collingwest | Week #4 Goals Update

I have not had a particularly good week this week, mostly (but not completely) because of physical ailments. On Saturday the 22nd, I still was having respiratory symptoms; just going outside for an hour to help look for an escaped cat left me winded and exhausted for the rest of the day. Sunday was even worse, and it was accompanied by fevers. I ended up not going into work on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday although I did attempt to work from home.

But by Thursday morning, I was feeling better enough to go in to the office for the day and I had a really productive one. It exhausted me, though, so I spent most of yesterday resting. I’m feeling better again today, though, which is a good sign, and I’m planning on taking the opportunity the weekend offers me to take it slow and easy. With luck, I’ll be able to return to my regular routine again this week — and that will return me to more serious work on the goals.

All this said, I didn’t do nothing toward the goal work. It just wasn’t as much as I would’ve otherwise wished.

Writing

Counting today, I’m now at 19 writing days for the year. At this point, I do not expect I’ll make my goal of 350, but the next tier down on Get Your Words Out is 240 days and I should easily be able to stay ahead of that. Pledges can’t be changed midyear, so I’ve unofficially decided that I’m going to strive for at least 315 writing days. That’s 90% of the goal and I shouldn’t have any trouble achieving that.

This week, I also revamped the blog structure to put everything except my strictly-personal posts onto the Stannum Enterprises main site. As arranged, I’m emphasizing the different “topic” sections (WordPress’ categories) on the site and eventually I plan to put different stylesheets into the WordPress setup so that there are visual differences between the two. I also plan to make it easier to follow each topic’s feed than to follow the general feed. The goal there is to create the kind of targeted blog sites that readers prefer, while also being a single blog on the back end.

Not counting this post, I’m at 20,215 words for the year. All are non-fiction, and 13K of them are in the private journal. In other words, I need to get cracking on the fiction. That said, just knowing that my output is strong helps me keep myself motivated for writing in general.

Career/Education/Finances

While I got my IRA contribution in for the week, I didn’t get anything else accomplished. I have 24 hours of continuing education that I have to get done by early March if I want to renew my license on time, so that needs to be my major priority this week outside of catching up at work.

Fitness/Diet

Believe it or not, despite having a fairly uneven January, I’ve managed to log 2 exercise days (both were walking laps at work) and 3 good-lunch days so far this year. Getting back into my regular routine this next week will let me increase both those numbers into a frequency that might actually mean I can still meet both those goals. That’s the plan, anyway.

My weight has been fluctuating up and down and I am expecting that I likely won’t hit the January weight goal. This said, since I am using Slim-Fast there’s a decent chance of me being able to catch that up as well. The good news is that I’m well under my maximum number of sugary drinks for the month. Just being more aware of how many I’m drinking means that I’m starting to reduce that without even thinking a lot about it.

So, while I had another rough week, I’m still in a pretty optimistic mood about the goals work going forward. The routines have been set up, and while I’m not always managing to stick to them, I find myself returning to them every time I get off-track. That, really, is the purpose behind goal-setting: to keep yourself on-track, even if it’s not as much as you’d like to be. The habits are forming, which was my ultimate goal. The rest are details.

Originally Posted at https://blog.collingwest.com/2022/week-4-goals-update/.