Oh, goal-setting, how I love thee. I am really excited about September. Not because I have anything fantastically awesome planned, but it is the beginning of my favorite time of year. We’re back to football, Halloween decorations are out, and it’s really not too soon to be thinking about Christmas and singing holiday tunes now, is it? (Don’t answer that.) Plus, I have a really, really, really exciting fall planned. September is also a huge birthday month – my brother turns 27 (WHAT!), my nephew turns 5 (I don’t even want to talk about it), and it’s also my mom’s boyfriend’s birthday. Celebrations all around!

Let’s dive right into goals!

August Goals Recap

1. Be more social, by going out at least twice during the month (excluding book club). Yes! I actually ended up having three nights out this month: dinner and a movie with a friend, a night out at a yummy restaurant downtown with my book club girls where I also had my first taste of gelato (!), and then book club was basically canceled because nobody read the book (except for me!) so four of us met at a Mexican restaurant after work one Thursday. I made way more of an effort this month to be social, and I realize going out three times in one month isn’t crazy for most but for me, it’s a solid social month.

2. Take Dutch to the dog beach. Yes! Well, actually, we took him on the first day of September but whatever, I’m counting it. Ha. He had a blast, we had a blast, and we’re already talking about going again. Yay!

3. Ask five bloggers if I can post on their blog and pitch topic ideas. Ugh, still no on this one. It’s something that’s SO easy to let fall to the wayside because I feel a little uncomfortable about asking people if I can post on their blog. (What if they say no?!) I still need about 20 blogs to reach my goal so I just have to get over myself and just ASK.

September Goals

1. Try out a trampoline fitness class! A while back, my mom bought a Groupon deal for both of us for an “Airobics” class at a local indoor trampoline arena. The Groupon expires in mid-September and we have three classes to use, so I’m really excited to try this out! It just seems like a ridiculously fun way to get some exercise, you know? I’ll be sure to report back on how the classes go!

2. Go back to church. So, big confession: I haven’t been regularly attending church for well over a year now. And I know you don’t need to attend church to maintain your faith, but I actually think you do. You need to be around other believers, need to worship, need to hear the Word. I always feel more centered after a church service, because I know it’s where I’m meant to be. I want to regain control of my faith and I think a big step is to just get back to attending church every Sunday.

3. Sit down and create a new budget. Along with my new job came a significant pay raise, so I will need to sit down and rework my budget. My immediate goals are to bring my credit card balances back up, start helping out with household bills more (I’m in charge of our grocery budget, but want to get to a point where we’re going halfsies on all bills), and get back to a cash budget system for all unnecessary purchases (i.e., eating out, shopping, etc.).

What’s your favorite thing about fall?

I promise I won’t start every monthly recap like this, but how is February already over? This month flew by! This month has had some extreme highs and extreme lows. There was good: such as a blossoming relationship, buying a car, and watching my mom complete two races. And then there was bad: the crash and burn of the said relationship and struggles in all areas of my life. A good friend told me to “honor my feelings” and that is what I am trying to do. Sometimes I am sad. Sometimes I am angry. Sometimes I am joyful. Sometimes I am hopeful. Honoring my feelings means being present in them. To cry if I want to cry. To laugh if I want to laugh. I don’t like being sad or angry or upset. But sometimes I need to be sad or angry or upset.

In any event, today is a new month, and with it, hopefully, a new attitude! I am sad to see this relationship end so soon, but I’m hopeful that the next guy who catches my eye will be even more wonderful. I have faith in this!

Onward to my recap on my February goals. (Spoiler alert: I didn’t do anywhere near as good as I did in January…)

February Recap

Meal plan every week and no eating out on weekdays. This was half a success. I was successful at meal planning every week but sticking to the plan? Not so great. My mom and I do not like to cook so sometimes it’s easier to just pick something up rather than spend time in the kitchen. I’m not even talking about complicated dishes here! At most, it takes us 20 minutes to make dinner. It’s definitely an area we need to work on.

Save more money than I spend. Big, fat fail. For one, I bought a car so, ya know, that’s rather expensive. And I just wasn’t very smart with my money. (More to come on this subject next week!)

Ride my bike once a week. Another failure. I only managed to get in one bike ride, due to scheduling difficulties and cold weather. It’s actually quite the process to load the bike up in the car and get out to a park to ride, but I found out it’s worth it! My one bike ride felt great! It was a windy day and my backside ached for a solid 3 days afterward (need to invest in padded shorts!) but I enjoyed it a lot. Hopefully, I can make this a regular Saturday morning routine for me.

Stop eating after 8pm. I didn’t track this goal, really, but I feel like I accomplished it. Mainly, I made this goal to stop snacking after dinner. If I’m hungry, I give myself a pass but usually, I’m not. It’s just routine for me and I eat more out of boredom than actual hunger. Success-ish?

Set up a payment plan to take care of my ER bill from 2010. I did not do this. Oops.

So 1.5 goals out of 5 achieved. Eek. In January, I made a habit of checking in with my goals every weekend. I even made myself a checklist where I could tally things up and make notes and decide on what I needed to do the following week. It was a mini-progress report for myself. I didn’t do this in February and it shows. It may sound silly, but it helped immensely and I want to get back at it in March.

