On October 1st, I posted some goals for the month. I had never done that before on my blog, but decided, what the heck.
I had the goals in the back of my mind all month long. Some days more so than others, but I was trying to give it my best shot.
How did I do?
1. Financial
Save money. I have a specific amount in mind and I’ll let you know if I meet it or not. I paid off my debt and have been saving money all year, but I’d like to save more before the end of the year. And no, I won’t be going too crazy with holiday gift purchases. At all. Guess I can write off Thursday Things if I want to save more, but I’d rather have zeros in my bank account than random trinkets and knickknacks that don’t amount to much. I think.
I did okay with this. I didn’t save as much as I wanted to (who ever does), but I did save about 80% of what my goal was. Had I not bought this lens or donut pans and cookie scoops I could have had more in savings but sometimes it’s more important to live a little than to save, within reason of course. We all have our own internal line of what’s ‘living a little’ and what’s excessive and unnecessary. Overall, I am fine with my spending and saving for the month. Success.
2. Exercise
Do different yoga poses than the ones I usually do; work on poses that I don’t like as much or that don’t come as easy.
I have a tendency to practice the same poses over and over at home because I have my little routine and I whip through it. I need to push myself to practice asanas that are not in my current repertoire.
I have really tight quads and forced myself to do poses like virasana and kapotasana even though it would have been easier for me to just do other things like inversions or forward bends and skip the quad work. Overall, success.
3. Health
Get more sleep. At least 5.5 hours every night. Yes, I get less than this most nights.
This has been goal of mine for ages, including on my 2011 Goals & Intentions list, i.e. New Year’s Resolutions as some people call them, but I have continued to fail at it, miserably.
I’d like to work on this for my overall and longterm health. I don’t necessarily think it’s healthy to go without consistent sleep even if I can function “fine”. I’ve trained myself over the years to function on less and less sleep. I used to be a I have to have 8-9 hours girl. But life changed, a baby happened, demands come up.
I always say, “I’ll sleep when I’m dead.” But I would like to sleep a little more now.
Sleeping was up and down. There were nights that I got less than 5.5 hours but there were also nights I got 7 hours, which for me, is huge. Overall, I think I got slightly more sleep, on average, than I had last month, so that’s a success.
4. Cooking
Develop, photograph, and blog about two new original dessert recipes
Success! I have loved creating and blogging about more recipes this past month and plan to continue with that trend.
Candy Corn Cookie Dough Pretzel Bites
Peanut Butter Oatmeal White Chocolate Chip Cookies
Blueberry Banana Recovery Smoothie
Caramel Maple Pumpkin Pie Smoothie
Pumpkin Peanut Butter Oatmeal Bars
Caramel Apple Bars (end of September but close enough)
5. Photography
Give myself another self-assigned project and just get out there and take pictures. And not of food. People or things.
Fail. I have taken lots of pictures but most of them have been food and I haven’t done a full-on self-assigned photography “project” like I had hoped.
6. Blogosphere
Comment on less blogs. I know many people want to comment on more blogs and I think that’s great. It mirrors my own journey with reading one blog and commenting on it, to reading and commenting on more and more blogs until commenting has taken on a life of its own and has become a full time job. And it keeps creeping up. It’s also one thing that prevents me from getting sleep, which is when I know that I change is imperative.
With me, it’s a time management issue because I can read in stealth about 5 times faster than if I comment.
I’m still reading, just not commenting.
Overall, I am commenting less. However, I have found new blogs to read that I am loving. But I have stopped reading some, too. Baby steps but success overall. My blog reading has been replaced with Pinterst reading.
7. Family
Spend more time with Scott and Skylar. At least two extra hours per week of family time over what we have now. Just being together is the most important thing in my life and I want more.
Fail. Scott was traveling for work for about half the month of October and so it was impossible to spend more time together. Just spending any time together was all we could muster. However, we have our family trip coming up and soon enough we will have plenty of happy-family-togetherness.
8. Friends
Get together in person with a friend at least once during the month. That doesn’t sound like much, but I have said before that it gets harder and harder to make time for friends when you’re not in school, and when you have a job and a family, but I need to do this for myself to recharge my own batteries so that I can continue to give to my family and others.
A coffee meetup does wonders for the soul. Even just an hour.
Fail. I am disappointed that I didn’t make this happen. Do long email chats with Katie and phone calls with Marla count? I have realized that many of my friends and I do not live in the same city, including friends I’ve made through blogging, and I wish we could get together in person rather than email. One day I hope it happens.
Overall Tally:
Success = 5
Fail = 3
I’ll take it.
Questions:
1. Did you set any goals for October or for November? Do you have over-arching life goals that you’re mindful of?
How did you do with them or how are you doing with them?
The year is almost over. Wow.
If you set any New Years Resolutions or set New Years Intentions you better get crackin’ on anything you hope to accomplish, tackle, or check off your list for 2011.
The things I’d like to work on and my goals include:
more time with my family
more time with my friends (real life). One day I’d like to meet my “blogging friends”. These friends are just as “real” as in-person friends and I want to spend time with them one day, too.
more cooking and kitchen time
sharing more recipes on my blog
improve my photography
What’s on your to-do list? Or goals list?
2. What was the best thing you cooked (or ate) last month?
I’ll go with the cookies. Or the bars. Or the Butterfingers. Ok, I can’t pick.
