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Wow! How are we in February already?!
I’ve debated whether to do a monthly goal progress update or a quarterly one. I’m going to go for monthly, just to keep myself in check, but it may end up being quarterly.
How this works is, I’ll look at the SMART goals I created for myself in Rosie’s Goals for 2023 and see how I’m doing!
Without further ado, let’s see my progress in my four main goal areas: personal, writing, financial, and professional.
*drum roll please*
Rosie Rose’s Goals for 2023 - One month check-in
Personal
📚Read 36 fiction books -
I’m starting this one book behind. It should read 3 books a month. I finished two. I also started two others, so I guess I’m not that far behind since I should finish those both up soon.
The January Friends of Fiction Book Club Challenge was a book with a one-word title. For that I read Amends by Carissa Andrews. Then, I read book 3 in the Seaside Café Mystery Series by Bree Baker Tide and Punishment. I’ve started Patient Zero by Jonathan Maberry because he's the author Guest of Honor at a writing conference I'll be at in March. I also started Pawn’s Gambit by Darin Kennedy because it's been on my TBR a while. I’m maybe 20% into both of those.
I’m wavering between a couple options for the February book club challenge which is to read a book written by a POC, and I have a list a mile long to choose from! I can’t decide which to pick first. I’m leaning towards The Violin Conspiracy by Brendan Slocumb, but I've also been interested in Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor as well. I have a week or so because I want to finish at least one of the two I’ve started before I start a third book.
All-in-all, I’d call this a success.
📚Read 4 non-fiction books - I have two on my TBR. One is Write Frame of Mind by Carissa Andrews. The other is In the Creative Arena by Tony Albrecht. This goal is one per quarter, so I’m not behind on that yet.
📚 Return to Streaming on Twitch - This hasn’t happened yet. Switching my setup from my work computer to my gaming computer is such a hindrance. And I haven’t felt much like console gaming yet. So it hasn’t happened. Maybe this month.
💪 Lose 25-40lbs - No progress here.
🧘♀️ 190 Days of Yoga - I completed Yoga with Adriene’s new 30 Day Yoga Journey called
Center! I loved it. You can see a collage from each practice on my writer IG. I discovered a couple other writer friends who were doing it as well!
I’ve started following her February calendar “Align.” My partner decided to join me this month, so that’s been nice. If you want to follow more of that journey you can follow my fitness IG @foodandfitnesswithrose
So far, this is a success! I’m 32 days in.
🏃♀️ 3-5 days of cardio a week - Hit and miss. Some weeks I walk a ton and some weeks I don’t walk at all. But, we’re registering for the local homeless shelter’s 5k Fundraiser in April. We did it last year. So I need to start training! It is a run/walk, but I want to beat my time from last year.
Writing
✍️ Holiday Romance WIP- Complete writing Holiday Romance WiP by January 15th. Let it rest for a month and potentially have a couple Pre-Alpha readers for general plot/character impressions. Re-read, edit in late-February, early March. Query to presses accepting un-agented holiday romance submissions. If not accepted by August, prepare to self-pub and set pre-order date for Holiday season 2023.
Eesh. Well, let’s talk about this. I did not complete writing this draft by January 15th. I did managed to make it to 70k words by January 31st, and I am close to the top of The climax. I have raised my goal to 80k by February 5th, which is Sunday. It may not take 80k to finish it. We shall see. I’m wanting to put my nose to the grindstone this weekend and finish it. I was hoping to let it rest before re-reading and editing it. The press I had my sights set on for potentially querying has bumped their holiday romance deadline up to March 15th. I think it was later last year. So, I’m not sure if I’m going to be able to do that. But we’ll see what happens. There are some other presses I’m researching with later deadlines. It’s all dependent on me getting this draft done.
✍️ Kindle Vella serials - Start 2-4 serials on Kindle Vella. I do have a loose plan for this, but I’m not going into detail here. These will likely be contemporary romance or erotic romance. I have a couple started, that I can pick up on. I plan to use January to do some light plotting for these and start writing and hopefully start publishing in February! Maybe I’ll write a Valentine’s one, as a debut.
Whew! Not happened yet. I’ve been doing well to work on my holiday romance. Once it’s completed though, then I’ll look at these. I’ve had a few plot lines bouncing around in my head.
✍️ Phoenix Rising (urban fantasy) Rewrite
✍️ Re-read, world build Love in the Time of Paleblood (High Fantasy)
✍️ Re-plot Alias (thriller)
These three were all for later in the year.
✍️ Weekly Twitch Writing Stream - I have not done any of these yet, but I have hosted some writing sprints in the Discord.
✍️ Attend 3 Cons - Still trying to decide on a potential 3rd con to go to! First one is in about six-weeks! There's still time to sign up to attend the SAGA Genre Writer's Conference in Winston-Salem on March 10-12!
✍️ Blog 2-4 times a month - I feel like I’ve done fairly well with this so far. I was doing Bloganuary—which was a Wordpress prompt event with a new prompt every day. I did about a week’s worth and then got sidetracked. I liked some of the prompts I didn't get to though, so I may go back and answer some more of those questions for future blogs.
✍️ Complete building Rosie’s Reverie website - As I finish up my holiday romance draft this is becoming a priority.
✍️ Join TikTok for Book promo - I’ve joined TikTok. I haven’t done anything with it yet. LOL Follow me though! @rosiepotter56
Financial
💰Pay off two to three debts - We have had a random turn of events and have already paid off two credit cards this year. I pulled money out of my state 401k that I’ll never use again and slapped that on a card, because that was more beneficial to me now than trying to save it for 30 years from now. And the wreck we were in at Christmas, actually worked out in our favor because my partner got a little bit of the money from the settlement that didn’t get paid to Toyota, and we were able to pay off another debt!
So mission accomplished? I think I’ll be upping this goal to 4-5 debts now.
💸Put $5000 in savings - Already got a grand in! Fingers crossed nothing happens to mess that up.
THE PREVIOUS TWO GOALS ARE SUPER IMPORTANT BECAUSE
💸 Buy a house - Later in the year goal.
Professional
👩💼Keep my new job all year - So far so good! I had my 30-day Review today and all was well.
👩💼Professional development - I’ve signed up for a free 2-hour Webinar next week and I’m looking at another one that happens later in the month. The one later in the month is on Scriptwriting for training modules, so I have a double interest in that. That’s one thing I love about my job as an Instructional Designer. I get to do a bit of writing!
📚Read 4 L&D books - Haven’t picked one to start with yet.
*****
I feel like I’ve kicked the year off to a good start! What do you think?
Let me know in the comments how your goals for the year have been going! Always love to hear how others are doing and be an accountability partner in any way that I can!
For now,
Rosie J.
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