Wednesday, January 2, 2019

Goals for 2019


Happy New Year!!

Hope you had lovely and fun celebrations. As usual, I was helping DH sell fireworks, but this year we had Sonshine with us so it was just like old times. :0) I'm not looking forward to putting him back on a plane bound for Seattle, but once he's gone, it'll be time to knuckle down, get back on the wagon, yada yada yada.

But what does that mean for me in terms of specifics?

1) I absolutely have to write my Grandma on a regular basis. I still have the post cards I bought last year, and it was a good idea, so I'll stick with it. I mean, sometimes writing a letter seems both daunting and tedious when nothing much changes from month to month. The specific goal is to send a post card monthly and a letter quarterly.

2) Still gotta call my mommas too. The once a month timing seems good for this task too, so we'll stick with that.

3) Walking the dog...yup. She needs the exercise and quite frankly so do I. The specific goal to start is to walk her Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. I generally work from home those days, so I will take a 15-20 minute break and get the dog and myself out of the house unless it's raining.

Looks like most of last year's goals are being carried forward. But, as I've done for the first three goals, I'm going to set specifics. On we go...

4) Cook and eat better. Meaning no more bread-based carbs for awhile. And then just maybe my carb-lite tortillas at some point. Other than that, more protein and green veggies. More fish if I can track it down in my WalMart that has been re-arranging foodstuff again. Less red meat. More keto, maybe.

5) Re-institute the cleaning plan. I really wanted to hire someone to come in and do some stuff like mop the floors and scrub the bathrooms, but that's not going to happen anytime soon, so that means I have to make a concerted effort myself. So I'll be digging out the box of index cards and scheduling chores. This system is from a book called "Sidetracked Home Executives: From Pigpen to Paradise" by Pam Young and Peggy Jones. It was recommended by a friend many moons ago.

6) Reduce body fat and maintain current body weight. Losing the four pounds I've gained over the holidays isn't going to be too difficult, so I'm not overly worried about it. Losing the inches is going to be a challenge. The first little bit probably won't be too hard, but once I reach that plateau again...ugh.

Part of the plan involves not eating after 7pm and not eating before 9am. I might extend that daily fasting stint by an hour for a week or so to jump start everything. I don't often eat after 7pm regardless, although I have cheated a bit and have eaten my morning meal anywhere from 7:30am onward. Warm water is a really helpful way of feeling full and defeating the hungries. I'll be drinking a lot of warm water in the next couple of weeks.

7) Work on the writing career, such as it is. I'm not trying to make a living wage off the writing, but I would like to make enough publish a couple of books each year as well as travel to the GRL Conference each October. So the goal for 2019 is to publish at least two books. I have book 7 of the Ten Rigs Texas series 1/3 to 1/2 complete. I also have book 1 of another three-book series at some partial point of completion, not to mention an epic historical (that does need a lot of editorial work) at about 75% completion. I also need to flesh out all the recurring characters for the next 6-9 book series I'm planning.

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Okay, so, the first seven goals are carry-over/repeats from 2018 as well as one or two that are from as far back as 2017 or 2016. I don't need to make "attend more Stars games" a goal again, because just finishing out the season with the current tickets I have will be enough and I can't imagine that we won't remain partial season ticket holders for next season. :0)

That means I need three new-for-2019 goals. Let's see what we can come up with...

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8) Get some stuff around the house done. Aside from the general housekeeping of #5, I have a few projects that I'd like to get done. One such project is the hallway bathroom. I think I mentioned I want to paint all of the tile eventually. Unfortunately, there's a lot of tile so it will have to be done in stages. The toilet will probably have to come out because there's tile halfway up the walls. Most of the other projects are smaller and require less effort, but it would be nice to finally get them taken care of. I can enumerate them all later so I have a place of reference.

9) Expand the sampler pattern offerings at my Etsy store. Let's shoot for minimum of one new pattern a month. It helps that I have a handful at various stages of completion and quite a few additional ideas. The biggest hurdle is that I like to have real life samples to take pictures of instead of just the image the pattern program generates. As you can guess, that's the most time-consuming part.

10) Spend more time together as family, including DD. I was recently reminded of how much fun it is to play board games. As a result, I bought a new one--and funny enough it was one we had years ago but that we never apparently figured out how to play. DD and I both got games for Christmas as well. So I'm going to shoot for one game night a month to start an we'll see how it goes.

So those are my goals, with specific measurables, for the new year.

How about you?

2 comments:

Rachel Capps said...

Cluedo is a popular game with my kids :)

Jen FitzGerald said...

Gosh, Rachel, we haven't played Clue in years. :0)