Today I finally pulled the trigger and bought myself a new laptop. I have been wanting one for a while, and CostCo had a great deal, so boom- new laptop. My intent is for this laptop to replace my desktop- eventually. I have to move everything over, which may take me a while (well, not really once I set up a shared folder on the laptop, but still…)

Other than that, it’s been a fairly quiet week on the home front. Next week, I start the barely working part of my schedule between now and May 3. I’m working 6 hours on Monday and then will likely not go into the office again next week. I’ll check my email a couple times a day, and that’s about it.

Because of this, I am trying to set myself a schedule here at home so that I have some productivity and don’t spend the whole day playing Bejeweled Blitz or WoW or something else along those lines. I want to try and get some writing done and maybe, just maybe, apply for some jobs.

 

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

February- yes

March- no

Publish one guest post per month.

January- yes

February- no

March- no

March was a failure. I’ll see if I can get myself back on track in April.

 

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 (2 rejections)

March: No

Complete the first draft of my novella and start edits.

I am working on something to submit in April, and I’m looking at creating myself a writing schedule once I’m not going in to work every day. This is mostly because I need something productive to do and also because I feel like I am behind where I want to be with both the short stories and the novella.

 

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. I promise – a new post will go up this week. We’ll see how much of my computational finance class analysis ends up there.

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

April Numbers

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

 

Making our own dog food is now out the window.

However, we did sign up for the CostCo American Express card, and my new plan is going to be to put ALL grocery expenses on it and pay it twice a month. We’ll see how that works.

 

 

Floating Goals

Earn my Certified Supply Chain Professional designation. I have the test scheduled for Wednesday, April 24.

Find a new job. I have had a couple of phone interviews and should be hearing in the next week or so about scheduling in person interviews.

Rebuild savings to $5-10k. We’re up to $3,100, and another $2k is scheduled to go into savings in April.

Replace all the windows in the house. We got the information for the vendor Direct Buy contracts with for window replacement. Next step will be to get someone out to give us a quote.

Fix the plumbing issues. We have a number of little plumbing issues all of which we really need to get fixed.

Get an Exterminator. I have ants in my kitchen and my bedroom. They need to go.

Publish new photography/flash fiction book. My artist is in. Now we just need to start working out the logistics. I will be back in contact with her this week and hopefully we’ll start working on it.

Refinance the house. DONE.