Ahh, September goals. As you might expect, things didn’t go as planned this month. I injured my big toe at the beginning of the month, prompting a few days of convalescence. And then Hurricane Ian upended my routine during the last week of the month (but thankfully, that’s all it upended!) In the end, I think I only completed one goal and nearly completed a couple more. But that’s life! That’s why I don’t put too much pressure on myself when it comes to my monthly goals. I love setting them and trying to accomplish them, but I’m also not going to beat myself up when goals don’t get done. Life is unpredictable, and these goals are just a fun way to push myself.
September Goals
1) Do a 30-minute workout three times a week. Not complete. The toe injury kept me from working out and I found it really hard to get into a routine this month. I think I only did, like, 4 or 5 workouts this month. Oopsy.
2) Update all of my blog posts from 2009 and 2010. Not complete. I got through 2009 and the first quarter of 2010, but I didn’t get much farther than that.
3) Drink water every day. Ugh, no.
4) Establish a better nighttime routine with lights out at 10:30 p.m. I am still really struggling with this goal, but for a week or two in September, I felt like I was getting into a better routine. And then the hurricane happened. So… semi-complete.
5) Pay off my credit card. Lol, no, considering I had to put a three-night Airbnb stay on my credit card this month. Sigh.
6) Find a reasonably priced course on growing a podcast following. Not complete.
7) Organize my iPhone photos from 2021. Complete! Woohoo – got something done this month at least.
8) Make a doctor’s appointment. Not complete. I just kept letting this fall off my to-do list.
9) Brush the cats once a week. Semi-complete. I did this a few times in September, but not weekly.
10) Make myself dinner three nights a week. Mostly complete. I fell off during the last week of the month since we were in Ft Lauderdale, but I was very good about this the other weeks of the month!
October Goals
1) Do a 30-minute workout three times a week. Let’s try this again! Please no injuries or hurricane scares this month.
2) Update all of my blog posts from 2010. An easier goal for this month. I think recategorizing one year of blog posts every month is about what I can accomplish right now.
3) Drink water every day. Rollover goal.
4) Establish a better nighttime routine with lights out at 10:30 p.m. Rollover goal.
5) Pay off my credit card. Would be nice to mark this complete in October. We’ll see!
6) Recycle some old electronics/cable cords + do a Goodwill drop. I have an old iPad, an old Chromebook, and some cable cords that need to be recycled, which I can do at Best Buy. I just need to make the trek! I also need to do a Goodwill drop. I have a garbage bag filled with items to donate and I want to donate an old cat tower, too.
7) Organize my iPhone photos from the first half of 2022. More photo organization! It’s so nice to see my Photos app look a lot less cluttered. Of course, I failed to realize that having all of my photos on Google Photos would mean I would quickly start running out of space on Google Workspace, which includes Gmail and Google Docs. I’m now paying $2 a month to have 100GB of space on Google Workspace.
8) Make a doctor’s appointment. Rollover goal.
9) Redecorate my bathroom. One of my 2022 annual goals is to redecorate my bathroom, which is really just a simple refresh: a new shower curtain, new towels, new bath mats, etc. I have everything I need but the bath mats, and I am forcing myself to order those this week so I can finally mark this goal complete. Yay!
10) Continue making myself dinner three nights a week. I’m going to keep this goal going in October. It’s a fun one for me to accomplish, but I don’t think it’s quite a habit just yet.
Gosh, you just reminded me that I really need to go through my photos from the last…six months? Eight months? Year? I don’t even know, it’s gotten bad. As usual, I have put this off until it has become a monster of a job. If only I would do it more frequently! This is also how I feel about cleaning my oven. It would not be a problem IF I DID IT MORE OFTEN. Ah well, you win some you lose some.
@Nicole: My solution is to NEVER CLEAN MY OVEN. Please don’t judge (or go ahead and judge, I can take it) – we moved into our house 5 years ago and I haven’t cleaned it once. Not even after buying the house and inheriting the old homeowner’s stove. It’s hot, so it’s not like there are germs – right?
I know this is gross, but I’m just not an oven cleaner.
And I feel you on the photo organization demerit. Sigh.
No judgment here, mostly jealousy! Haha. For me, it’s not so much about the germs but about food particles that have crusted on the bottom of my oven and then make my oven smell like something’s burning every time I turn it on! So then it gets to the point where I *have* to clean it because I just can’t take that smell!
Photo organization is always the easiest task to put on the backburner! I totally get it. We’ll see how well I keep up with organizing my photos once I’m done with working through the past few years!
These seem like reasonable goals! You can do it!
Thanks, NGS!
I have SO many pictures from this year and while they’re all off my phone and on the computer, they are not organized at all and I’m starting to stress. I always do an annual photobook and like to have photos well organized to make that process run more smoothly. Alas…I’m just so far behind. In reality, a few hours would likely get things into working order, but somehow that time investment seems insurmountable.
The hassle is the fact that my husband and I have photos from the same event, so I have to categorize everything by date and then sift through BOTH sets of pictures, and move favourites for the photobook to a different location.
I might be overcomplicating things…but having a really intricate system DOES make the photobook prep a lot easier.
Sigh.
I just need to get the darn thing started!
Also, kudos on taking the time to set monthly goals. I can hardly keep track of my 22 annual ones from this year!
Photo organization can be such an overwhelming task, especially when you have tons of pictures of the kids and vacations and other life events to deal with! I totally understand. It’s just one of those tasks that can continually get pushed down the list!
September was a weird month with your toe injury and then the hurricane! Hopefully October is more ‘normalish’!! You have a good set of goals.
I have really focused on photo and video organization over the last 2 years. I do a month at a time and that has made it manageable. So last year I went through all the photos taken that month in previous years. now that that’s done, I go through my photos from the previous month, delete the duplicates/screen shots/things that didn’t turn out, and made a folder of favorites to use for my photo book and calendar projects. This year I’m tackling old videos and that has been such a fun project! I’ll often have Paul sit with me while I go through videos because he loves seeing himself at a younger age!
Aww, seeing those videos must be so fun! And kinda crazy because it probably doesn’t seem that long ago that Paul was just a baby/toddler! You seem to have the right system down!
Don’t beat yourself up over some of your goals, you had bigger things to worry about last month… and I actually think “rollover goals” are all the hype 😉 it’s good to keep chipping away at something!
Yesss… love a good rollover goal, sometimes!
Um, just going to chime in here and say that injury and, you know, an act of god qualify as good reasons not to meet one’s goals. Go easy on yourself, my friend! And yes, rollover goals – they mean you are committed, even if you weren’t able to achieve them in in one (crazy nutty) month.
You would die – DIE – to see my completely unorganized photos. I don’t even take that many! Organizing them would be easy – I need to put all the quote pictures from IG in one album, the ones from vacations/family gatherings in another, and that gets me through about 75% of them! But motivation and time… ooof… you inspire me, although whether I’ll act is another question. 🙂
Oh yes, I am not beating myself up at all for not completing my September goals. It was a wacky month!
I get so stressed out about unorganized photos, haha. Only my own, though! I’m so anal about digital clutter.