Goals – Page 23

Categories: Goals

Quarterly Goals | Quarter Two 2017

I go back and forth (and back and forth) on goal setting. Sometimes, I want to set monthly goals. Sometimes, I want to set quarterly goals. Sometimes, I think this whole goal-setting process is silly and don’t want to do it at all. I know of only one other blogger who uses her blog to set goals, so it’s not something I see very many people doing.

And yet.

I still love to use my blog to set goals. I still love thinking about what I want to accomplish. And I’m still way more likely to work toward my goals if I have to report back to my blog about my accomplishments later. (It’s the Obliger in me.)

I never used to get excited about the start of a new quarter, but there’s something refreshing about it. If we break our year up into three-month chunks, rather than looking at is as a whole or in monthly increments, it makes establishing goals and achieving them a little easier. There’s enough time, but not too much time.

So, here I am. Setting quarterly goals once again. I know I’m a mess when it comes to how I set goals, so I thank you for bearing with me. I’ve broken these goals into six sections – finances, health, writing, nagging tasks, adventure, and personal habits – because these are the sections that I’m always striving for. Finances, health, and writing are the big areas of my life where I’m constantly looking to improve and take chances. Nagging tasks, adventure, and personal habits are areas for me to take care of things, step outside my comfort zone, and experiment with my life and see what happens.

FINANCES | Move my savings to a CapitalOne 360 Savings account.

HEALTH | Use MyFitnessPal to track my food and walk 5,000 steps a day.

NAGGING TASK | Finish my mom’s wedding album (just in time for her second anniversary, oops).

ADVENTURE | Enjoy the hell out of Puerto Rico.

WRITING | Pitch an article.

PERSONAL HABIT | Stop snoozing my alarm.

Your thoughts on goal setting? Yay or nay?

Categories: Goals

February Goals

I love having monthly goals back into my life. There’s something about the ordinariness of them that I need and I like ticking off specific goals in my bullet journal. I don’t have a ton going on in February, for which I’m grateful. My grandpa is having back surgery, my mom is hosting her annual Super Bowl party, and I’m going to try to get out to some trails for long walks. (The weather has been unseasonably gorgeous lately.) I also need to file my tax return and it will be my first time declaring freelance earnings, which has me all sorts of nervous. (Anybody with experience with this want to help a girl out? Please?!)

Anyway, let’s get into my monthly goals recap! Here’s what I hoped to accomplish in January:

Write 2,000 words weekly in my fiction novel. Complete! I’m so thankful for my weekly writing dates with my friend, M. We usually try to meet on Sunday mornings and I’m able to knock out my 2,000 words within two hours with her. And then she forces me to read aloud to her what I’ve written. I’m currently at 10,000 words in the novel and I’m enjoying the process so very much.

Walk 5,000 steps daily. Mostly complete. There were a few days when I didn’t hit my step goal (and two days when I didn’t wear my Fitbit at all, whoops), but generally, it wasn’t too difficult to get to 5,000 steps. On particularly sedentary days at work, it forced me to go for a walk in the evening, which is never a bad thing!

Update my “Work With Me” page on my blog. Not complete. I forgot I even made this goal in January. Oops.

Submit one personal essay. Not complete. My weekends in January ended up being pretty busy and I was given a freelancing assignment that I had to prioritize over other writing (and paid writing > unpaid writing, sorry not sorry). I do have a great idea for a personal essay, so I just need to find the time to write it.

Work out three times a week. Mostly complete? Ish? I fell apart towards the end of the month (whenever I’m feeling particularly anxious, it’s hard for me to exercise, even though I know that’s exactly what will help me), but it’s a goal I’m constantly striving toward.

