August Goals Update

Oh no. A new month. I gotta keep myself honest with this goals update from August.

1. Health Goals: I resolved to continue drinking an appropriate amount of water (around 4 glasses a day), eat 3 servings of fruits and veggies a day and keep my nutrition balanced, and walk at least 10,000 steps a day plus add in an aerobic activity every other day.

2. Personal Project Goals: I resolved to keep working on getting photos sorted as the first stop on a website rebuild; resolved to work on writing three days a week and submissions when I can; resolved to relearn ukulele songs I've forgotten and learn new ones, keep creating my regular webcomic and video content, and get some small voice acting gigs.

3. Reading Goals: I resolved to read at least twice a week.

4. Relationship and Communication Goals: I resolved to document daily life stuff more, keep up with e-mails and online communication, and make time for friends and family.

5. Other Goals: Get rid of some things in my garage, paint the pillar, keep the house clean, watch some backed up TV shows, and avoid biting my nails.

Progress Update:

HEALTH GOALS:
Summary: I'm still doing well with getting three servings of veggies and fruit almost every day, but I've kinda fallen off the wagon a little bit with not paying that much attention to the balance or portion sizes etc. I hope to see a difference in this in September. Water intake has been great, above or beyond the goal every day this month. I had another day where I had to bump scheduled exercise a day forward because of being really tired after coming back from vacation. (I know the difference between just being lazy and truly being tired. You don't wanna hurt yourself pushing through when you genuinely need rest.) I am continuing to take vitamins (Vitamin D in the morning; biotin, red yeast rice, and Co-Q10 enzyme in the afternoon; multivitamin at night). Here is my Health calendar of progress:

(Click these calendars and they will expand so you can actually read them!)

PERSONAL PROJECT GOALS:

Summary:

EDITING: After completing its first whole edit, I'm about 18 chapters into the second edit, and I'm finally starting to see significant progress. The manuscript is getting close to dropping below 150,000 words (from almost 200,000!) and from there it will become more and more manageable. I'm continuing to squeeze the chapters and diagram them in a separate document so I can later look at the outline and decide if any plot points can be reduced or deleted. It's working!

SUBMISSIONS:

Still on an agent search to get my older work to a new representative and sending short stories to new markets. Many short stories have gone out to promising markets, but progress is slow. I'm still doing submissions consistently but I don't always get to them on the day I mean to. I still hope to be able to pick up writing on my other in-progress novel this year, but I think editing and going out to the test audience and then going to querying might eclipse too much of the efforts. We'll see.

Writing Progress:

PHOTO PROJECT: I finished the photo project and got everything into albums this past month. I have been taking a break from this, but this coming month I guess I will start filtering them into my digital albums. Exciting!

UKULELE PRACTICE: After learning all the songs I planned to the previous month, I took a big break from this this month, just playing uke a couple times when I wanted to experiment with some random song. I'll see how much of it I retained at some point and see if I can practice regularly to stay fresh, but right now I no longer have a goal with this.

VOICE ACTING: I did not win any new roles this month, but I've continued to keep busy recording for at least four different projects, trying to keep up with deadlines. I submitted fewer auditions this month than usual because I was busy with family visits, vacation, and catching up after vacation.

Here's the Projects Calendar:

READING GOALS: 

Summary: Hmm. Looking at how dismal this still is, I wonder if I need to crack down this coming month--the original goal was to read at least twice a week, and I forgot I even had anything specified. I'll see if I can keep to this in the upcoming month.

Progress:

RELATIONSHIP AND COMMUNICATION GOALS: 

Summary: Vacation with family was the big thing--it took up a lot of my peopleing battery this month. Other than that just a couple little things on the schedule. I'm up to date on interpersonal communication, but the documentation goals have STILL gone unaddressed.

Progress:

OTHER GOALS:

Summary: I still need to sand and paint the plaster pillar that is sitting outside and need to sell some garage items. I did work with my sister to finally get my mom's telephone stand out of my garage, so that's a big improvement. I still have a TV show I want to watch. I need to catch up on photographing the updated Steven Universe collection. I hope I can dive into the documentation goals soon. I haven't thought about it in a while.