It’s Sunday, time for my weekly Sunday evening post! I know you wait all week for this update on how I’m doing on my goals.

 

Blogging

The purpose of these two goals is, yes, to grow my blogs, but also to support and highlight blogs and bloggers I enjoy. Just like I will be posting 2 new to me blogs every week in my round ups, the point here is to draw attention to blogs that others might not be familiar with. (Blog swaps will not count toward either of these goals.)

Write one guest post per month. January- yes

Publish one guest post per month. January- yes

I know February is only 2 or 3 days shorter than the other months, and yet it always seems much shorter. I have not even sent anyone a possible guest post nor have I really asked for guest posts. I need to do this.

 

Writing

Writing fiction is my side hustle, though I have yet to make any money from it. I’ve found that I devote much more time to the blogs than I do my fiction, though, because I am on a schedule. I feel accountable to my readers to get posts up when I say I will. And because I am a procrastinator, deadlines are a must for me. I get the energy I need to work on something from an impending deadline.

I am hoping to transfer the power of those two things- accountability and deadlines, to my fiction this year.

Submit at least one piece to a paying venue per month.

December: Yes (rejected)

January: Yes (rejected)

February: Yes x4

I guess not quite x4. One of the venues I submitted to isn’t necessarily a paying one. In addition, I also submitted two flash pieces to a contest. So, I’ve submitted one story to a paying venue, one to a non-paying venue, and two entries into a flash fiction contest. Still, that’s 4 submissions this month, and I am proud of myself for that.

Complete the first draft of my novella and start edits. Another 579 words written this morning, and we’re moving forward nicely.

 

Finances

A lot of financial goals will actually end up as floating goals- ie they will be things I expect to complete well before the year is out. But I do have some long term financial goals that I think will work for year-long tracking.

Create and track a practice stock portfolio. Latest post went up Feb 7.

End the year “on budget” in the categories I’m tracking.

February Numbers

Category	On Budget
	Month	Year
Groceries	Yes	No
House	Yes	Yes
Eating Out	Yes	No
Allowance – E	Yes	Yes
Allowance – C	Yes	Yes

 

On groceries, we’re over for the year by $0.10, so not by much. We’re also not that much over for the year on eating out. I believe it will work itself out in March, and actually I think we might get ahead, as on Friday we got two $100 restaurant.com gift cards.

 

 

Floating Goals

Refinance the house. DONE. The loan funded successfully on Thursday.

Rebuild savings to $5-10k. Refinancing the house caused us to deplete our cash reserves pretty much to zero, and yet we spent almost $6k on Friday. (More on this on Tuesday.) Plus we had a $3.2k bill from the adoption agency in February. So rebuilding savings may take a few months, but we really want to get that cushion back.

Replace all the windows in the house. We did something on Friday that’s pretty much going to make us feel required to replace the windows this year. It will also save us considerable money on the project, though that comes at an initial cost (which we paid on Friday).

Publish new photography/flash fiction book. I’ll be seeing my artist next Friday and hope to have a good update on this next Sunday.