Not too bad! Three-ish out of five completed, and I’m happy about that because January ended up being a crazier month than normal. February should be a bit calmer, and here are the goals I’m setting:

No pizza February. Since I really want 2017 to be the year I finally get my health under control and lose some damn weight for once, I’m taking measures to slowly cut out the bad stuff from my diet. January, I gave up fast food and, aside from one slip-up early in the month due to not planning properly, I didn’t have any fast food. February, I want to give up pizza because I eat it, no joke, at least 5-6 times a week. If I order a pizza for dinner, that usually yields leftovers for 2-3 days and then, last year, I fell into this habit of eating pizza rolls whenever I didn’t want to make dinner and end up eating those at least twice a week. It’s just… it’s bad, you guys. Too much pizza! I want to cut it out completely for 28 days and then allow it back into my life but with restrictions. As in, I can only eat pizza from non-chain restaurants. No more Dominos. No more Pizza Hut. Their pizza isn’t even good pizza anyway!

Update my “Work With Me” page on my blog. This is back on the list for February because it’s a task that really needs to be completed. Fingers crossed I don’t forget about it!

Work out three times a week and walk 5,000 steps daily. I’ll probably have some sort of exercise/step goal every month because I need the accountability of coming to my blog and reporting. At this point, I just want to go for three long walks a week and maybe in March, I’ll finally join a gym so I can start getting in more high-intense workouts.

Stick to a 9:30PM bedtime. I feel my best when I go to bed early and lately, I haven’t been shutting the lights off until 11PM or later. Sometimes, this is due to working at my computer until late in the evening or just spending too much time scrolling through my social media feeds on my phone when I should be turning off the light. I’m committing to a 9:30PM bedtime in February and I know I’ll feel so much better for having done so.

Write 10,000 words in my novel. This equals to 2,500 words per week, which is a little more than I wrote in January. Since I can usually write 2,000 during my weekly writing date with M., I’ll just need to schedule extra writing time during the week… only about an hour or so, which is totally doable.

Do you have any goals for February?

Categories: Goals

Monthly Goals | January 2017

Last year, I didn’t set monthly goals for the majority of the year, opting for quarterly goals instead. This year, I want to bring back monthly goals because I really love setting small intentions for the month. It’s just fun for me. Some of these goals are related to my bigger yearly goals while others are just little tasks I need to take care of or habits I want to cultivate.

Here’s what I’m hoping to accomplish in January!

Write 2,000 words weekly in my fiction novel. In order to write an 80,000-word novel by the end of the year, I need to write 1,538 words weekly. I rounded up to 2,000 to make things simpler (and to give myself a week or so of leeway, should I need it). Writing 2,000 words a week is nothing and something I can usually accomplish during my weekly writing date with my friend M., so I’m pretty sure I can get this done.

Walk 5,000 steps daily. I got a FitBit for Christmas! Yay! And it helped me realize how little walking I do on a daily basis. Like, my average is under 4,000 steps. Uh, whoops. Can I blame my sedentary office job for that? I know that I’m “supposed” to walk 10,000 steps a day, but that sounds like an impossible daily feat, so I’m setting the bar low at 5,000 and I’ll work my way up from there.

Update my “Work With Me” page on my blog. I’ve finished some cool freelance projects in the past few months (and was recently published on Thought Catalog – WHAT!), but I haven’t updated my “Work With Me” page since before I started hustling after freelance work. I need to make sure this page reflects the work I’ve done, so I just need to spend a few hours one weekend updating it. (And if I put it as a goal, I am much more likely to do this!)

Submit one personal essay. As mentioned above, I was recently published on Thought Catalog. They reached out to me to republish one of my blog posts and it was such an exciting moment for me. I really want to make 2017 the year where I publish more of my writing in different places, to truly take a big step outside my comfort zone and let my writing out into the world. I’ll start by trying to submit a personal essay to a publication in January.

Work out three times a week. I’m slowly working my way through Couch to 5k for the 4,959th time. It’s the easiest way for me to work out right now since I can do it easily before work and it gives me a good challenge. I’m still not a fan of running, but maybe the 4,959th time is the charm?

What’s one thing – big or small – that you want to accomplish in January?

Categories: Goals

Goals for 2017

Here we are at the beginning of another year. It’s crazy how fast time passes, isn’t it? I don’t feel like it was all that long ago that I was welcoming 2016, but suddenly, 12 months have passed by and I’m thinking ahead to what I want out of this new year.

