Progress Report

This was a long week. Workwise. Familywise. And emotionally. Most of which it doesn't feel like my place to share. I had a hellacious day Wednesday. Day job was busy. Side gig was busy and had issues that required a redo. Thursday was much the same without the redo. BLAH. I finally caught up Friday with the day job so hopefully this next week will be more manageable.

The Main Habits I'm Tracking:

    1) Morning Affirmations -- 7 of 7 days.

    2) 20 Minutes Walking -- I haven't done a concentrated walk. It's still a goal though so I'm leaving it up here. However, I have started tracking the days I at least met my step goal per my pedometer and that was a wonderful 5 of 7 days this week.

    3) 20 Minutes Reading -- 7 of 7 days. I failed to read a non-fiction book in February so my goal is to read/listen to two this month. I actually started one yesterday and have another I need to transfer from my email to my ereader. It's been forever since I had an epub book I had to charge and restart my poor Nook! 

    4) Work Writing -- 3 of 7 days. This was a major miss week due aforementioned long week.

    5) Name 3 Gratitudes -- 7of 7 days. I ended up writing a page of my frustrations out Wednesday but that was expected. I struggled to come up with 3 things I was grateful for Wednesday and Thursday but did manage it.

    6) Drink 4 "bottles" of water -- 3 of 7 days. I get three in pretty easily most days but that final one it hard if I don't get it drunk before I get home from work. (I mean, who wants to be up multiple times a night? LOL)

I'm feeling the financial pinch since the first payday in March is always small due to the short pay period at the end of February. Definitely tightening the belt. Hopefully, the other contributors to the monthly expenses step up to the plate. 

Weekly Progress

 For a short week it sure felt long. I took last Friday off which gave me a nice four-day weekend. I got quite a bit done on my current writing project. The goal is to get that bad boy done and edited by summer. I'm not putting a specific date on it but am aiming for June, I would be happy with July though.

The Main Habits I'm Tracking:

    1) Morning Affirmations -- 7 of 7 days.

    2) 20 Minutes Walking -- I haven't done a concentrated walk. It's still a goal though so I'm leaving it up here. Per my pedometer, I'm averaging 1.5 miles of walking per day which I'm happy about.  

    3) 20 Minutes Reading -- 4 of 7 days. I've failed so far this month to read a non-fiction book - Sigh. 

    4) Work Writing -- 5 of 7 days. I began to process of moving my WIP back into Scrivener. It's a bit easier to move scenes around when you need to. 

    5) Name 3 Gratitudes -- 7of 7 days. No real surprises this week during my review. I fought some stress headaches though. 

    6) Drink 4 "bottles" of water -- 2 of 7 days. I get three in pretty easily most days but that final one it hard if I don't get it drunk before I get home from work. (I mean, who wants to be up multiple times a night? LOL)

I can't believe we're moving into March already. This year is just flying by.

Weekly Progress Times Two

 Well, oops. Superbowl and all that.

The Main Habits I'm Tracking:

    1) Morning Affirmations -- 7 of 7 days - both weeks.

    2) 20 Minutes Walking -- I haven't done a concentrated walk. It's still a goal though so I'm leaving it up here. Per my pedometer, I'm averaging 1.5 miles of walking per day which I'm happy about.  

    3) 20 Minutes Reading -- 6 of 7 days - both weeks. I've failed so far this month to read a non-fiction book - Sigh. 

    4) Work Writing -- 6 of 7 days - for last week. 7 of 7 days for this week. I've actually been trying to get my WIP plotted to my satisfaction this weekend. 

    5) Name 3 Gratitudes -- 7of 7 days - both weeks. No surprises this week during by review for either week. Though I was hard pressed to find 3 one day this week due to some work related drama that was resolved the following day.

    6) Drink 4 "bottles" of water -- 3 of 7 - both weeks. Which seems wrong so I may have forgotten to record this accurately.

