Weekly Goals, Week 5: Best Laid Plans

Shortly after posting last week, I got sick, and it was a doozy.  I slept most of the day Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.  I kept thinking just one more day of resting, and I'd be able to get back to work.  Not so.  I finally felt halfway human when I woke up on Monday, but even then, I ran out of steam quickly and had to nap halfway through the day.

So today I'm in a frenzy to not just get my house ready for my mom to recover here, but also to clean and sanitize everything so she doesn't get sick while she's recovering.  Last night we picked up some heavy-duty cleaners, more serious ones than what I'd usually use, and today I'm doing endless amounts of laundry.  I'm just washing everything: the blankets I used in my sick nest on the couch, our bedding, the guest bedding, and all the regular laundry, as it was overdue as well.  Later I'll be scrubbing all surfaces in the bathrooms and kitchen.

So all my planning and hopes and goals are out the window.  I have one goal this week:

1. Survive

Send help.

Weekly Goals, Week 4: Down to the Wire

Whew!  For a minute there I thought that just like last week, I was going to let the entire week go by again before sitting down to write this post.  It's the problem about being busy with things that keep me away from my computer: Things like blogging don't get done.

This week we're officially down to the wire.  My mom's surgery is next Thursday, a week from tomorrow, which means we have a week to get the house (or at least the parts she needs to be able to access) passable for a walker.  I feel like I'm struggling still to get the doll room cleaned up, so I'm not sure how on track I am at this point.  Thankfully we still have a full weekend coming up, which I should probably use to focus on my mom's spaces (instead of finishing up the doll room).

I've had a busy week so far, but I've been putting work in on the doll room where I can.  Yesterday I worked on a doll tea photo shoot for the museum, for photos that we'll use to promote some upcoming events.  I'll need to put together some marketing images and copy, and I also need to work on a website for a client (hopefully some minor work), but I may or may not get to those this week.  The priority is probably the museum images and copy for the February event, since there's a time crunch on those; everything else can be shifted off until next week.

Despite those small goals, the overall goal of organizing and cleaning up the house stays the same.  Here are my goals for the rest of the week and the weekend:

1. Work on organization projects
2. Work on February event marketing

Besides organizing and cleaning up, I included the marketing materials for the February event.  I didn't include the other projects because they're not quite as important; all other client work can wait until next week.  For now I need to focus as much of my energy as possible on getting the house ready for my mom's recovery!

Weekly Goals 2024, Week 3: Holiday Week Blues

Yikes.  Since I'm writing this on Friday instead of at the beginning of the week, I guess this edition is more of a week-in-review than weekly goals.  But I didn't want to skip writing about the week altogether.

Last week was actually pretty productive.  I got a bunch done in my organization project, on top of babysitting and other obligations.  It was a good week.

This week has been a struggle as far as productivity goes.  I don't know if it's because it was a short week due to the Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday, or because I feel like I'm coming out of hibernation after the extreme cold of the holiday weekend, or just a "productivity hangover" from how much I'd been getting done before that.  We've been super busy lately, and that does sometimes have the effect of making me into a slug once the pressure lets up a little.

The weekend was tough, partially because we had extreme cold with one day (Monday) not even making it above zero, and the other days over the weekend only marginally better than that.  I thought that while it was cold, I'd be motivated to get stuff done inside, but the opposite seemed to be the case: It made me want to hibernate.  The effect was compounded by the fact that I was dog sitting for the weekend, and we ended up with the dog for an extra night when the family got stuck in the mountains due to the snow and cold.  Their dog can't be left alone, and tends to shadow me at home, which also makes it difficult to get anything done while she's here.

I thought once I dropped the dog off home on Tuesday and the weather warmed up, I'd be able to get stuff done, but I forgot to take into account that my mom was coming over on Tuesday.  She stayed the night and didn't leave until late in the day on Wednesday, so that took out two more days.  Yesterday I felt like I struggled to get anything done, and today has been much the same.

I'm thankful today is Friday.  Today I have some copy I need to write for the museum, and then with the rest of the weekend my main goal is to get back to work on organizing.  I have two weekends left to get the house ready for my mom before her procedure on February 1st, so I need to get moving on that.

Weekly Goals 2024: Week 2

I can't believe it's already the second week of January!  Last week started out with the post-holiday drag getting back into the swing of things, but it ended with absolutely crazy levels of busyness, at least for me.

My only goal for last week was to work on cleanup and organization, and you know what?  I accomplished that!  And actually, I made a lot of progress.  My doll room has been a wreck for a year (okay, probably longer than that, but for a year since I moved it to the bigger room) and I finally started tackling that.  We cleaned and organized pretty much all weekend.  We got a lot done, but there's still a lot left to do.

I'm also trucking along on my social media marketing research project.

This week I decided to focus fully on organization.  I can get started on all other projects (working on my novel, working on client dolls, and now taxes coming up soon, too) once the organization is all finished, but right now we have a time crunch: My mom is having a procedure February 1st, and will need to stay with us for a little while afterward.  That means I need to make sure everything is organized and passable for her while using a walker, which means I have a lot to finish before then.