The truth is, I don’t exactly know what I want out of 2017. I know I want to travel. I know I want to save money. I know I want to get healthy. I know I want to finish my novel. But those are just goals. If I achieve them, great. If not, that’s okay, too. I guess what I’m mostly seeking from 2017 is fulfillment. I want to be fulfilled and satisfied with my life. I want to feel good about myself.

But, still, I made some resolutions for this year. We’ll see how many of them I achieve and if I even remember them by the time 2018 rolls around. So much can happen in a year and I’m excited to see what will unfold over the months in this one.

Here is what I’m hoping to accomplish in 2017:

Quit fast food and soda

Every year, I make some sort of weight loss goal that I never attain. This year, I want to make a healthy living goal. After thinking long and hard about my eating habits and how I want to feel, I know that these are two addictions I need to cut. I eat fast food maybe one to two times a week, more on a really bad week. I don’t feel like I’m hugely addicted to fast food, but it’s more that I rely on it when I didn’t meal plan well or am feeling upset and want to feel better. If I can cut it out completely, all the better! And it’s the same with soda. Over the past month, I’ve dropped down to one soda a day and I’m just going to continue dropping the number of sodas I drink until I don’t have the urge for it anymore. (The cold turkey method doesn’t work for me; I’ve tried it in the past.) Here’s to a healthier 2017!

Read four “classic” novels

I’ve already decided what the novels will be: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, The Count of Monte Cristo, Pride and Prejudice, and The Handmaid’s Tale. All of these novels may not be classic novels in the literary sense of the word, but they feel classic to me and that’s all that matters. (Heh.) I am terrified to read The Count of Monte Cristo because it’s nearly 1,300 pages (!), but someone counted it among one of their favorite novels on the What Should I Read Next? podcast, so I think I’m going to give it a shot. (My backup plan is to read 1984 by George Orwell if I can’t make it through the book.) I want to read more widely this year, books that I wouldn’t necessarily pick up on my own, so I’m excited about this reading goal!

Save $1,000 in an emergency fund

I am placing a priority on this goal this year. It’s ridiculous to not have an emergency fund, being nearly 30. My goal is to place $50 a paycheck into a separate savings account (and to have that money transfer automatically so I can pretend it was never there to begin with!) My money habits are not the best, and I acknowledge this, but every year, I’ve gotten a bit better at how I spend and save money and that’s all I can ask of myself.

Start seeing a therapist

This is another goal that I constantly have on my yearly resolutions and there are reasons why I keep putting off finding a therapist. My last therapist experience wasn’t positive, therapy isn’t cheap, my social anxiety means making phone calls to make an appointment terrifies me… I could go on. But I’m inspired by the people in my life who have taken the plunge and started therapy, and inspired by the change it has wrought in their lives, so I’m going to work hard to mark this goal as complete.

Write my novel

I was hoping 2016 was going to be the year that I finally wrote my novel, but it didn’t happen for me. I continued to get in my head about writing and my work-in-progress and ended up quitting and starting over a dozen times. I also had to put writing to the wayside when my freelance work picked up, but I’m hoping to make fiction writing more of a priority in 2017.

Get a tattoo

Honestly, I have no idea what I’m waiting for, divine intervention? I know the tattoo I want. I know where I want it. I know I will feel so happy when I get it. Time to stop being a baby and do the thing.

So here’s to 2017! I’ll check in on these goals every few months in the hopes I actually stick with them throughout the year and can mark more than a few of them complete.

Do you have any goals for 2017?

Categories: Goals

Quarterly Goals | Fourth Quarter 2016

It’s the last quarter of 2016! I can’t believe how fast this year has flown by, but looking back on the past nine months, I’m pretty satisfied with how this year has turned out for me. I took a cruise, moved into my own place, started a freelancing side hustle, put lots of money towards my debt, and just… settled into myself. I feel really good about who I am right now. I’m finding myself less and less concerned about not hitting the milestones I thought I’d hit by the end of my twenties and more excited about where I am and what the future has in store for me.

