2014 Monthly Goal Check-In for April/May

Wow is all I can say about the last two months.  I have had some amazing moments in those months and have been kept fairly busy.  I have been adapting to a fuller schedule as I continue on my journey to become healthier.  I am loving life right now though and wake up each morning with a smile on my face, even though I am waking up at the crack of stupid.

If you want to read a bit more about my resolutions feel free to check out my previous posts:

New Year’s Resolutions Past and Present (the first post)

2014 Monthly Goal Check-In for March

1) Move More/Lose More
I am feeling the most proud of this goal right now.  I am consistently hitting 10,000 steps each day and on at least half of the week I am also hitting over 11,000.  The biggest change in the last two months with this goal is the fact that I joined the gym and am going most mornings to use the treadmill.  It is a bit challenging especially on weekdays because in order to get the work out in before starting my job, I’m getting up at 4:30am.  I will admit that there are days I question my sanity and my drive to do this but what has kept me going is the knowledge that the more work I do now the easier it is going to be to do my first 5K in September.  I have taken to visualizing how good it is going to feel when I cross the finish line to help keep me moving.  It makes even the hardest days on the treadmill a little bit easier.

I’m also incredibly excited with the ‘lose more’ part of this goal.  In the last two months I have done extremely well with my weight loss.  Since the middle of April, when I started regularly going to the gym, my weight has for the most part been steadily going down.  The total weight loss for 2014 now stands at 14 pounds (with 10.9 of that being lost in since the middle of April).  I also hit a huge personal milestone this month and finally lost all the weight I had gained when my friend Will passed away.  You can read about that here. 

2) One Day a Week Vegetarian
The last couple of months have been bad for this goal.  As my schedule has gotten busier and my time shorter I have to admit that my meal planning has lacked a bit.  As soon as meal planning lacks my meat free days tend to fall to the sidelines because I don’t have as many recipes yet that I can just make at the drop of hat and know that I will love.  I am trying though and have made it my mission to get back to full meal plans each week instead of the quick ones I have been doing which will also mean getting back to my meat free days.

3) Regular Blog Posts
Writing blogs much like meal planning has been a challenge.  I am learning that I have far too many hobbies and things going on in my life to keep up with it all without plans in place.  I’m working on find a new balance that will let me get the things I really want to do done.  So for the month of June my mission for this particular goal is to post a blog entry once a week which will mean 5 entries including this one – only four more to go.

4) 365 Photo-a-Day Project
I am very happy that this goal is still running along smoothly.  I have continued to take photos each day and have started the process of getting them turned into digital pages that I can print.  I really do love this project and I love looking back on my 2013 pages.  As a side I also finished the last of my 2013 pages so I just have to send them off and I can officially say last year’s project is done.

5) Read 50 Books
I am now up to 18 books read this year, which apparently puts me 2 books behind schedule for hitting my 50 by the end of the year.  This doesn’t worry me yet because I think I’m still doing better than I was last year at this time.  I have been reading quite a mix of books and have found a few new favourites in the last two months.  The two that stand out most in my brain are The Fault in Our Stars by John Green and Skinny by Donna Cooner.  Both were easy reads but both had me in tears at the end for different reasons.  I am continuing to make reading a priority and try to read at least a chapter a day.  In order to hit my goal though I really need to spend a little more time reading on my weekends so that shall be the plan for June.

6) Nanowrimo challenge Complete a Draft of Conor’s Story
Well I attempted to do the Nanowrimo challenge in April but just didn’t have enough time to get it done.  I may have done better if I had used Conor’s story rather than the story that came from my dream but oh well.  I did learn that I really am a planner.  As interesting as it was to try and write a story I hadn’t planned I struggled a great deal with it.  I like to know the story fairly well before I try to write it so that when I start writing it just flows.  This allows me to feel like I’m making progress and not just messing around.  It is not a complete loss though because at least now I know how to best channel my creativity to get results.  It is all about outlining and planning.  I’m just a geek that way I guess.  Hehe!

As for Conor’s story well sadly I haven’t had much of a chance to work on it, well at least not with pen and paper anyway.  I have discovered that the treadmill is a great place to work on the ideas in my head.  I am slowly filling my phone up with notes taken while I’m walking.  It has been pretty wonderful.  When I get the chance to sit down with Conor’s story I feel like it will flow well.

At the end of March I wrote that I was feeling excited about the way my life was going.  I was looking forward to starting at the gym and I have to say that the last couple of months have not disappointed.  I have been feeling strong, positive and driven.  I have been feeling like I can take on any task that I come up with and that I will find success.  I am amazed in a lot of ways how truly positive I feel about everything right now.  It gives me hope that this year really will be the best year of my life to date.

