January 2022 in Review

[rowyn]

Health/Fitness

I set a goal of “exercise on 13 days in January”, and achieved that goal by January 13th, which was unexpected. For the first few days I was like “hey, I can still say I’ve exercised every day this year, that’s amusing.” And then I went “this streak was made to be broken” for the next ten or so, but I didn’t actually break it until the 16th. Once it was broken, I was lackadaisical about exercising, so my total for the month was only 22. Still, that’s better than even my stretch goal, so I’m happy about it.

I missed a few days on consumption tracking, but overall kept an eye on it, good enough.

Writing

I made some good progress on Alien Peacelords in the first week of the month, then went “What’s my writing goal for this month anyway?” and took a look at my goals. And discovered I didn’t have a writing goal and I was supposed to be editing Angel’s Grace and I was Very Sad. Seriously. I’m gonna set a writing goal this month just so I can be happy about making it.

Wrote 9,000 words of Alien Peacelords to reach 13,120 words, and took the novel from ~3% done to ~11% done. Book is coming in a little below target word count so far, which is good since the estimated length is pretty long.

The Business of Writing

After realizing I was supposed to be editing in January, I mourned for a bit and eventually got to edits on Angel’s Grace. Target was 65% complete, and I hit 78% complete. But I forgot to put a “final read through” step on my editing list for this book, so adding it takes it down to 72% complete. Meh. I only have 11 points left to do on the list and I don’t want to do any of them.

Probably added another 10,000 words to it this month. It’s grown about 18k total since I finished the first draft.

Reading

I finished T. Kingfisher’s The Wonder Engine and started a new book. I may DNF the new book, which has not grabbed me yet, and try something else.

Art

I got the tablet pen for my Surface Go 3 and set it up for drawing, and then proceeded to sketch a bunch of horses. One of my mutuals on Twitter, Adorkastock, sent this QT:

friends, you must make the mind horse https://t.co/mceVACpNo5 pic.twitter.com/3HSfyZBzlx

— AdorkaStock | Pose Reference (@AdorkaStock) January 7, 2022

.

So I drew the mind horse, and after that I wanted to draw an actual horse. And then I remembered how much fun horses are to draw. They’re fun for much the same reason that humans are fun, in fact. There’s a lot of interesting areas of light and shadow on their bodies because their hide isn’t thick/furry enough to obscure the details.

Social

Still doing the online Craft & Chat on Saturdays, which is when I do my drawing. Still staying home otherwise, waiting for Paxlovid to be readily available.

January Goal Score Card

• Write a year-in-review post: Done!
• Figure out annual goals for 2022: Done!
• Break up the remaining editing points for Angel’s Grace into smaller steps I did this, and it did help, but I still don’t want to do the remaining items on the list.
• Get Angel’s Grace to 65% edited: Done! A little over, even.
• Exercise 13 times: Overachieved, aw yeah, the power of lowballing goals.
• Set up new Surface so I can use it for art: yes done
• Look at goal list occasionally Actually did this! Noticing that Alien Peacelords wasn’t on the list motivated me to check it some extra times.
• Make entries in bullet journal for at least 20 days: I have entries for every day, although I often played catch-up so I don’t know how accurate it is.

Stretch Goals:

• Write more of Alien Peacelords Not a tremendous amount of progress, but I did write more of it!
• Exercise 20 times this month I achieved this one too!
• Consumption tracking Eh, more-or-less
• Practice art (bonus stretch goal: total of 15 hours of practice) About 9 hours, so not quite to the bonus goal, but still good.
• Post four blog entries, apart from my usual month-in-review I forgot about this one until the end of the month and ended up posting three days in a row. And the earliest one of the four was my year-in-review. But I only said the month-in-review didn’t count, not the yearly version, so technically achieved!
• Maintain bullet journal for entire month Technically yes!
• Finish reading a book I haven’t read before Done!

February goals

• Get Angel’s Grace to the “final read-through” stage.
• Get Alien Peacelords to 18% complete
• Exercise 13 times
• Look at goal list occasionally
• Make entries in bullet journal for at least 20 days.

Stretch Goals:

• Read through A Game to You.
  
• Make an editing list for A Game to You.
  
• Work on notes/outline for a different book
  
• Get Alien Peacelords to 40% complete
• Finish all initial edits on Angel’s Grace
• Get some use out of the art book I bought in November (Color and Light by James Gurney)
• Exercise 20 times this month
  
• Consumption tracking
  
• Make an art
  
• Work on cover art for Demon’s Alliance and/or Angel’s Grace
  
• Practice art (bonus stretch goal: total of 15 hours of practice)
  
• Post four blog entries, apart from my usual month-in-review.
  
• Maintain bullet journal for entire month
  
• Learn a new game
  
• Finish reading a book I haven’t read before
  

Comments

[tuftears]

*cheers for overachievement of January* Good luck with the February goals!

(ponders) I guess I exercise 4 times/week, so in a month with 4 weeks, that'd be 16 times. 20 times seems like a lot?