Sunday Evening Post #94

DSCF1976Class of 94 in the house! Yes, I’m dating myself.

Slowly getting ourselves into a new routine, but I think that routine will mean that the Sunday evening post will now go up at almost, or just after, midnight, east coast time, as we spend Sunday evenings doing “family” stuff, so I won’t be on my computer until after SP is in bed.

 

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

April- no

Publish one guest post per month.

January- yes

February- no

March- no

April- no

April turned out to be not any better than March when it came to getting guest blogging done or posted. With my certification out of the way hopefully I’ll get my act together in May.

I do have a request in with one blogging friend to write a guest post for me, so hopefully I’ll get that up this month.

 

DSCF1987Writing

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

April: Yes

Complete the first draft of my novella and start edits. I actually got some writing in this last week. I’ll try and repeat that this coming week.

 

 

DSCF2005Finances

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. The Dow hit a new high again, so I’m looking forward to the May report.

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

May Numbers

Category

On Budget

Month

Year

Groceries

Yes

No

House

No

No

Eating Out

Yes

No

Allowance – E

Yes

No

Allowance – C

Yes

Yes

 

Grocery spending will be up this month as we get used to having another mouth to feed and need to stock up on things like school snacks. And because eating out is one month delayed (paying on the credit card and all) we will likely be back on budget by next month, as we have yet to eat out this month and aren’t likely to do so soon.

 

DSCF2116Floating Goals

Find a new job. Interview on Tuesday. Meeting with an agency on Wednesday. Sit down with my career coach on Friday. I’m feeling good.

Replace all the windows in the house. We decided to go with the vendor we met with on Wednesday, mostly because they are the only vendor in the area who can actually retrofit vinyl windows to our house (currently we have old aluminum windows). This means now cutting away of the siding, and no framing of the windows, which we would then have to paint.

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

Get an Exterminator. Ant season seems to have passed. I still want to get someone out, but it’s less urgent at the moment. And since the ants always come in at the windows, it’s possible replacing the windows will end the ants.

Publish new photography/flash fiction book. One of my goals for my “down time” is to start working on this project. Sadly, my down time hasn’t been very down.

Refinance the house. DONE.

Earn my Certified Supply Chain Professional designation. DONE.

Rebuild savings to $5-10k. We’re up to $8,075. I’m calling this DONE. (Though savings will actually grow considerably over the next 24 weeks as I get severance and hopefully a new regular paycheck.