Goals – Page 25

Categories: Goals

The Quarterly Check-In | April-June 2017

The second quarter of 2017 was good to me, I must say. I traveled to Puerto Rico with my mom where we sipped piña coladas on the beach, toured an ancient fort, hiked to a waterfall, and rode horses through a rainforest. I finally got the book tattoo that I’ve been craving for years. I joined a gym and I’ve become a crazy gym rat (and I love it). I participated in Sportsfest with a bunch of coworkers. And I started taking anti-anxiety meds, which have been life-changing, to say the least.

Of course, with the good comes the bad, like getting majorly sick in April, dealing with some not-so-fun adulting things, having lots of bouts of loneliness, and Dutch’s nighttime restlessness and overall senility.

But the good vastly outweighs the bad in this case, and I can assuredly say that this last quarter was a fantastic one for me. I am so pleased with 2017 so far. It’s been good to me.

At the beginning of every quarter, I like to review my yearly goals and make sure I’m on pace to achieve them (and if not, to revise them or make a plan for getting on track), as well as set a handful of goals to work toward over the next three months. It’s a check-in of sorts.

So, here is my yearly goals update:

1) Quit fast food and soda – not complete. I have been somewhat successful at cutting out fast food from my diet, but it’s still something I’m having on a semi-regular basis. Soda is always a work in progress, but I’m down to having one a day.

2) Read four “classic” novels – in progress. I’ve read The Handmaid’s Tale and A Separate Peace. I have a friend’s copy of Jane Eyre and I think I’m going to give that a try very soon. Fingers crossed I can get through it!

3) Save $1,000 in an emergency fund – not complete. Ugh, I don’t want to talk about it. Quarter two was a spendy, spendy quarter with a trip to Puerto Rico, booking a flight, and not bringing in extra money from freelancing.

4) Start seeing a therapist – not complete. I need to make this a priority in quarter three.

5) Write my novel – in progress. I’m about 40,000 words into my novel, so I’m nearly at the halfway mark. I’m really having struggles with the novel right now and resistance toward finishing it, but I’m trying to tell myself just to write and I can try to make sense of it all later.

6) Get a tattoo – complete! Yay, I got it done. Finally!

***

Here’s what I hope to accomplish in quarter three:

1) Give up fast food completely.

2) Have two soda-free days every week.

3) Put $50 in my savings account every month.

4) Make an appointment with a therapist.

5) Write 3,000 words every week.

6) Get some form of activity every day and hit 6,000 steps on my Fitbit daily.

7) Pay off my credit card and freeze all unnecessary spending (i.e., buying clothes or going to Starbucks for breakfast or eating out if it doesn’t involve socializing) until I do.

8) Put together my mom’s wedding album.

9) Go on some dates.

10) Run a 5k.

Image credit: Pineapple Supply Co.

Categories: Goals

Yearly Goals – Check-in #1

I totally meant to check in on my yearly goals earlier this month, but time slipped away from me and here we are, nearly at the end of April. (HOW?!) Nonetheless, I wanted to take some time to look back on the goals I set at the beginning of the year and see how I’m doing with them. For some of them, I’m doing great! And for others, not so much. Isn’t that how goal-setting tends to go, though? I wish I had tried harder in some areas during this first quarter, but I still have three quarters to get stuff done.

Here’s how I’m doing on my yearly goals:

1) Quit fast food and soda

Well, this goal was going well during the first half of the quarter, but then I sort of fell apart during the second half. I’m only having fast food maybe once or twice a month, which is good, but I still feel better when I cut it out completely, so I need to get better at meal planning and choosing better options when I’m out. Soda continues to be an uphill battle, but one I’m determined to win!

2) Read four “classic” novels

I have read two already: The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood and A Separate Peace by John Knowles. I’ve loved both books so much, and while they may not be classics in the truest sense of the word, they feel like classics to me, so that’s all that matters, right?

3) Save $1,000 in an emergency fund

I’ve saved $300 towards this goal, but unfortunately, I’ll be using that for an expensive car repair coming down the pipeline. The first quarter of this year was spent catching up on my credit card, which had a $1,700 balance in January (and now is nearly paid off!), so hopefully, the rest of the year can be spent working towards this emergency fund.

4) Start seeing a therapist

Finding a therapist that is taking new patients, accepts my insurance, and works with my schedule has been incredibly difficult! I got frustrated last month after a slew of back-and-forth phone calls with a therapist that went nowhere, but I’m going to get back to the search after my trip. I know how useful therapy will be for me, and I just need to be patient and know that I’ll find the right person in time.

5) Write my novel

This goal is going exceedingly well! I’ve written about 30,000 words of my novel, so I have around 60,000-70,000 words to go. At this rate, I will definitely finish my novel by the end of the year. I’m having so much fun writing the novel, and I just want to do this for the rest of my life.

6) Get a tattoo

Hasn’t happened yet, but I’ve discussed this with two different friends and both are on board to get a tattoo with me. I am hoping this will be a fun task I can mark complete sometime this summer!

So, I’m doing well with some of my more fun yearly goals (reading and writing), but I’m lagging behind on the less fun ones (healthy eating, saving money, and therapy). What I’d like to work on over the next three (well, now two) months is to quit fast food completely (I can do it!), save at least 5% of every paycheck, and email therapists until I find one I like.

I’m trying to remember that these yearly goals are simply for personal development. They are things I’d like to accomplish over 2017, but they are by no means a measuring stick for how well or not well the year went. I just really love goal-setting and making these goals helps me to continue to work towards something every day, no matter how big or little of a step I take.

Have you made progress on your yearly goals?

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?