When I set my goals for the year, I tried to set very concrete steps for achieving them. Inspired by a friend’s suggestion, I modeled the tasks on the notion how one trains a pet: if a dog shows a penchant for chewing up shoes, it isn’t enough to scold the dog and try to keep the shoes out of reach; you must give the dog an acceptable chew toy. In other words, replace a bad habit with a better one.

Goal: Reduce the outrage.

Step: Listen to the Wait! Wait! Don’t Tell Me podcast once a week, limit the amount of time I read news during work breaks.

Progress: I keep getting interrupted while listening to Wait! Wait!…, but I am still spending less time reading serious/upsetting news throughout the day. I have also started listening to other, non-news related podcasts for my walks home from work.

Goal: Write more regularly.

Step: Spend the reclaimed break time writing. Find other ways to motivate myself to write rather than twiddle the keys.

Progress: I’m still only doing so-so with this. So I’m giving Camp NaNoWriMo a try. My posted goal is similar to what I did for regular NaNoWriMo, with the currently unstated goal of also making serious headway on the third novel in the series.

Goal: See friends for fun more, as opposed to all of my social interactions being driven by various projects.

Step: I still haven’t thought of a good concrete step for that.

Progress: We’ve gone several weeks without one or the other of us coming down sick, which should have helped. As I said to one friend just last week, it took several weeks of neither of us falling ill again before I’ve started to feel like it isn’t tempting fate to plan anything.

We still haven’t gotten a weekly get-together going. Given my work schedule of late, I’m not sure how wise it is to try to squeeze that into the schedule when we’re also trying to get back into the habit of editorial meetings and related projects.

I still think doing more fun things with friends is a good goal.

Goal: Paint, draw, and make music.

Step: Go to the Drink ‘n’ Draw gathers. Set aside some time to sketch each week.

Progress: We finally were not sick and there was no snow, so we attended this weekend! I did a horrible sketch of a dragon, and even worse of a raccoon, a decent version of a raccoon paw print (for reasons), and a rather nice sketch of the legendary cursed artifact/holy relic known as the Amulet of Ostrea. And midway through the sketching, I realized that the kneaded eraser I was using (and it was working just fine) is one I’ve own for over a decade—though it has spent most of that time in one of my art supply boxes being neglected.

Traditionally, Ash Wednesday is a day to contemplate one’s transgressions as the beginning of the 40-day observance of Lent. Except, of course, I was raised Southern Baptist, where rituals like a priest smearing ashes on one’s forehead are frowned upon. On the other hand, I’m taoist, now, and taoism is always open to the any traditions we find useful. Therefore, Ash Wednesday is a good day to post my monthly check-in on my goals/resolutions for the year!

When I set my goals for the year, I tried to set very concrete steps for achieving them. I tried to model the tasks on the notion how one trains a pet: if a dog shows a penchant for chewing up shoes, it isn’t enough to scold the dog and try to keep the shoes out of reach; you must give the dog an acceptable chew toy. In other words, replace a bad habit with a better one.

Goal: Reduce the outrage.

Step: Listen to the Wait! Wait! Don’t Tell Me podcast once a week, limit the amount of time I read news during work breaks.

Progress: I keep getting interrupted while listening to Wait! Wait!…, but I am still spending less time reading serious/upsetting news throughout the day.

Goal: Write more regularly.

Step: Spend the reclaimed break time writing. Find other ways to motivate myself to write rather than twiddle the keys.

Progress: I’m still only doing so-so with this. I still spend more time typing potential posts than working on my fiction, for instance.

Goal: See friends for fun more, as opposed to all of my social interactions being driven by various projects.

Step: I still haven’t thought of a good concrete step for that.

Progress: We were sick slightly less often during February. I did make it to a friend’s birthday get together in the middle of the month, but we’ve missed other social events we’d planned to go to because one or the other of us was sick.

We have failed to get the weekly get-together going again. Illness takes a lot of blame for that. There’s at least one vicious circle of related difficulty. If people are coming over, we need to clean up the house. If we’ve both been so rundown or tired after workdays that we don’t do minimal cleanup, there is so much to do before people come over (and just to be clear, here, since folks are always saying, “Oh, we’ll understand a little mess!” it isn’t just dealing with clutter. It had gotten a lot worse than clutter.), that trying to do it in just a few evenings after work left us both so exhausted, we needed to sleep through the period that friends would have been here.

Goal: Paint, draw, and make music.

Step: I was counting on the monthly Drink ‘n’ Draw gathers to help with this.

Progress: We were actually well enough that we could have attended, if half the region hadn’t gotten snowed in that day.

I set some goals for the year, and since this sort of thing often does not go as well as we hoped, I tried to set some very concrete steps for the goals. I tried to model the tasks on the notion how one trains a pet: if a dog shows a penchant for chewing up shoes, it isn’t enough to scold the dog and try to keep the shoes out of reach; you must give the dog an acceptable chew toy. In other words, replace a bad habit with a better one.

Since being accountable to someone seems to keep me motivated, I also planned to post updates throughout the year. The beginning of a new month seems like a good time to do that:

Goal: Reduce the outrage.

Step: Listen to the Wait! Wait! Don’t Tell Me podcast once a week, limit the amount of time I read news during work breaks.

Progress: I have been limiting the amount of time I spend reading the during breaks and listening to the Wait! Wait podcast each week. I’m still getting riled up about certain kinds of news, but I also feel as if I’m laughing at the antics of the wingnuts slightly more often than I was.

Goal: Write more regularly.

Step: Spend the reclaimed break time writing. Find other ways to motivate myself to write rather than twiddle the keys.

Progress: I have been writing during part of my lunch break at work, though I’ve been writing blog posts more often than fiction. I’ll keep working on this.

Goal: See friends for fun more, as opposed to all of my social interactions being driven by various projects.

Step: I didn’t have a good concrete step for that. Which may be just as well, given that for most of the month of January, my husband and I have been sick or trying to get over being sick, et cetera.

Progress: We haven’t been able to resume our weekly get together and chat night. I didn’t have to cancel Writers’ Night nor miss out on the AFK Tavern meet-up with out-of-town friends, so I wasn’t a total hermit.

My friend, Anthony, has been trying to get folks together for a regular “drink and draw” on a Sunday afternoon at AFK Tavern, and I’ve put the next one on our calendar. Which may help with the next goal.

Goal: Paint, draw, and make music.

Step: I didn’t have a good way to make myself do that instead of other things.

Progress: If I can manage to attend the Drink ‘n’ Draw meet ups, I should get some sketching done there, as well as seeing friends just for fun. I still need to come up with some more steps to push this one along.