That being said, I do have a couple other things preventing me from focusing solely on that this week.  I have a scheduled photo shoot with the doll museum tomorrow, a doctor's appointment on Wednesday all the way across town, and babysitting Thursday and Friday.  So my available time will be a little spotty until this weekend.  (I'll also be dog sitting over the weekend, but we should be able to work on organization while the dog is here.)

So like last week, I only have the one goal:

1. Work on organization projects

This week I hope to finish the doll room and get started on the living room.  The living room is where the sofa bed is for my mom, but in order to put away all the doll stuff scattered about, I need to first finish cleaning up and organizing the doll room.  Then I can do the living room and make room for the walker she'll need after her procedure to get through.

So I'll just keep focusing on this for now, and anything else I can accomplish during the week is just icing on the cake!

Weekly Goals 2024: Week 1

Did you miss me last week?  I decided to take the week off from blogging and all work-related things.  Zac was off the week between Christmas and New Year's, and I just wanted to focus on our house projects together.  I was hoping to get a year's worth of house projects done in a week, but of course that didn't work out so well.  As usual, I forgot about the need to eat, sleep, relax, and see friends and family (after all, it was the holiday week!).

Still, we made a lot of progress that we wouldn't have otherwise, and I'm pleased with what we did.  Plus we were able to do it at a pretty leisurely pace, so we felt like we got to relax over vacation too.  It was a good balance.

With the new year I've decided to do something a little different with my weekly goals posts.  This week is the first week of 2024, so I'm going to start over with my weekly count, and we'll just count up to 52 weeks.  It'll be easier to keep track of my weekly goals, and ultimately, my goals for 2024 as well.

My goals for the last tracked week of the year didn't pan out very well.  Since it was the week leading up to Christmas, I'm not surprised, and I did somewhat anticipate it since I specifically said I was focusing mostly on my first two goals, working on organization and my novel.  I did manage to get some work done on organization, but nothing on my novel.

Last week I did a pretty poor job of tracking our time working on things, which is really too bad.  I did spend quite a bit of time on organization, but I forgot to track probably 75 percent of it.  But I managed a reorganization of the sales closet, pantry, and both bathrooms, and got a substantial amount of work done catching up on filing.

This week is still shifting and changing, so I don't know entirely right now what the entire week is going to look like.  My mom is trying to schedule a pre-op and surgery for a replacement, so a lot of my next couple weeks is in limbo until I find out when that will be.  Meanwhile, I'm trying to schedule a time to film a couple of videos with a local doll shop, and possibly some babysitting next week as well.

With all that in limbo, it's difficult to set goals for this week, so I'm focusing on the minimum I want to accomplish, regardless of what else gets planned or rescheduled or moved around.

1. Work on organization projects

You know what, we're just going to go with that this week.  Maybe it's just because I'm having a hard time transitioning back to a "regular" work day, but right now I feel like I can't manage very much at the moment.  So I'll just focus on that until it's done (or at least to a place where I'm satisfied with it)!

Goals for 2024

I feel like the end of 2023 rushed up on me before I was ready, and here we are, two days into the new year!

I looked back to my goals post for 2023, and was surprised to see that I didn't post it until February last year.  I didn't remember taking that long to get around to writing about my goals.

When I wrote that post, I still had a freelance client I was working for.  That ended a month or two later when the platform didn't pay me.  I had to fight to get paid, which I did eventually, but they retaliated by kicking me off the platform.  I tried another platform, but I didn't care for it.  I had already been contemplating what I wanted to do with my freelance career, though, so it wasn't a difficult decision to let my freelancing lapse for now.

Currently I'm writing materials on a volunteer basis for the Denver Museum of Miniatures, Dolls & Toys, where I'm also on the board, and for now that's my only professional writing work.  Eventually I might take up freelancing again but for now I'm pursuing other things.

As for those other things, I didn't accomplish what I wanted in 2023, but I'm hoping to have better luck in 2024.  I wanted to finish my first novel of Ruby Ransome and start the self-publishing process, but I took a break from working on the novel around the holidays and never got back to it again until NaNoWriMo 2023 rolled around.  I'm hoping to accomplish those things this year, though.  I took a break from writing for the holidays and to get my house projects done, similarly to last year, but I have hope that I'll be able to get back to work on it more easily this year.  I have more momentum this year, and hopefully all the work I've been doing on covers will keep me excited and motivated, too!

As I mentioned last year, I don't really do New Year's resolutions anymore.  I used to set a handful of resolutions at the start of every year, and then fail spectacularly at them throughout the year.  I stopped because it was so discouraging to go through the same pattern every year.

This year, though, I am going to set one writing goal.  I debated on making it to publish my novel, but I decided that's a lot of pressure, especially as I'll be new to the publishing process.  What if something goes wrong?

So instead, I'm setting this goal for 2024:

Finish Ruby Ransome and Pandora's Box.

I like that goal because it's enough progress that it's more than I've been able to do so far, but not so much that it'll be too easy to fail at.  And honestly, even if publishing gets delayed for some reason, just having finished the novel will be a major achievement for me.

Last year, 2023, was definitely a significant improvement over 2022 (the year where my horse almost died), but I think I can do better this year!