Revisiting Goals

Summer’s half over and it got me to thinking that the year is half over as well. And I think it’s high time I checked out the goals I set out at the beginning of the year to see how I’m doing.

First up, a reminder of those goals:

Publishing: Wandering Wizards and an anthology; start submitting poetry and stories.
Organizing and indexing
Writing every day
Less gaming & social media, more exercising and eating healthy

Doesn’t look bad, does it? Because technically there are only four goals. But three of them are multi-part goals so it’s not as simple as it looks.

Publishing — utter fail
Wandering Wizards has been moving forward at a snail’s pace and the anthology is still nothing but an idea. And I definitely haven’t been submitting anything to any kind of publications.

Organizing and indexing — utter fail
I did get the rest of my files pulled off of my old lap top, but they’re still scattered amongst various USB sticks. And I think I’ve pretty much figured out how I’m going organize my poetry, but haven’t made any effort to do so.

Write every day — sort of fail
It’s kind of feast or famine with me, especially lately. The spirit is willing my but mind is weak, and the distractions are many.

Less gaming & social media, more exercising and eating healthy — semi-win
The gaming and social media are kind of hit or miss – some days are more successful than others. It’s an ongoing process that I’m still working on, especially the games. But the more exercising and eating healthy is going well. I haven’t lost any weight yet, but my A1C (I’m diabetic) has gone down 1.4 points.

So . . . it looks like I’ve got my work cut out for me if I’m to reach my goals by the end of the year. But the grandbaby starts kindergarten in the fall, which means I have my days to myself again. So if I can’t reach at least one of my writing goals by the end of the year then maybe I’m not cut out to be a writer.

Prompt of the Week

The Story Shack still won’t let me in, so this week I used the Seventh Sanctum writing challenge generator, which came up with the following:

The story takes place in the early morning. A character will send a letter.
A character will prepare for a religious ceremony. A character becomes attracted to someone during the story.
A character writes a book, but the action goes terribly wrong. A character becomes happy during the story. During the story, there is a sudden change in weather.
The story must have a giant at the beginning. The story must involve a pendant at the end.
A character is misunderstood throughout most of the story. During the story, a character drinks something that disagrees with them. The story is set during a day off. The story takes place at noon exactly. During the story, someone is mistaken for someone famous.

Last week I spent way too much time thinking about my story and doing research, but to be perfectly honest it just wasn’t happening for me. Hopefully this week I’ll have better luck with one of the prompts from above.