I've started the whole take care of medical stuff I've been putting off. I had my doctor's appointment with my primary care doctor this week. I was even able to get my labs done that day. Cologuard arrived in the mail yesterday so that will be taken care of this week. I have a mammogram scheduled - joy :snicker: and I have my dermatology appointment scheduled. Definite progress on that front. Go me.

I need to find a short non-fiction book for the little over a week I have left in the month!

Short and sweet today :)

Weekly Progress

I felt tired most of this last week and I'm not sure why. We wrapped up January and moved into February and it's a bit mindboggling how fast the year is going. I did complete my non-fiction book for January. I listened to Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose though I also have the paperback version as well. This is definitely one of those books I suspect I'll gain more each time I read/listen to it. I recommend it if you want to learn more about deep reading whether or not your goal is to be a better writer. I still need to decide on my non-fiction book for February. 

The Main Habits I'm Tracking:

    1) Morning Affirmations -- 7 of 7 days.

    2) 20 Minutes Walking -- I haven't done a concentrated walk. It's still a goal though so I'm leaving it up here. Per my pedometer, I'm averaging 1.5 miles of walking per day which I'm happy about.  

    3) 20 Minutes Reading -- 6 of 7 days, including wrapping up my non-fiction book for the month as noted above. 

    4) Work Writing -- 5 of 7 days, including some editing for Joely. Run, don't walk, and pick up One Cut Deeper by Joely Sue Burkhart and fall in love with Charlie and Ranay.

    5) Name 3 Gratitudes -- 7of 7 days -- No real surprises this week.

    6) Drink 4 "bottles" of water -- 4 of 7 -- The calendar reminder is definitely helping. I'm also tracking this on my pedometer. 

My plan was to do another no book buy month for February but I already kicked that to the curb. I'll have to come up with another thing to apply to February for my no-spend goals for the year. 

I decided to take my trip. It's a bit scary because I really can't afford it and continue with my plan to be debt free by May/June of next year. However, yesterday, I bought my flight and ticket to LLS M5 and reserved the hotel in Savannah. I plan to take advantage of this trip to visit friends in Miami and, maybe, Fort Mill. This trip will tick the box of going somewhere I've never been before - Savannah. Joely and Molly will be at LLS as attending authors so it will be a blast no matter how it shakes down.

Weekly Progress

 As discovered last week, Sunday makes more sense so on we go.

Moulin Rouge was everything it was billed to be. We had a fantastic time.

The Main Habits I'm Tracking:

    1) Morning Affirmations -- 7 of 7 days.

    2) 20 Minutes Walking -- I actually got this in once this week. It wasn't all at once but I got outside for about 20 minutes yesterday. I also pulled out my pedometer and got that set up again yesterday. I managed to hit about 63% of my step goal.  

    3) 20 Minutes Reading -- 7 of 7 days, including 3 more chapters on my non-fiction book for this month. I have three chapters left which is about two hours of listening. 

    4) Work Writing -- 2 of 7 days. I missed Wednesday due to the show and Thursday was spent catching up on side gig work because of the show.

    5) Name 3 Gratitudes -- 7of 7 days -- The biggest thing that came through in my review is that I created cleaning focuses for each weekend day and have been feeling productive in that area this week.

    6) Drink 4 "bottles" of water -- 4 of 7 -- The calendar reminder is definitely helping. I'm also tracking this on my pedometer. 

I broke my no book buying. Sigh. There was a flash sale. It was only 99 cents but my streak is broken. I will likely attempt this again for February. I have a bunch of books on Audible just waiting for me to find the time to listen plus a number of Kindle books I can read.

The other reason is I'm planning a trip. I won't commit until I know what's happening with the next season at the Smith Center (preview coming February 6th) but I'm getting my ducks in a row. On one hand, I really shouldn't do the trip because that won't help me get debt free in 18 months. On the other hand, it ticks off the box of taking a vacation somewhere I've never been before. I need to live. I can't keep putting things off without feeling like I'm drowning. The trip will also give me the opportunity to connect with someone I haven't seen since I lived in Florida along with some people I met during a business trip a few years ago in South Carolina. Like I said, just getting my ducks in a row right now.

