#AMonthofFaves Challenges and Goals – Reading challenges, personal goals, resolutions – how did you do? What are your goals for this month, this season or next year. Check in here.
These were my goals for 2018:
- deal with my mail as it comes in ❌
- eat the frog when it comes to grading 🤷🏾♀️
- enter at least one writing contest ✅
- work on my creative writing every day ❌
- see Hamilton ✅
- eat more vegetables ✅
✅ means done, obviously.
As for the mail…yeah. The best I could do is buy a cute bin to put it in. I’m going to deal with it over the break and see if I can’t figure out a better method than open it and either throw it in the bin until I’m ready to file/shred it or put it in the pile of bills and other stuff that needs to be dealt with immediately.
I didn’t do a better job of grading right away because hahahahaha I’d literally rather do anything else most days, but, because I had my students do self-grading, it was much easier to deal with. So I’m calling this a sort of win. (I mean, it’s a win, but I still want to get better at not procrastinating grading.)
Every day for creative writing is/was not feasible. I’ll work on a better plan.
These were the reading challenges I planned to participate in during 2018:
- Book Riot’s Read Harder
- #MustReadin2018
- Reading the Bible as Literature
Okay, so yeah, I never even started reading the Bible. I’m calling the Read Harder challenge a wash because I’ve read for 14 of the categories, but don’t see myself actively putting in the work to fill in the other 10.
I’m four books to my Goodreads goal (75!), so I’m pretty sure I’ll make that.
I’ll be posting my #MustReadin2018 wrap-up on Thursday.
As for next year, these are my goals:
1. Get out of debt. My specific short-term goal for 2019 is to pay off this one student loan I have that I’m still mad isn’t paid off yet and then make a significant dent in my credit card debt. More importantly, I need to stop accruing debt, so no new debt in 2019 is part two of this goal.
2. Focus on my health. More specifically, reorganize my life so it goes God > Health > Family > Work. Right now, work is usually at the top of my list and that has to change because I’m pretty sure most of my health issues are related to stress (see also goal #1). My job can be stressful, but it doesn’t have to be the most important thing in my life, especially because if I dropped dead tomorrow (or were hospitalized), they would just find a sub and keep it moving.
3. Get an agent and sell a script. So obviously, I need to get to work on this.
I haven’t made a decision about reading challenges yet, but I’m definitely going to do #MustReadin2019. I want to read poetry and plays in 2019, so I have to take some time and see if there are any reading challenges related to that.
And dassit. We’ll see where the rest of the year takes me.
And since it’s December 24, have a Merry Christmas to all who celebrate! May everyone reading have a peaceful and joyful day tomorrow.
The Englishist 
Your goals are my goals – seriously … except for the script! Mail is an issue for me / my fam too – and for us … a cute bin just meant the mail collected in a cute bin.
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I had to get the cute bin because it started sprawling across the counter. Sigh.
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I’m sooooo envious you’ve seen Hamilton. And way to go on eating more vegetables. I should pick one thing (like mail) to organize better too — I like starting with something manageable…
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I wish my mail were manageable. I hope you have better luck than I did!
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I managed to get my unread email down from 5200 to 450 this break, and most of the 450 are to me from me and articles or recipes I sent to myself. I felt SO virtuous. Health is my priority for 2019 too. I’d been thinking of doing Whole30 for January but decided I just can’t take all that meat. I don’t even like meat! So I’m going to try to skip sugar and dairy in January and see how that goes. And then get back to working out. And sleeping. Those would all be good things.
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