rowyn | Entries tagged with resolutions

( Almost done with these for 2006 )

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

I didn't do well on this resolution this month; in the last eight days I've only exercised once. But this is a blip, not a trend -- I was sick for two days, busy with costuming for one, and away from home for the other four I missed. On average, I think I'm still beating this one. On "average minutes per day", definitely (I almost never exercise for only half an hour), and probably still on "average days per week" (since my norm is still six, I have some slack to miss days).

2. Read twenty-six books this year.

2 January: Zorro, Isabel Allende; Witch's Business, Diana Wynne Jones
1 February: Elantris, Brandon Sanderson
1 March: Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift
6 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
2 June: Against the Tide, John Ringo; Waifs and Strays, Charles de Lint
4 July: Paint Your Dragon, Tom Holt; The Curse of Chalion, Paladin of Souls, The Hallowed Hunt, all by Lois McMaster Bujold
2 August: American Gods, Neil Gaiman; Barrayar, Lois McMaster Bujold
3 September: The Doppelganger, Marie Brennan, Truckers and Diggers, both by Terry Pratchett
7 October: Tapestry of Magics, Brian Daley; Wings, Terry Pratchett; two "Dark-Hunter" novels (I don't remember the titles and, well, it doesn't really matter) by Sherrilyn Kenyon; The Tough Guide to Fantasyland by Diane Wynne Jones (thank you, John! <3 ); Bring Me the Head of Prince Charming, Roger Zelazny and Robert Sheckley; The Spirit Ring, Lois McMaster Bujold.

Which puts me to twenty-eight books for the year. Over my goal with two months to spare! Even if

3. Collect six rejection slips for fiction this year.

I don't understand why I can't get my act together on submitting stories. I got no problem with rejection. I don't cry or pout or beat my fists against the wall when I get rejected. I usually feel a vague sense of satisfaction -- "Yeah! Another rejection! Just like all the real writers."

But I'm still incompetent at applying.

4. Pet the cat.

Yup.

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

Still done.

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

Writing:
-- Editing Silver Scales very slowly. The current count for the file is 243,400 words, but I cut out three or four thousand words that I plan to stick back in somewhere else, so the number looks lower than it really is. When I was wrting Prophecy, I remember obsessively counting the words that I wrote, and how long it took to write them out. Now I'm obsessively counting the words that I cut, and bemoaning how long it takes to remove them. Why did I want to do this, again?

-- I've written nine entries on "Nightmare Waking".

Role-playing:

"Game of October" proceeded more slowly this month; I think it was one session for everyone, except for one neglected player. But sitll definitely going.

Art:
-- I took a bunch of reference photos while I was in North Carolina, including several for a sketch that I've been wanting to finish for the last several months, but haven't because I needed a phonot reference on it. So I may get some mileage out of those this month.

Misc.:
-- I put together a new costume for Halloween, which I quite like. Even though I didn't make any of the pieces for it, just finding all the bits took several hours of effort, so I guess this counts as productive.

-- I went to visit

sophrani and

kagetsume, which I'm also sure counts as productive. It produced lots of fun for me, anyway. :)

October wasn't terribly productive on most fronts, but oddly I'm not particularly perturbed by it. Perhaps because nothing stopped, even if I'm not moving forward very quickly on anything.

7. Clear out my email inbox at home.

Amazingly, I had not actually backslid over the course of October. At 737 at the moment, after clearing out 150 just now.

9. Do at least one post per month tracking my progress on each of these.
Nine out of ten now.

( Obligatory New Year's Resolutions Update )

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

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

I've converted one of the rooms in the Basement of DOOM into an exercise room (which is kind of doomful when you think about it). I've got lots of those waterproof jigsaw-linked rubber floor mats down for flooring, along with a weight bench, bunches of dumbbells, my yoga mat (the rubber mats are fine for walking on but they're still kinda hard for kneeling or lying), and a few cheap full length mirrors. I'd love to have mirrors covering the walls like a real gym or a dance studio, but that's way more money than I'm willing to spend. The floor mats were more than I'd expected as it was.

It's been a dry summer; the Basement of Doom hasn't flooded in a long time. I'm hoping that, when it does, the floodwaters will flow downhill around my floor mats, instead of over them. I suppose I should get a weight stand for my dumbells, but I rather want to take a break from spending gobs of money for a while. Instead I've got them on top of the floor mats, with the extra edge-pieces for the floor mats underneath them to add a little additional height. I expect they'd survive getting wet, but I don't want rusty dumbbells just the same.

I've done some jogging again, too. On Tuesday and Wednesday I jogged most of the way home from work -- probably 6/10ths of a mile or so. (Lut and I measured the distance between the bank and the house again a few weeks ago, and it's not quite a mile -- around 8/10 or 9/10ths, instead.) I jogged very slowly, thinking that perhaps my problem the last time I tried was that I was actually trying to go faster as opposed to just picking up my feet. It seems to have worked, since I can now do several minutes of continuous jogging. My jog is faster than my walk speed, anyway -- I got home in 11 minutes on Wednesday, as opposed to my usual 17-19. Gonna try jogging home on M-T-TH-F from now on. I'm hoping that only jogging one way and giving myself a mid-week break will keep me from having knee problems this time around.

