Shock: January kinda got away from me. Probably due to any number of factors (I’m guessing mostly a huge switch-up in routine!), I didn’t get this post done in anywhere near the timeframe I’d originally imagined. So now I’m combining the looking ahead at 2014 post + the January recap post; I want to do monthly recap posts from here on out, I’m going to play with the format a little bit, but they’ll probably be a pretty constant thing in 2014.
Why do this?
Accountability, mostly. I’m totally okay if nobody even reads these, but the process of both writing it and putting it up publicly is hugely useful for me.
2014: Business
My business goals for 2014: write more and speak more. Like I mentioned in my 2013 recap post, when I looked back at my favorite things from last year, that’s what clearly stood out. My big business (esque? I’m not entirely sure how much revenue it will generate) goal for 2014 is to write a damn book. I actually want to write two books this year, or at least one and a half – finish a nonfiction book, and get at least halfway through Worldslip – but the nonfiction book is my priority. Clearly, I’m still getting back into the fiction-writing habit, but I aim to improve, and at least stick to bi-monthly chapters for the majority of the time in 2014.
2014: Health
My health goal for 2014: do as well as I can. (More on this on Friday.) I know there are things that make me feel better:
- meditating
- yoga
- exercise
- being brutally protective of my sleep time and quality
And I plan to do them as often as possible. I’d like to do one of the more do-y things (meditating, exercise, or yoga) every day. And keep adding to it as I figure out what works for me and what doesn’t. I know acupuncture makes me feel better, and I really want to try CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy), but both of those will have to wait until I’m on more steady money-footing; I’d also like to get a full food sensitivities workup just to see if there’s anything glaring I’m messing, same deal there.
2014: Money
My goal with money is feeling more secure. By the end of the year, I want to feel like I really have a solid grasp on my money in-and-out flow, maybe not “in control” of it (because that makes me think “controlling” which makes me think of jerking things around on a leash or choking them or whatever, not a pleasant association), but I just want to know that I have at least a month’s worth of living expenses in savings, that I know what money is coming in, where it’s coming from, how much it is, and when, and the same for outflow of cash.
2014: Love
(I wrote this before I wrote any other part of this post, in mid-January or so. Apparently I really needed to get it out of my system!)
I’m not entirely sure why I’m giving this a section – you can’t set love goals, after all. (Or, you can, but I imagine they’d be hard to quantify.) But I learned a lot in 2013 that I’m taking into 2014, so here we go anyways.
Namely: I don’t like dating the way a lot of people do it. I don’t want to see how many people I can date at once. I don’t think there’s anything morally wrong with going that way, but the way I am, I don’t want frivolous-surface only interactions with anyone in my life, least of all a romantic interest.
Also: fuck mind games. Various industries & gurus & experts have been manufactured that all seem dedicated to talking about how to be manipulative as all get out in order to “win” at the dating “game.”
Aside from a large and obvious issue here – which is that actively encouraging a person with recurring anxiety issues to play mind-games is like telling a recovering alcoholic to take just a sip; it won’t end well for anyone and the encourager should probably shut the fuck up – my thing is this: I don’t want people to treat me like a chess piece, so I refuse to do that to other people. I am exactly 0% interested in appearing less available or less interested than I am for the sake of triggering some false sense of scarcity. If someone needs a false sense of scarcity to be interested in me, they aren’t worth my time anyways.
Maybe that does make me a hopelessly naive idealist, and maybe that’s why I have a track record of being taken for granted (in friendships as well as relationships). You know what though? I’m past caring. I’m okay with that. (I mean, not with being taken for granted, but that’s a whole ‘nother standing-up-for-myself issue.) I am totally, perfectly okay with being a naive idealist if it means that I don’t partake in activities that are not only actively stressful to me, but suck the fun out of something that should be all about having fun and feel shitty to do (and that’s before we even get into a sociopolitical analysis of where exactly the rules for this particular board game are coming from and who’s writing them, which is something else I’ve spent a good deal of time thinking about).
So that’s my love resolution-definitely-not-a-goal for 2014: don’t play by other peoples’ rules, and don’t even try any more.
Now that I’ve got that rant out of my system…the January recap:
January: Biz
What worked: I loved doing the Rock Your Systems class, and I’m going to turn it into a self-study. I reaffirmed how much I love teaching and group work. I made the final decision to cut out 1:1 work entirely instead of trying to make it work. That felt freaking fantastic.
What didn’t: I don’t think I have anything to put here, really. I had a few slip ups with getting the RYS peeps their materials on time and instead sent them out a day late or so, but that was more adjusting to the new schedule. I did have a few schedule fuck-ups – I wanted to participate in a blog carnival and I missed the deadline (and not even by just a little, I mean plain ol’ fuckin’ forgot about it until the day before the post needed to be done), and my email inbox spent most of January looking like a wildly overgrown jungle, but it’s improving.
Next month: Debut the self-study version of Rock Your Systems, and publish at least one blog post a week. Start strategizing & outlining book – have a solid book-creation strategy + outline in place by end of February.
January: Health
What worked: For the majority of January, I either did the seven minute workout or 5-10 minutes of yoga every.single.day. I did get off track once or twice but the difference both mentally and physically for me when I have a regular physical-energy outlet is so big and so immediately noticeable that it makes it much easier to stick with it.
What didn’t: I did not quite hit my goals for doing regular meditation or energy clearing but I did more of it and more regularly than I had been doing, so ima call that a win.
Next month: I’d really like to get a Jawbone UP or Fitbit Flex to start getting some hard data on how many calories I’m burning, how much sleep I’m getting, etc. and start tracking patterns with those data points (I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that my cycle plays havoc with my sleep patterns most months, and I’d like to confirm that with some hard data); but given the money sitch (see below), that probably won’t happen in February. Which means that I’ll just keep working on the same positive habits I have been working on.
January: Money
What worked: Nothing went too badly here, thankfully. It could have gone better, but at no point did I worry about paying for food or anything, so yeah.
What didn’t: I really need to go over my Paypal account, delete all recurring charges for things that I’m not 110% regularly using, consolidate web hosting (namely: I think I’m going to finally bite the bullet and find some way to delete hosting for two of my older sites that I’ve been keeping up, and have my web guru set up a redirect for me), and stick to using the bus instead of car2go whenever possible. I might need to set up some kind of a budgeting system…I tried to use YNAB, I really did, but it was very not-intuitive to me and having to manually enter every.single.thing is probably not something I will be able to keep up with.
Next month: Start cobbling together some savings, be extra-careful because current roommate is moving out at the end of the month, and while I have things making up for that, they won’t be in place until after all of the rent is due, so I need to do everything I can to make sure that will go smoothly. I expect debuting/promoting the self-study version of Rock Your Systems will help as it’ll be my highest priced solo-offering to date (though I’m not sure what to price it at yet, it will definitely be higher than the usual $15-20 of most of the mini-products in the shop).
January: Other
I started this section and now that it’s come time to write it…I’m drawing a blank! January overall was really pretty quiet – I intentionally was a hermit for most of the month, because I wanted to give myself time to adjust to new routines and habits and so many changes, without burning myself out. And it worked pretty well; I had a few days where I felt immensely shitty and exhausted, but for the most part, the month was pretty steady.
And that’s it for this month. See ya next month with more updates on goals/habits and progress!