rowyn

1. Exercise at least five times a week for at least 30 minutes per session (20 of which must be aerobic).

Totally kicking this one's butt. Let's see: according the the Take Charge Challenge page, I've averaged 85 minutes per day (every day!) for the last seven weeks. Most of that's walking, lifting weights, and stretching, but I've also got some high-intensity dance exercises and a little jogging in there. Still not losing any weight, of course. Been eating better for the last week or so, though. Maybe in August I'll shed a pound or two. Or not. I don't know that I care any more. It's kinda cool that I can actually jog a whole mile.

2. Read twenty-six books this year.

January: Zorro, Isabel Allende; Witch's Business, Diana Wynne Jones
February: Elantris, Brandon Sanderson
March: Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift
April and May: In Our Hands, Charles Murray; The One-Armed Queen, Jane Yolen; Dhampir, Barb and J.C. Hendee; Resenting the Hero, Moira Moore; Emerald Sea, John Ringo; Starship Troopers, Robert Heinlein
June: Against the Tide, John Ringo; Waifs and Strays, Charles de Lint
July: Paint Your Dragon, Tom Holt; The Curse of Chalion, Paladin of Souls, The Hallowed Hunt, all by Lois McMaster Bujold

Bujold to the rescue again! Up to 16. I'm about halfway through American Gods now. I'm not very impressed with it, so it's been a slog. I expect I'll finish it some time in the middle of August. After that I've another Bujold novel to read, and a random book I grabbed at Barnes & Noble. There's an entire series by John Ringo that I haven't read and could probably get from the library, too. The man practically writes books faster than I read them. O_O

3. Collect six rejection slips for fiction this year.

I've been looking at this list periodically during the month, and thinking "I should do something about this one." But I haven't. Don't ask me why. It's not that I'm afraid of rejection, and it's not that it's especially a time-consuming thing: write one paragraph of cover letter, print labels, stick story in envelope, stamp, put in mailbox, done.

Except that it's not getting done. Hmph.

4. Pet the cat.

This, on the other hand, is getting done.

5. Put more money into savings in 2006 than I did in 2005.

Also done.

6. Keep track of any other productive things I do.

Writing! Zoe-my-gosh, I have been writing. I barely want to do anything else. It's an effort to write this, but only because I so want to go back to writing Silver Scales. I don't want to tally up my accomplishments for the month! I want to WRITE!

Ahem.

Writing:
-- Twenty-nine entries to Unfinished Tales. Twenty-seven of them on Silver Scales; two about an idea for a future project. Probably have another Silver Scales entry up by the end of today.

Role-playing:
-- Game of October is moving along, with another four or five logs this month.
-- Every PC played at least once in July.
-- I'm doing better on the administrivia end of things, too. All but the log I ran last Friday have been sorted and assembled by player. I should email out all the logs to their players again.

Art:
-- I'm very slowly using markers to color the sketch I did last month based on the paper-doll book. Maybe I'll actually finish the picture in August. I'm seeing John in August, which usually means a good month for art. Though we're also going to Seattle, so we may do more tourist and vacation stuff instead of drawing all the time. :)

Misc:
-- I've been in an incredibly good mood for most of the last week or two. I don't know that this counts as "something productive that I've done", but I wanted to note it down somewhere. It's more like a virtuous cycle: I am productive and what I produce makes me happy, so I want to produce more of it. It's mainly generated by Silver Scales, but the effect is spilling over into other things, making me happier to be running Game of October logs, happier to be getting things done at work, and just happier overall. Except when I get manic about it, "MUST WRITE NOW" in which case it becomes hard to be happy about doing anything else. Or focus on anything else. Actually, I want to do an entry about it, but every time I start I find myself thinking "I could write Silver Scales in this time instead" and so I go do that. Perhaps later ....

7. Clear out my email inbox at home.
"Almost 3000?" Lut said, glancing at my screen. "And you've been paring it down?"

About 2500 now. I admit I'm tempted to accomplish this resolution by forwarding all my email to my Gmail account and just using that. "If I want to find something, I'll Google for it." Main reason I don't is that I kinda like having my email stored locally and being able to make backups easily. Come to think of it, I haven't checked to see if Gmail *does* have a way to allow local backups.

9. Do at least one post per month tracking my progress on each of these.
Done!

Doing quite well overall -- if I could just get cracking on #3, I'd be acing it. :)