Anyway, my exercise levels are at an all-time high between lifting weights, jogging, and my usual dance. I'm not doing as much cardio as I used to, but my official resolution said that I could subsitute weight-lifting for cardio, so that's okay. I know lifting weights isn't an actual substitute for cardio, but I'm still walking (with a little jogging) 2-3.5 miles five days a week, plus doing dance workouts around three times per week, so I'm pretty sure I'm fine on this front. I should probably start tracking the dance workouts/jogging, though, since those are the only "get my heart rate up" exercises I'm currently doing. Just to make sure I'm not totally slacking off on cardio in my rush to become a big burly 5'3" girl.

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

I ought to have read thirteen by now, and I'm at twelve, so I'm still one shy of even. Oh well. I'm also most of the way through Tom Holt's Paint Your Dragon, so I should hit thirteen soon in any case. On the downside, I'm not enjoying Paint Your Dragon nearly as much as I did Expecting Someone Taller.

The de Lint book is a collection of short stories. I picked them up based on

shaterri's recommendation of "de Lint short stories", and they were indeed a treat. Interestingly, although deLint is published as a genre author (fantasy, or mythic fantasy if you want the subgenre), a few of the stories were straight fiction. They used characters that had other appearances of a more fantastic nature, but the events of the individual short story involved no fantastic occurences or supernatural encounters.

3. Collect six rejection slips for fiction this year.

*walks on by, whistling, and hopes the resolution doesn't notice her*

4. Pet the cat.

The cat is still getting petted, although not at the moment since I'm at work.

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

Got this one done in March but I'm still adding nails to its coffin.

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

Let's see:

20 entries in Unfinished Tales, all of them on Silver Scales.

Some number of Game of October logs -- I dunno how many exactly. Five or six?

I did another pencil sketch based on the Edwardian fashions paper-doll book. It's not bad but for some reason I couldn't get the head the right size. I drew it too large at first, about 1/6th of the body, and then too small so now the body is eight heads high. >_< Okay, so it's an Edwardian man with superheroic proportions, I guess. I don't think I've done any other art this month, so the art front remains rather pitiful. But that's okay, I'm getting writing done

Set up the exercise room in the basement, meaning I'm actually getting use out of my basement. This is a cool new thing in and of itself.

7. Clear out my email inbox at home.

Um. Losing ground on this one again. I'm at around 3850 now. And unfortunately at work, or I'd go do some more clearing while I'm thinking about it. By the time I get home, I'll have forgotten. Maybe I should just switch all my email to gmail and make this resolution moot.

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

Done! Phew.

1. Exercise at least five times a week for at least 30 minutes per session (20 of which must be aerobic).
Been sticking to this one without much trouble for May and April. A typical week is still six times a week for 40-50 minutes per session. (20-30 aerobic, the rest cool down/warmup or stretching). Even last week, with the con over the weekend, I managed fives times, and I'll manage five times this week, too.

2. Read twenty-six books this year.
I've finally gotten moving on this one. I feel like I've finally gotten over the hump of "not reading" that I was straddling for so long. I still don't read with the voracity that I did before college, and I doubt I ever will -- too many things I want to spend my time on. But I've been reading regularly on the walk to and from work, and forty minutes of reading per day is nothing to sneer at. :) Moreover, when I finish a book, I've been starting right in on the next one. I'm not being so finicky about what books I read, and I'm not just picking one likeable author and reading her entire oeuvre -- which works well for the short term, but as I still read faster than any author I know writes, eventually I do run out of new books by any given author to read. So I'm glad to be branching out and just reading whatever.

Anyway, lemme see if I can list off the books I've read so far 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

I think I've forgotten one, too. Anyway, at ten books in five months, I'm still a tad behind for my goal. On the other hand, I'm definitely gaining speed, and I've got a stack of books still waiting for me to read them. Including three Bujold novels, two Tom Holt novels, and a book of short stories by Charles de Lint (finally got around to picking one up,

shaterri.) Not to mention the rest of that book of short stories by Connie Willis -- it must be kicking around here somewhere. And I just started Ringo's Against the Tide.

3. Collect six rejection slips for fiction this year.
Um. I entered the writing contest at ConQuesT. Does that count? No? Didn't think so.

No progress.

4. Pet the cat.
Even as I type.

5. Put more money into savings in 2006 than I did in 2005.
Done, and still squirrelling away more.

6. Keep track of any other productive things I do.
A Game of October is still going, semi-regularly for a couple of players and irregularly for the other three.

No drawing to speak of since February; just haven't felt like it.

Wrote sixteen Silver Scales entries for

unfinishedtales in April and May, put down one story idea, and wrote a one-hour short story for the contest at ConQuest last Saturday.

I did some yardwork in April, too, although my yard has been sadly neglected for the last several weeks.

