – any other month and I would have blown off my writing goal. There’s just something about NaNoWriMo! I’m actually feeling a little nervous about not having it to motivate me when December rolls around.

Day 17

  • Goal: 2,000 words
  • Actual: 2,080 words
  • Things researched: different facial expressions

Today was a great writing day! I waited until the end of the day to write when I should have done it in the morning as I was just lazing around and then spent the rest of the day procrastinating about getting it done. But, I did it! It went pretty quickly, too. Maybe a little over an hour to write 2,000+ words so I’m happy about that. I’m currently on track to finish by Nov. 24th so I think I’m definitely going to give myself a day off sometime this week. I think I’ve earned it!

Day 18

  • Goal: 1,500 words
  • Actual: 1,617 words

I wrote these words before work and I definitely thought my alarm was messing with me when it went off at 4:45AM this morning. Alas, it was not! I was a sleepy girl as I wrote but I got it all down and most of it wasn’t half bad. Still, it took me about the same amount of time to write 1,600 words as it took me to write 2,000 words last night so that’s pretty telling. But I’m done for the day and I can feel good about that!

Day 19

  • Goal: 1,500 words
  • Actual: 0 words

My first goose-egg of the challenge! I planned to take a day off this week and Tuesday seemed like a good day to do it. It allowed me to sleep in (until 5:30am, haha) and just have a day where I didn’t have to think about my novel. It was a good break, but I definitely felt a little guilty about not writing today and wondering if it would affect my momentum. Time will tell!

Day 20

  • Goal: 1,500 words
  • Actual: 1,553 words

I got this done before work and man, was I sleepy while writing it! I finally had the good sense to make myself iced coffee, which gave me the kick in the pants I needed. It was a pretty easy writing day – took about 45 minutes to get these words done and I’m happy with what I wrote. Although I forgot the name of a semi-minor character and didn’t feel like searching my document for the name I gave him originally so I made up a new name for him. Must remember to go back and change it! Remembering the names of minor characters is harder than you’d think! I also find myself mixing up the names of my main character and her closest female friend a lot, which is problematic since my main character is dating her friend’s brother. That could get dicey. 😉

Day 21

  • Goal: 1,500 words
  • Actual: 1,194 words

Oh boy, I was just not interested in writing today. I really had to force myself to sit down and write and then I made a deal with myself that I only had to write to two full pages. It’s under my goal but it’s still forward progress! To prepare to write today, I read back through some of what I wrote yesterday and, y’all, it’s total garbage. Ha. Like, I’d probably abandon the romance novel if I was reading it myself. EEKS. I’m trying to take deep breaths and remember it’s okay. It’s supposed to be trash during the first draft and I will be able to spend lots of time revising it and making it sound much better. Also, I wrote it at 5am yesterday when I was half asleep. I was pretty positive I wasn’t writing award-winning prose then.

My goal is to finish the challenge by Wednesday, which means I need to write around 2,000 words a day from now until then. My weekend is relatively plan-less and the first part of the week is, too, so fingers crossed I can make it happen! (And am much more inspired to write than I was today!)

Total word count after week 3: 39,934 (80%)