So, before I jump into my goals for this quarter, I need to take a look back on the third quarter of 2016 and the goals I set:

1) Write at least 20,000 words in my novel. Incomplete.

I made some progress in my novel, but then fiction writing took a back burner when I started looking for freelance writing jobs. And then, as I tried to get back into the story, I realized some key elements were missing and what I really needed was to spend time thinking about my plot and what I wanted to say with my novel. I decided to go back to the drawing board with my novel and put together a solid background on my characters and a solid outline for my plot. So, that’s where I am on that.

2) Start a freelancing side hustle. Complete.

I am so happy to mark this goal as complete! I completed a bunch of different projects with various clients that I found on Craigslist, Upwork, and Freelancer. Using websites like Upwork and Freelancer isn’t the best way to begin freelance writing, but it was the easiest place for me to start. And I scored some pretty interesting gigs that allowed me to stretch my writing skills, so it was a great experience for me.

3) Have a smooth, seamless move into my new home. Complete.

My moving weekend went as well as I could have hoped! It was a really, really tiring time, though, and I’m so glad it’s behind me.

4) Take a social media/blogging sabbatical in September. Complete.

I had serious thoughts about breaking my sabbatical halfway into September but decided to hang tough and stick it out. I’m debating if I’ll ever do a month-long break again (I missed blogging so much!), but it was good for me!

5) Lose 10 lbs. Incomplete.

Oh, boy. Losing weight has not been easy this year, mostly because I haven’t really dedicated myself to doing so. I’ve toyed with the idea of joining Weight Watchers again, but I don’t think that’s what I need. I think what I need is to overhaul my diet, bit by bit, worrying less about what the number on the scale says and more about how eating certain foods makes me feel.

6) Find a new primary care doctor and dentist. Incomplete.

Oops. Forgot I had this as a goal.

Looking back on my goals for the third quarter, I’m pretty happy with the progress I made! I completed three out of the six goals I set, and those were the more important goals to me, so I’m proud of myself. Go, Steph!

Now, let’s take a look at the fourth quarter of 2016! In this quarter, I have a lot going on. I’m taking two trips: a girls’ weekend in The Villages with my book club gals and a five-day cruise with my mom. I’m turning 29. Dutch has his annual Running of the Weiners race. Then there are the holidays: Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas. A full quarter indeed!

Here’s what I want to accomplish:

1) Submit an essay to an online website.

A secret about me is that I’m scared to put my creative writing out into the world. I’m scared that I’m not good enough. I’m scared that my thoughts are too small. I’m scared of allowing strangers on the internet to read my words. It’s a fear I need to get over and the only way to do so is to actually put my work out there and let people discuss it.

2) Finish outlining my novel.

I was hoping 2016 would be the year I finally finished my novel and sent it to agents, but it was not to be. Instead, 2016 is the year I couldn’t make up my mind about how to plot out my novel. I’ve finally settled on a great premise and inciting incident, so I want to take the rest of 2016 to thoroughly outline my novel so that it is as strong as it can be.

3) Get a tattoo.

So I mentioned that I’m going to The Villages for a weekend with my book club girls, and for those who aren’t familiar with this town, it’s a retirement community. Yes, we are visiting a retirement community where all activities end at 9pm (which is so ideal for me, you have no idea). I think there would be nothing more hilarious than if I go spend a “crazy” weekend at The Villages with my girlfriends and come back with a tattoo. I hope I can make it happen.

4) Start exercising again and drink water daily.

I’m taking the smallest of steps in this journey to live a healthier life. Hopefully, by focusing on these goals and less on eating a certain way to lose weight, I’ll learn to be more accepting of my reflection.

5) Decorate my apartment.

My apartment is mostly put together, aside from the fact that my walls are still bare! I have shelves I need to hang, which will help, but I also want to put together a gallery wall using prints I’ve collected, buy a painting or two, and blow up some Instagram photos to really make my apartment feel more like home.

Do you have any goals you’d like to accomplish this quarter?