2014 Monthly Goal Check-In for March

Where did March go?  I’m not sure if it is just me but this month just disappeared on me.  I was kept busy throughout the whole month but I still feel like I have made some good strides again on my goals – well at least some of them.

If you want to read a bit more about my resolutions feel free to check out my previous posts:

New Year’s Resolutions Past and Present
2014 Monthly Goal Check-In for January/February

1) Move More/Lose More
My hope of hitting an average of 11000 steps each day this month was not to be.  My schedule kept me on my toes but sadly not walking very much.  If I take an average of the steps for the month I was only hitting about 8500 steps this month which was down from last month.  I did end up hitting a new all-time daily high though this month with a total of 16101, which is totally worth celebrating.  This was a huge day for me because it showed that my goal of hitting 15000 a day is not out of reach.

With my daily average of steps being down it doesn’t surprise me to say that my weight also didn’t change this past month.  I’m actually up .6 of a pound with my total lost for 2014 so far being 11 pounds.  In April I am expecting to hit a big milestone for me though.  I am expecting to finally get back to the weight I was before my life derailed a little when I lost a very dear friend.  It has taken me almost two years to lose the weight I put on the year after he passed away but it is very liberating to know that I’m very nearly back where I need was.  It is like I am finally moving past his loss.  I still miss him like crazy but I know that Will is looking down and cheering me on as I get close to this milestone and will celebrate with me as I pass it.

2) One Day a Week Vegetarian
I can claim success on this goal this month.  It does help that I remembered I had made the goal this month.  I found a few new yummy recipes and had a few of my old favourites.  All of which helped me find at least one day a week to devote to being meat free.  I have to admit that I really do enjoy the challenge this goal brings into my meal planning.  It has forced me to be creative and experiment a little bit more with my food choices.  It has me cracking my recipe books once a week so I can pick new dishes, which has also meant I have been picking new meat based recipes as well. 

3) Regular Blog Posts
I have to admit I thought I had done better with this goal in March until I actually looked at my blog.  I discovered that although I had written almost a blog a month I never posted them.  This month my goal will be to actually post the entries I’m writing.  It’s pretty silly to write them up in draft and not do the work to publish them. 

4) 365 Photo-a-Day Project
It was bound to happen but after 445 days I missed my first photo.  :-(  I was a little disappointed when I realized it but when you consider I have done 445 other days perfectly I can’t really get too down on myself.  I’m really excited about the month of April for photos though.  I have a mini vacation coming up to a retreat area I have never been but looks beautiful online and of course the end of the month will bring Calgary Expo.  Both of these things plus a few other events all should help make April a bit easier to keep the photography going and find some cool things to take pictures of. 

5) Read 50 Books
I’m not as far ahead of myself as I was last month on this goal but I am still more or less on track to hit my 50 books read this year.  My total is now up to 11 books done so far.  I was slowed down a little because of picking up Life of Pi.  I completely enjoyed the book but was reading it as much for the story as I was for a way of possibly setting up my historical fiction novel.  This meant I took a little more time and care in reading it.

6) Nanowrimo challenge Complete a Draft of Conor’s Story
This goal may have turned into a little of both the original goal and the revised goal.  I found out the Camp Nanowrimo is going on during April so I signed up originally thinking I would work on Conor’s story.  Last night though I had this incredibly vivid dream and part of me is thinking about giving it a shot for the month of April.  I don’t know if it is a story that has already been done but the dream was quite intriguing.  The timing of the dream also feels a little like fate considering today is the start of Camp Nanowrimo.  This means that this goal may actually become two goals.  I guess we will see how this month progresses.

In terms of Conor’s story it is also moving along quite nicely.  I think I have figured out a few things that were getting in the way.  Of course at the same time I also created a few more things to work out.  I am a planner and am trying to plan this story so that when it comes to write I can just let it flow.  This is a little different than other stories I have done but at the same time I feel like this is the journey I need to take to complete this story.

As crazy as March was I feel like it was a good month.  I made some big life decisions this past month including signing up for a gym again which has me over the moon excited.  I have plans to add a trainer as well before April is done.  It has been a long time since I felt this excited about the way my life was going.  It is a pretty amazing feeling.

2014 Monthly Goal Check-In for January/February

I am lucky enough to have some really smart friends that are willing to put up with me as I steal their ideas to help my own creativity.  One such friend (who has a lovely little book review blog here) and last year she was posting monthly updates on her resolutions for the year.  I think this is a brilliant idea and have decided to high grade it for my own blog.  It is my hope that this monthly check-in will help keep me on track and lead me to a completed check list of goals for in December (especially since even in two months I’ve already managed to ignore a couple of my goals).  Anyone that is looking to check out my original list for the year can read all about it in the entry New Year’sResolutions Past and Present.

