dianaschnuth

Seems I have an inflated idea of how much I can accomplish in about an hour every night after my son goes to bed.

I also miscalculated how much I can write in one week and still get other things done.

In the first quarter of 2014, I had planned to find a general practitioner, collect Connor’s arts and crafts from daycare into an artbook, and clean my home office desk area. I managed to photograph a few of Connor’s crafts, actually prepare images for a couple of those, and get my desk mostly clean (there are a few odds and ends that need homes, but all the boxes are empty, save the one full of weights and exercise equipment that needs to go in the basement).

So, I need to re-evaluate.

There’s no shame in realigning my goals when it turns out that I overestimated what I can realistically get done.

My new Q2 goals are to find a general practitioner and to scan and document Connor’s art. (I won’t actually collect it into an artbook until Q3.) My new weekly goals are to post one photo post and one “wordy” post to my blog (as opposed to committing to writing 1000 words and posting a weekly Photo Friday), to upload one photo to Flickr, and to review my goals monthly (instead of quarterly). I also am committing to read 10 new-to-me books (one down, nine to go), but also allowing myself to skip past books that I start and don’t find to be a good fit for before-bed reading. I’ve been ignoring the Steve Jobs biography for a couple of months now, just because I can’t get into it when I am (or should be) half-asleep in bed.

I’m afraid that if I don’t set some sort of goals for myself, I’ll get to the end of the year and still have a crapton of unfinished or half-finished projects and wonder what the hell I actually did with 2014.

I decided that, this year, I wouldn’t even make a not-really-a-resolution.

This year, I’m making a project plan and setting small, achievable goals.

I may come up with more goals for the latter part of 2014, but I think that’s plenty to get started with.

I like the fact that it’s more of a prioritization of big projects that I’ve been letting slide, and less of an “I’m going to do X thing every day” resolution that will quickly get broken. Honestly, I haven’t hit the mark on some of my weekly goals every week, but my plan is to have it all even out on a quarterly basis. I missed one Photo Friday, I haven’t been getting that 90 minutes of exercise in, and I was a little low on the word count one week — but that doesn’t mean I’ve given up. Instead, I’m overachieving in subsequent weeks so it all averages out.

I’m also receptive to a do-over, should it be warranted. Who’s to say that these goals will be reasonable and feasible come April? Maybe I’ll want to add different goals and replace ones that aren’t challenging or don’t really matter to me as much as I thought they would. And that’s OK.

I plan to check in quarterly and post my progress here — you know, because that’s how you do when you have a personal blog.