When I set my goals for this year, I pledged to continue the things I thought worked last year and added some new things. One of the things that I think helped me achieve those goals was writing a monthly report on the blog on my progess. It’s yet again a new month, so here’s the next report!

So, how did I do…?

First, my specific goals for September were:

• Upload that project. Nope.
• Finish and upload one of the t-shirts. Nope.
• Write at least four blog posts about things I like, rather than rant about things that outrage or irritate me. I wrote six. So, yay!
• Ink the comic page. Nope.
• Finish the timeline work I started on novel two. Nope, but I made progress.

Well, that’s not good.

And how about the more general goals for the year? Each goal is paired with some specific tasks based on the notion of trying to replace a bad habit with a good one:

Write more, rant less. My tasks are: listen to non-political podcasts or audiobooks every week; spend at least one lunch break a week reading one of my ebooks instead of the news; continue to spend at least half of my lunch break writing; give myself a monthly quota of blog posts about things I love; set specific monthly writing goals in each check-in.

I listened to audiobooks (one of which made me cry a lot) and a lot of podcasts. I did not do nearly as much writing during lunch as I should have. I made myself stop working on my blog for a week to try to get one of the long-not-finished goals wrapped up, and didn’t get it done. I’m not feeling very accomplished here at all.

Take care of myself. My tasks are: get back in the habit of waking up on weekends at nearly the same time as work days; get back in the habit of making weekly meal plans together; get back in the habit of setting up my pill-minder every week.

My sleep schedule was a lot better this month. Our meal planning has been hit-or-miss. I did keep my pill-minder up-to-date and did a good job of taking my meds on time nearly every day.

Enjoy time with friends. My task is to make an effort at get-togethers to focus on asking leading questions and otherwise try to up the interaction.

I still tend to babble more than I listen. I felt as if we spent more time with friends this month than some of the previous months. But that might be a distorted perception thanks to my birthday get-together. I enjoyed all the time, regardless.

Paint, draw, and make music. The one specific task is to draw or doodle some fan art for projects I love.

The previous month I fiddled with the comic page and failed to ink it. This month I fiddled with the t-shirt design and failed to finish it. On the other hand, some time was spent trying to fix the design of the Tai-Pan website when an attempt to get the shopping cart that had stopped working updated. I wound up rolling everything back to the version where the shopping cart doesn’t work, but everything else does. But I’m counting some of this time as art-related work.

My tasks for October are:

• Upload that project.
• Write at least four blog posts about things I like, rather than rant about things that outrage or irritate me.
• Finish the timeline work I started on novel two.