Oops - A Day Late - Weekly Progress

Well I have egg on my face...if I ate eggs anyway. I was in bed, doing my gratitude journaling when I realized I'd forgotten to do this little task. But, all things considered, Sunday is probably a better day for it anyway. 

I spent a bit of time yesterday getting my budget/cash flow worksheet set up for the year. I really like this system and you use it in Google Docs so you have it anywhere:  True Money Saver. I highly recommend it. Just my own laziness that I didn't do this on the 1st of the year like usual. But hey, I was de-Christmas-ing the house on the 1st.

I also spent a bit of time yesterday finetuning the habits etc. I'm tracking in the spreadsheet I downloaded from Emily Excels previously mentioned. I've broken the list into Morning, Noon, Evening, and Night groups along with a Review group. 

The Main Habits I'm Tracking:

    1) Morning Affirmations -- 7 of 7 days.

    2) 20 Minutes Walking -- HA HA HA, that'd be a big ol' no this week (I'm keeping it on here because I REALLY, REALLY need to get back into this habit).

    3) 20 Minutes Reading -- 7 of 7 days, including 2 more chapters on my non-fiction book for this month. I need to get on the ball with this though because the next two chapters are LONG.

    4) Work Writing -- 7 of 7 days.

    5) Name 3 Gratitudes -- 7of 7 days -- I didn't really do a review last night but it was a pretty basic week with no surprises.

    6) Drink 4 "bottles" of water -- 4 of 7 -- I did quite a bit better this week. I made a calendar reminder for myself to drink 24 ozs four times a day which really helped keep me on track.

I've held to my no book buying though I was really tempted to break it yesterday when I learned of a flash sale by one of my go-to authors. I haven't got around to the other books in that series yet and in the end, that is what stayed my hand.

I'm looking forward to the Moulin Rouge Musical this Wednesday. Even though it is sometimes challenging to find someone to go to the Smith Center with me, I love having season tickets to the Broadway series. We get a preview for the 23-24 season on February 6th. 

Weekly Progress

Week Two is almost a wrap.

Fun event this last week was seeing To Kill a Mockingbird at the Smith Center with Ian. Normally, I'll read the program before the show starts but Ian and I were talking/catching up. I spent the entire first act recognizing the voice of the actor portraying Atticus Finch but not placing it. (My seats are good but without binoculars, you'd be hard pressed to see individual faces. Since focusing on faces via binoculars means missing other aspects of what's happening on stage, I no longer even take them to shows.) Of course the minute the lights went up for intermission I was looking up Atticus...it was none other than Richard Thomas! Another I recognized was Jeff Still! Yeah, a bit of a fan girl moment.

Habits I'm tracking:

1) Morning Affirmations -- 6 of 7 days 

2) 20 Minutes Walking -- HA HA HA, that'd be a big ol' no this week

3) 20 Minutes Reading -- 3 of 7 days

I created a quick and dirty Google Docs sheet to track my reading. Nothing fancy, just title, series/book number, author, month completed, and format (ie: paper, ebook, audio book, etc.). I used to keep a much more detailed list back when I barrowed from the library more and paper was my default format. With Kindle, I can just drop completed books into a collection and call it good. As of today, I've read nine books this year and did a beta read for Joely. 

4) Work Writing -- 4 of 7 days, I completed my read through of my current WIP and added 1k new words...Yay!

5) Name 3 Gratitudes -- 6 of 7 days (haven't done tonight's yet) - I'll do my weekly review of the journal I'm keeping for this tonight

6) Drink 4 "bottles" of water -- 1 of 7, which isn't to say I don't drink water daily I just didn't meet my daily goal of 4

I had two items I wanted to complete this week 1) scan and shred papers on desk - done, and 2) schedule doctor's appointment with primary care doctor - done.

I've been successful in not buying any books this month. Though I admit to adding some to my wish list.

Today has been insanely productive on the cleaning front and I was able to tick off a lot of items from my to-do list. I'm pleasantly tired.