1) Move More/Lose More
Of all the goals that I set for myself this year this one is moving along the best and most smoothly.  I’m regularly hitting my 10,000 step goal for the day.  This goal will be changing to 11000 for the months of March and April as I step my way to the year-end goal of 15,000 steps a day.  I’m meeting my goals currently at least in part thanks to a friend/co-worker that not only cheers me on but is willing to walk with me one lunch hour a week at my pace.  She is one of those crazy active people that I aim to be like but haven’t quite gotten there yet.  It is amazing to be finding support for my journey and has proved to be very motivating for me.

When it comes to the lose more part of this goal I have to say I’m incredibly proud of the way the year is going.  I’m currently down about 11.6 pounds for the year.  I am finding my clothes are fitting better.  I’m more comfortable in my skin and just generally feeling really good about the progress I am making.  I can see my future healthy self and I am racing to catch her.

2) One Day a Week Vegetarian
This sadly is one of the goals that I had forgotten I had made for myself.  I am still cooking vegetarian meals and dishes but have not been diligent on planning and creating meat free days.  I shall remedy this for the month of March.

3) Regular Blog Posts
A look at the lists of posts I have done in 2014 shows that I have also not been paying much attention to this goal at least in terms of actually getting results.  I don’t consider this goal completely forgotten though because in the last couple of months I have been working hard offline to move my blog in the right direction.  I have spent time working on a plan and vision for my blog.  Now it is just the time to start to put that plan into action.

4) 365 Photo-a-Day Project
All though this project feels a lot more challenging this year, I’m happy to say it is well underway.  I have yet to miss a day and somehow am finding things to take pictures off.  The challenge this year is an unexpected internal voice that has popped up that keeps saying things like, “you took that photo last year” or “do you really need another picture of your cat?” (this last one sounds a lot like my brother.)  I have to keep reminding myself that the project is meant to capture my everyday life.  My life sadly is not always exciting and interesting – in fact more times it would probably be described as quiet and dull – but that just means I need to work on doing more fun things each day.

5) Read 50 Books
The progress on this goal when compared to this time last year is astounding to me.  I’m making way more headway on this than I did in 2013.  So far in 2014 I have read 8 books, which have me right on target to hit 50.  I think the biggest difference is that I am making reading a priority in my life now.  I try to read at least a little bit each day and it has been wonderful.  Not only is it helping me complete this goal but it has been inspiring my own fiction writing.  
                Favourite books read in Jan/Feb were Ashfall by Mike Mullin and The Nerdist Way: How to Reach the Next Level by Chris Hardwick
                Most challenging book that sadly got put down was The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves, and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History by Robert Edsel. – I wanted to love this book but couldn’t pull my way through its pages.  I will try again though before the year is done.

6) Nanowrimo challenge Complete a Draft of Conor’s Story
I have decided to change this goal to finishing a draft of my currently historical fiction novel.  I have fallen in love again with my main characters and don’t want to wait to write them until the next nano challenge.  I have spent the last couple months relearning the story, the characters and reviewing all my research.  It has left me feeling very motivated and this goal is moving along at a good pace.

Overall I’m feeling really positive towards 2014.  For the first time that I can remember not only do I have very specific, goal focused plans that I’m starting to put into place but I also have mental pictures of where this year is leading me.  I can see my future as clearly as if I had just taken the photo and I know that nothing is going to stop me this year from getting everything I want.

New Year’s Resolutions Past and Future

The end of one year and the start of a new one creates the perfect time to wipe the slate clean and start over.  Each year I am one of the many that creates resolutions to help guide me on the year to follow and also like many I think they are often quickly forgotten and pushed to the side.  This year was a little different for me, if only because I had the resolution documented so I couldn’t forget them.  I’m actually proud of my resolutions for 2013 because all of them except for one was at least attempted.  So on this last day of the year I want to quickly look back at my resolutions for 2013 and share my new resolutions for 2014 (some of which will look pretty familiar).

In 2013 I came up with four things I wanted to work towards, all of which were things that work towards my overall life goals.  They were to move more, complete a 365 day photo project, complete another Nanowrimo challenge and read fifty books.  Each of these resolutions have had their own challenges and they are also ones that I have ignored in other years so I was pretty determined to complete them.

The resolution to move more was probably the easiest of all the resolutions because it was vague enough not to give me outlandish goals but still specific enough to get me up off the couch.  This resolution took me a while to actually fulfill because it wasn’t until I got my fitbit that I actually could see that I was actively working towards moving more.  I have already written about how wonderful this change has been for me.  It has been incredibly powerful to see results that I want and at a steady pace.  I feel like this resolution is one that I can check off as being completed without any second thoughts. 

