It's check in time! If you're new to this blog, the First Friday of every month is my Monthly Goals blog post, where I go through last months goals and mark up whether I completed them or not and then list the new goals. October was the month I implemented, with gusto, my New System, and so far it's been a screaming success as you will see by my goals! (who would have thought?!)
September was a really tough month, busy but also with some family stress, a continuing bout of SAD Syndrome and one of my beloved cats got very sick. He was at the vets a lot, had a number of examinations, tests and procedures, lost a lot of weight and had to stay over. We did get to bring him home and have been trying to get him eating, he’s still not out of the woods yet but we are hopeful at this time. But it’s been emotionally draining.
I had planned to keep September's goals nice and simple, maybe sticking with just 5. Well, that lasted all of 30 seconds into writing this blog post. So, despite September usually being the start of my business rush as people start buying for the holidays (and the fact that August, usually a quiet month, was actually crazy busy) I have added more goals than I planned to. Oh well, I do like a challenge 😀
It's Goals Time again! If you are new here, I like to check in with my last month's goals and see how I did. I can then bounce any goals I didn't manage to the current month. I try to stick to around 5 to 10 goals per month. If I have 10 goals, I …
First Friday of the month, that means it's Goal time! Last month's goals seemed manageable but boy were they not! Oh well, I did some which was good and the ones I didn't mostly were out of my hands. Check below for a recap and to see what I have planned for this month.
May had me mostly focusing on the house projects. With my room out of commission, 90% of my possessions packed up and stored in a family member's basement, I spent most of the time planning, prepping and coordinating with tradesmen. Dealing with so many people left me mentally and emotionally exhausted, seriously, I can't really cope with that much social interaction. So it felt like everything took so much longer than it should have. But we are so close to getting it all done. Oops, spoke too soon.
April turned out to be a hair-pull-inducing stress month. Filled mostly with packing our home, moving boxes, stripping the worlds-worst wallpaper and trying to coordinate tradesmen who seemed incapable of a) answering their phones or b) replying to voicemails, texts or DMs (even when THEY told us which they preferred). So I am approaching May with a lot more caution - mostly because I will be without an office, will have limited internet access and have to spend large amounts of time out of the house while people fix things.
As we drift into April, I look back on March to see what I managed to accomplish. It was rough month for me and I am glad it was one of the months I take a few days off in. Those quarterly breaks make the difference between me burning out and being able to function like a normal human being. I tried not to give myself too much for March and am happy with what was accomplished. I'm going to attempt a few more goals this month as next month might see me offline for a week or two due to some house work we need doing. So I want to get more done this month.
While we writers might work with words, many of us have a deep love for art - especially artwork that features our characters. It's become common practice amongst writers to get their main characters portraits commissioned to add that extra connection for the reader to really see what we see. So with that in mind, I just HAD to do a shout out for an incredible artist and pimp her work!
The month of February has come and gone and it's time for me to look back on what I wanted to accomplish and what I actually MANAGED to accomplished as well as setting out March's goals.
Author Ari Meghlen Official Website 