March Intentions

Complete a Buy Nothing challenge this month. February was not a very good month for me, financially. I wasn’t very smart with my money and then there’s the whole buying a car thing. My bank account took a big hit, even with my tax return. I’ve wanted to complete one of these challenges for a while now and this month is the perfect time to do it. (And now that I’ve been researching cruises for the fall, this may stretch into a “Buy Nothing So I Can Afford a Cruise” challenge…)

Set up a payment plan for my ER bill. So, oops, didn’t quite get around to doing this in February. On the list for this month! Can you tell how much I am procrastinating about this?

Go back to church. Confession: I haven’t been regularly attending church for well over 6 months now. It’s mostly laziness than anything else keeping me away. I know I feel better about myself and I need the connection I find at church. It’s time to go back.

Make three meals a week at home. Baby steps, my friends. I am inspired by those of you who seldom eat out but I am not one of those people. As mentioned above, I despise cooking so I take the lazy girl’s way out and pick something up. This month, I’m making a goal of making 3 meals at home a week. It’s not much, but it’s a start.

Complete the Spartan 500 in under 1 hour. This will be the third Spartan event I’ve participated in. I’m still not brave enough to complete the Spartan 1000 (400 burpees, you guys. 400!) but I really want to kick some major ass at the 500. My previous times have been around 1:11 and 1:15 so I know I have it in me to do it in under an hour. It’s the sit-ups that kill me. Time to train! (And if you’re local…. join me! Here’s the link. It costs $10 and is a killer, killer workout.)

How was your February? Any goals accomplished?

picture credit

I can’t believe we’re already at the end of January. Then again, this month felt intensely long, with it being five weeks long and everything. January was a really good month in my life and I really cannot wait to see what February holds in store for me. I don’t have anything exciting coming up to look forward to (like the past two years, when I had a fabulous cruise on the horizon…) but good things are happening and I’m finding myself more and more in love with this life I’m building.

January Recap

Work out five days a week, incorporating Best Body Bootcamp workouts and Couch to 5K training. I completed this goal all but one week, which was the first week of January. I’m getting into a routine of working out again, thanks largely in part to Best Body Bootcamp. Since those who work out five days a week get their name in the pot for the weekly cash drawings, it definitely makes me more apt to work out!

Spend no money on Kindle books and get my credit card balance to $0. Major goal accomplished! My two credit cards have no balances on them at all, which is a feat I haven’t managed to do in years. Now comes the tough part of not using it, unless absolutely necessary. I also did well on my Kindle buying freeze for January and I’m thinking of extending it into February.

Plan my next novel. I didn’t get anywhere with this. I haven’t felt very inspired with fiction writing lately. I have ideas, but then I have another idea. Then another idea. Then another idea. And it’s hard to focus my mind on one idea to write about. I write down all my ideas so I have a growing list but I’m shelving this for right now.

Figure out what I need to do to start freelancing. Check! I reached out on my blog and Twitter to guest post on a variety of blogs (50 is my goal!) to build my writing samples and my reputation. There are some big-name blogs I plan on pitching to in the future, but I think I took a good step in the right direction for this in January.

Get 8-9 hours of sleep a night. I definitely felt myself developing a better routine at night, where I shut off the TV and shut down the laptop by 8:30 so I can take care of bedtime routines before going to sleep. I averaged 8 hours of sleep most nights, with a few nights being 7 hours. I’m very happy about this goal!

Four out of five goals completed. Not too shabby!

February Intentions

Meal plan every week and no eating out on weekdays.  The past two weeks, my mom and I got completely off track with meal planning, which means most of our meals are eaten out. Meal planning is annoying and I hate coming up with meals and making sure I have all my bases covered (lunches especially!). But it’s also necessary if I want to lose weight, because I know I’ve gotten completely off track with healthy eating over the past two weeks. I think by making it a goal to eat every dinner in on weekdays, it’ll help with my weight loss goals as well.

Save more money than I spend. Now that my credit cards are paid off and I’ve eliminated unnecessary bills and expenditures, I want to really work on saving more and spending less. That’s my goal for the year, because I know I tend to spend money if I see it sitting in my bank account. Aside from paying my mom for rent, food, utilities, etc., I only have my phone bill to contend with. I think I can save a good chunk of money, as I’m trying to prepare in the event my tax return is sucky (which is what I’m using to hopefully buy a car).

Ride my bike once a week. In December, my mom’s coworker brought us an old bike for us to use. I’ve always wanted to become a biker but I haven’t ridden it once. The area I live in isn’t very biker-friendly but I still want to try to take the bike out once a week to shake up my exercise a little bit.

Stop eating after 8pm. I’m not a mindless eater, nor a big nighttime snacker but I can be a late-night eater. My mom and I used to eat dinner at 8pm or later most nights, but we’ve gotten better at eating dinner at a normal time, usually 6:30 or 7:00. But then I want dessert! And sometimes, not even because I’m hungry but because my body is so ingrained in the routine of dessert after dinner. After soda, sugar is my biggest vice (well, they do work in tandem as soda also contains lots of sugar so it was the first step in beating my sugar addiction) and I want to start working on all those little snacks I have throughout the day. (Obviously, if I am actually hungry, I will have something but I want it to be a healthy something!)

Set up a payment plan to take care of my ER bill from 2010. Ugh. I’m not looking forward to this goal one bit. Once I finish paying off my orthopedic, I want to start the process of dealing with this bill. It’s just one of those things that needs to be dealt with, and I keep pretending it doesn’t exist.

What are your goals for February?