7. Clear out my email inbox at home.
3737 emails. Which is down another 800 from the last update. I only make progress on this one when I'm doing these updates, though.

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

Umm. Missed April. Oops. Well, four out of five's not bad, right?

1. Exercise at least five times a week for at least 30 minutes per session (20 of which must be aerobic).
March was not a good month for exercising. The trip to California took a lot out of me. Still, I squeaked through on this one, but only because my good weeks average six times per week, not five.

2. Read twenty-six books this year.
Up to ... four.
Zorro, Isabel Allende
Witch's Business, Diana Wynne Jones
Elantris, Brandon Sanderson
Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift

I hadn't planned to count books I'd read before, but re-reading Gulliver's Travels took me so long that I feel entitled to count it. Besides, my perspective on the book was very different this time around. Too tired to post my thoughts on it tonight; maybe later.

I need to find more books that really engage my interest.

3. Collect six rejection slips for fiction this year.
No progress.

4. Pet the cat.
*pets the cat*
*cat purrs*

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

Yes, I've already squirrelled away more money in 2006 than I did in the whole of 2005.

6. Keep track of any other productive things I do.
I re-started A Game of October, and have run a total of five logs involving four different players so far. A bit slow going -- ideally I'd like each of my five players involved in two logs per month -- but it's progress. All the sessions so far have been fun ones, too. =)

March has not been a good month for other kinds of fiction. Five entries to UT, all of them Silver Scales.

I have done a few essays in this journal in the past couple of weeks, though, which perhaps counts for something. And I've been sending a bit more email recently.

No drawing to speak of.

Did quite a bit of housekeeping, especially clearing out the basement. I've got one room clear now, and I may get some free weights and a weight bench for it. Lut wants a freestanding boxing bag, too.

7. Clear out my email inbox at home.
4447 emails. Which is down about 400 from the last update, so believe it or not, that's progress,

9. Do at least one post per month tracking my progress on each of these.
Done! With almost two hours to spare. Kind of a slack month, really. I hope I do more in April.

1. Exercise (30 min per day, 5 days per week)
I'm doing well at this one. I've missed a few days, here and there, but I'm still easily averaging 5 days per week.

koogrr and I were quite good about exercising while I was in Florida this time. A few days we didn't make my "20 minutes of aerobics and/or weights" goal, but we did well overall.

2) Read 26 books this year.

So far, just three:
Zorro, Isabel Allende
Witch's Business, Diana Wynne Jones
Elantris, Brandon Sanderson
I'm currently reading Gulliver's Travels, which probably shouldn't count since I've read it before (granted, about twenty years ago, but I remember it surprisingly well), and a book of short stories by Connie Willis.

So, going a bit slower than two per week, but not too bad.

3) Collect six rejection slips for fiction this year

Oh yeah. I forgot about this one. I guess that's why one of the resolutions was to look at the list monthly.

4. Pet the cat.

*Puts down her hand and clucks until the cat comes.*
*Pets cat*

Done.

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

By the end of March, this should be settled.

Yes, 2005 was a really bad year for savings, and 2006 has -- so far -- been a really good one. I'll be cutting back on my contributions to long-term savings after March. I want to beef up my short-term savings, too.

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

Writing

Nineteen Silver Scalesentries since my last update, which makes for thirty-seven so far this year. I should do a word count on it at some point.

I also did two entries for Rabbit Hole day.

Art

I colored a Floosh icon for

beetiger and did a Sythyry piece experimenting with my new markers. I finished two marker pictures while I was in Florida, and did bunches of pencil sketches. I also started work digitally coloring the Faerie Hypnotist for

apanthropomorph, but I'm making that picture more detailed than just an icon, so it's taking longer.

I did some coloring on a couple of pictures that I ultimately abandoned, too. I'm not sure how to count that.

Miscellaneous

I choreographed a dance routine to a song, to perform for John. Which doesn't count as exercise, so I don't get any credit for it under #1 above. So I'll take credit for it here.

As long as I'm on the subject of "things that don't count", instead of skipping my workout Friday like I usually do, I spent it stretching and learning a new dance step. But that's not aerobic so it didn't count as exercise either.

I spent much of today cleaning, inspired by both

koogrr and another of my crewmates in Puzzle Pirates heading out to clean. My kitchen and living room actually look almost respectable now. By my standards, anyway. Afterwards, I exercised, since what I'd done Friday night didn't count and this way I haven't skipped a day.

7. Clear out my email inbox at home.
*checks*
4820 items.
Yeah, not making a lot of progress on that one.

9. Do at least one post per month tracking my progress on each of these.
Done! At least this one's easy to quantify.

Yes, I'm running three weeks late in formalizing my resolutions.

1. Exercise at least five times a week for at least 30 minutes per session (20 of which must be aerobic).
2. Read twenty-six books this year.
3. Collect six rejection slips for fiction this year.
4. Pet the cat.
5. Put more money into savings in 2006 than I did in 2005.
6. Keep track of any other productive things I do.
7. Clear out my email inbox at home.
9. Do at least one post per month tracking my progress on each of these.

( Nattering and clarifications )