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 a new month, so here’s the next report!

So, how did I do…?

First, my specific goals for July were:

• Finish the Hugo ballot, including posting reviews of the remaining categories. I finished going through all the nominated material and finished my ballot. I decided not to post reviews in some categories for reasons explained elsewhere. I’m counting this one: Done!
• Write at least four blog posts about things I like, rather than rant about things. I wrote five. Done!
• Complete the edit pass on book one. I got all the way through it, though I’m not happy with it, so I’m not sure this counts as finished, yet.
• Complete the long not-quite-finished project. I was still working on tweaks over this last weekend, so not quite done.
• Finish and ink the comic page. Not done.
• Finish the t-shirt design, upload it, and offer it for sale. Not done.

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.

Thanks in part to the Fancasts categories of the Hugos, I listened to a lot of new podcasts. My weekly go-tos now are: Sewers of Paris, Savage Lovecast, Galactic Suburbia, Sex Death and Money, Adventures in SF Publishing and The Moth. There are several others that I’m listening to semi-regularly. I spent a lot more time editing than writing this month. I think mostly I was less often outraged about things than I would have been if I didn’t have these other things taking up my attention.

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 to making weekly meal plans together; get back in the habit of setting up my pill-minder every week.

The weather has continued to play merry hell with both my sleep schedule and my husband’s. But I’m not having trouble getting up and going to work in the morning, so napping in the early evening, then going to bed later than usual seems to be working okay. I have been spotty on keeping up the pill minder. And we’ve frequently been ignoring the meal plans to make something that doesn’t involve cooking because of the weather.

I found a new doctor for my husband, made him an appointment, and took him to it to get his months-long persistent cough looked at. He’s on antibiotics and other things, now, and we have hope this will take care of it. I’m counting this toward the goal of taking care of myself, if for no other reason than describing him as my better half would be a major understatement.

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.

We did very little getting together that wasn’t an event, again. I’ve enjoyed all the time with friends, but don’t feel I did a particularly good job at making progress on this goal this month.

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

I did more work on the t-shirt, though I’m not happy enough with the design to upload it, yet. I poked at another design. I worked on two book cover designs. So a lot more progress on this than most months!

My tasks for August are:

• Finish and upload that project.
• Finish and upload one of the t-shirts.
• Write at least four blog posts about things I like, rather than rant about things.
• Ink the comic page.
• Teach myself about topic that can’t be revealed and begin architecting a tool.