Thanks for the $25 Gift Card Giveaway entries
And could I ask you to please Vote for Me in the Delta/Biscoff Bake-Off. Just takes a second to click. Thank you!
great goals and having to accomplished more than half is good.
i had similar goals and I started/accomplished most of them but it’s an on going journey to always be mindful of everything in my life, with or without my goals.
I am loving your pictures. Very appetizing to look at.
November goal-
Start The New Rules of Lifting for Women (again) and stick with it this time! Also, to improve my vegan cooking (vegan is new to me, cooking is not). Great blog!
i hope the baking goals continue… us lucky readers are the ones that get to reap the benefits of your amazing recipes!!
i did a pretty average job with my october goals. the saving money goal gave me a bit of trouble, but i’m a work in progress!
Thanks, Kathleen…your support is great :)
Saving money, eh?…well, LMK if you’re still thinking of a new lens! ha!
oh i’m definitely still thinking of that! the lens is exempt from the savings goal :)
I need to make some goals – more of a running checklist to keep me on track and to get started on things and projects I want to get done! Thinking about it is just overwhelming, though! :)
I find that commenting on other people’s blogs to be a small part of my day – I have about 20 that I follow that post interesting content that I always seem to connect with and want to share my thoughts about. Fortunately for me most of them aren’t as prolific as you! ;)
Best thing I ate? I would have to say the smoked gouda grilled cheese served alongside a heaping cup of roasted red pepper and tomato soup last night. I wish I could have it for lunch, but alas, I’m at work!
ahh you just reminded me I need to make those samoas asap they look delicious!! Im impressed with how well you did on your goals I need to look back on mine soon!
LMK if you make them!
You did lots of baking this month! Loved it all. One of my goals last month was to spend more time with Kevin. But he too was out and about travelling. I saw him for 4 days in October. Ya, 4. We’ve booked a trip too, in December. So we’ll actually get to spend an ENTIRE week together!
have fun on your trip. Between this trip and India, love that you’re out there living life!
How do you function on 5 1/2 hours of sleep?! I need at least 7 to feel somewhat rested…usually 8 or 9!
Just one of those things…you make it work if you have to :)
Congrats on your goals! In terms of sleeping, I don’t know HOW you make it on 5.5 (I guess having a kiddoo changes things!), but I’m also working on having a more consistent bedtime and going to sleep earlier. There is no reason I need to be up on the internet as late as I am, and it makes it REALLY hard to get up for school in the morning.
I never used to be that way but it just sort of happened…it’s a mom thing for me I guess :)
Hope you get more zzzz’s too!
I’d say that’s a great success! I loved reading about your wins and losses, and I think striving for perfection will always leave us coming up short so its good to take a look at the whole picture and say- I improved on a lot this month… success! You’re recipes have been wonderful to read so many of, I really enjoy them!
My goals for the first few weeks of November are always just to eat super healthy…because from Thanksgiving on, it’s kind of a doozy for me, haha. Not drinking this year will probably help in that area, I suppose ;-)
Great job on your goals! I’m impressed with all the awesome recipes you cooked up (pun intended, ha).
I say our email chats count. ;)
I’m so glad you are getting more sleep! I’ve been slowing working up to getting more myself. My semester is 1/2 over, so the workload is chilling out. A little, but it is enough to let me get to sleep before 11 pm some days.
I don’t really set goals, but I am always trying new things. I did make a concerted effort last month to stretch more and I am way more flexible than I was before. It has become my favorite part of working out.
Per email, glad the stretching has been a big bonus and without our chats, I’d be in the looney bin :)
xo
I’d say you did pretty good – especially with the saving. And you earn double for all the new baking ;-) I wish I lived close by and we could have met up to satisfy the friends goal!
I really don’t set goals per se – something like a race, which I did indeed conquer. But I really should set some goals for myself, something to work towards. Might help me focus more.
I have noticed your added baking this past month and love it – you have such great ideas that are still healthy and gorgeous photographs! Thanks & keep em’ coming :)
You noticed? Ok cool..thank you for saying that!
I always see bloggers do the goal thing, and I haven’t really. It’s clearly a good tool though—even when you don’t fulfill everything.
I’m not a resolution kind of person—but I do set intentions sometimes. Like, once I paid off my student loans I wanted to save a specific amount of money, and I was close…but then I had to get my car fixed, bought a new chair, had someone screw me over in a business deal (ok, so I went on three trips too)…and all of a sudden I’m back at square one. I’m not disappointed though–I’m super happy that I’ve made my life be what I want (not sitting in some dull office all day!).
The best thing I ate…your cookie balls! (the cashew/chocolate chip ones–my nephew loved them too, and when he’s not with me he eats a lot of crappy fast food and junk so this made me super happy!)
you made my cookie dough balls and had a nephew that loved them? thanks for telling me :)
glad you did the october goals recap, averie! and more successes than fails is a move in the right direction, for sure. my november goal is no complaining about the weather – november is dreary and it’s depressing to think ahead to it getting WORSE in december…but i am going to look for positives and keep that goal in mind.
betcha november flies and then we can look forward to xmas excitement!
xmas and you know where is justttttt around the corner and I can’t waitttttt! one day we should meet up down there :)
I never set New Year’s goals or resolutions because it just seems destined for failure but I like the idea of setting monthly goals and holding yourself to account. It sounds like you did pretty well this month and I hope November brings you some of the things you were missing and especially some well-earned family time!