2017 Progress Report: Mid-January

Tracking habits *and* showing that not everyone’s bullet journal is beautiful!

My attempts to meet my goals so far this year have met with mixed success, but I think I’m making progress. Yay, progress! And progress or no, checking in every couple weeks to keep myself accountable seems like a good way to ensure I’m actually going to stick with my goals. Here’s my progress, broken down by the goals I listed in that earlier post:

Keeping in touch with folks: I’ve managed to get in touch with at least one old friend who I hadn’t been able to talk to in forever, so that’s been good, and we’re slowly catching up. Bonus: she’s moving to the Seattle area at the end of the year, so I’ll get to see her in person at some point!

Exercise: Exercising has been semi-consistent, and I’m slowly figuring out what routine works for me. (As much as I love running, going running outside when it’s 26 degrees and dark outside isn’t super for me! Thank you youtube for being full of silly free cardio workouts.)  I’ve managed to keep up with tracking food, and have switched over to MyFitnessPal for that part of my data logging. Being able to type in recipes and have it do all the math for what’s in each serving is *so much better* than adding each item individually in Fitbit, and the two sync, to boot!

I’ve been doing a lot of think about how I want my body to be, too, but that’s still mostly a lot of my brain chasing itself in circles. I’m sure I’ll get it figured out someday. At least my waist measurement has been going down consistently, even if my weight is currently staying put.

Reading: I’ve already knocked off one book this year! I finished up Windswept by Adam Rakunas over the weekend, and I can’t recommend it enough if you like a sci-fi setting that’s smart commentary and *isn’t* as unsubtle as a brick to the face. I’m now back on reading Life Debt by Chuck Wendig, which I hope to finish this week. On the audiobook front, I’ve been listening to The Ascent of Money by Niall Ferguson, which was honestly a lot more interesting before it started covering money in the 20th century. That said, it’s still pretty good, and I definitely plan on finishing it.

Write Consistently: Been fucking crushing this yessssss. Seriously, 1k words every day since the start of the year. I just hope I can keep up the streak!

WOO HOO, NERDS.

Languages: Japanese is getting practiced, though not as consistently as would be ideal. It still feels good to be getting back into the swing of it.

Fun fact: This is a super basic term and I will *always* get it wrong.

Sleeping More: The first week I was doing okay, and now I’m back to being bad at it. Will need to reprioritize to get more sleep in the future.

Shaking up Self-Expression: Making decisions about one’s hair is hard. That is all for now.

Getting Work Out There: I’ve collected three rejections since the start of the year! I plan on pitching my work out to new magazines ASAP. (I didn’t get any feedback from the rejections, or I’d probably do another round of serious editing first. Right now I just don’t want to tear apart stories I think are pretty much ‘done’ with no specific actionable ideas.)

I’ve started using Submissions Grinder again, and it is truly magical. Much better than just trying to keep track in my head, and now I know it includes ephemeral markets like anthologies, not just the established magazines!

Self Care: Trying to do better here, but it’s a long road. Doing my best to let myself take breaks and not push myself too hard. Playing lots of video games as breaks because they’re one of the only things that can get my brain out of its worry hamster wheel.

Cutting Down on Noise: I almost bought a dumbphone, but then Peter convinced me that probably wasn’t the *smartest* way to deal with the issues I was having. So instead I went and hushed a lot of notifications on my phone, and uninstalled Twitter. I still feel weird about not having Twitter around, but I do think it’s helping me read more. The muted notifications have been super helpful at cutting down distractions, too. (I have it set so most can show up in the notification bar, but with no vibration, strobing LED, or temporary sliding into the screen.) I’m trying to figure out how to block facebook (the website) on my phone, though, because I still spend more time on that then I would like.

I’ve also started decluttering the house, so right now everything’s a mess, but at least it’s on its way to getting better.

I’m trying to keep the sorting mess to my office, which has made for cramped quarters. It was *bad* for a while there, but has cleared up a lot since I took this photo.

I’m worried I won’t be aggressive enough on the first pass, but at least I’m freeing up some space and getting everything organized so that taking a second pass will be much, much easier, and I’ll be able to just focus on what I want to keep and what should go instead of stressing about where it’s all going to live in the interim.

Finish My Shit: I set deadlines for myself for Nautilus, and while I haven’t been meeting them (oops!), just having them as guidelines for what I need to be working on is super helpful. I’m hoping to catch up soon. I haven’t been very consistent about editing The Shivering Deeps yet, because it’s a big scary project. I’m trying to get myself over that fear. I haven’t worked on either as much as I would like, and am still developing the daily work habits I’ll need to start making more consistent progress.

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I think that’s everything! Here’s to the next two weeks being even better than these last two. (Although, with the inaguration on the way and the official start of the Trump presidency, who knows what badness the future will bring?)

I hope everyone’s goals for 2017 are going well, too! The novelty has probably worn off them at this point, but that’s okay! You can do it!