The second resolution is also one that I’m happy to say was a success.  In 2012 I started to do a picture a day with the plan of completing an album of 365 moments that would have made up my year.  I did not complete this project in 2012 – in fact I made it to October and completely gave up on it which made me even more determined to do it this year.  I mean really I was so close to be done it was silly to stop.  I’m ecstatic to say that I have completed this project (my very last photo is of the movie poster for The Book Thief which I saw this afternoon).  The difference this year is that I created and printed the pages as I went along.  As I started to see the finished pages coming to the house I realized how truly special and great this project is.  I think it is my favourite album that I have created to this point in my life as a scrapbooker.  This year was an amazing year in a lot of ways and I have it all captured to remember forever.  I highly recommend everyone doing something like this.   There were times it felt like a drag or I would wonder how much I would really like to see hundreds of pictures of my cat or my dinners but when I look at the album even those pictures are pretty special and tell a story.

My third resolution is the one disappointment of the year.  I did not do Nanowrimo this year.  I had planned on signing up to do the summer camp version again which was being held in July. I signed up with intentions of working on a novel I have been researching for a bit but after the craziness of the floods in June I just couldn’t seem to get to a spot where I could actually focus and get to work.  I had a second opportunity to try in November and I did consider it but November is a notoriously busy month for me because of the work I put into our adopted Christmas family so rather than disappoint myself with an unfinished goal I put it to the side for the year.

My last resolution to read fifty books was actually added towards the end of the first week of January.  I have always loved reading but since graduating from university I have found that I don’t do as much of it as I would like.  I’m far too easily distracted by other things and even with the resolution I still didn’t quite make it to my goal.  I read 28 books this year.  I am a little disappointed by this but at the same time I’m pretty sure it is more than I have read in any year since I left university.  What I wasn’t expecting from this resolution though is that I would fall in love with fiction again.  A lot of the reading I had been doing was more research type books.  I got lost in a world of history and forgot how much fun losing myself in fiction could be.  Of all four resolutions this one was by far the most fun to try and achieve and so I don’t consider it a failure only getting part of the way to the end – it just means I have to try again.

Now as we stand at the start of a brand new year and I have done the look back it is time to look forward.  I have once again created a list of resolutions and much like last year I’m going to document them so that they stay fresh and I actually work towards them.  I plan on looking back at the end of 2014 and having even more check marks for completed resolutions.  So here is the list for 2014:

·         Move More/Lose More

o   With my fitbit I get a weekly report of what my average steps per day is and I plan on recording that on my blog page.  My last week was not my best week but it is the starting point.  I average 6,535.  This time next year I would like to see that number doubled.  Of course with moving more I expect to see my weight continue to drop.  This will be especially important because I have big plans for 2015 and I don’t want to be slowed down by my weight.

·         At least one day a week is a vegetarian day

o   In the summer this past year I decided to try to go part time vegetarian and I loved it.  I have continued to have meat free days and want to keep this going.  I love the variety it has brought into my diet and I look forward to continuing to explore other food choices.

·         Regular blog posts

o   I try to be good about posting but having just cleared out my blog posts folder on my computer and I realized that I write a lot that I never post.  So this year I will try to not let fear/nerves get in the way from me posting.  It also encourages me to set aside time each week to do some writing which also helps me keep motivated on working on my fiction

·         365 Photos for 2014

o   I wasn’t sure I was going to put this on the list again.  I loved my 2013 project but it has felt like a burden at times but at the same time like I said above it is one of my favourite albums so how could I not do it again.  I expect 2014 to be filled with just as many memories that I want to capture.

·         Read 50 books

o   Yep this one is back again too.  What can I say but I hate to see things incomplete so it is back and this year I will do it.  I have proved to myself in the last couple months I am capable of reading a book a week so I just have to make sure I do it consistently this year.

·         Complete a Nanowrimo challenge

o   That’s right it is another of my resolutions that has come back.  I just want to prove to myself that the first year I did this and completed a novel wasn’t a fluke – besides I also figure it is a good excuse to actually get my Titanic/WWI novel written.

I have to say that as great as 2013 was for me I am more excited to see what 2014 has in store.  I feel like each year just gets better and better so how can next year not be amazing.  I think as each year goes by I get closer and closer to being the person I really want to be. 

Before I end this post I just want to take a minute and wish you all a very Happy New Year.  I hope that 2014 is a stellar year for all of us.  I hope it will be a year filled with good deeds, good friends and a whole lot of memories.