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It’s been over a month since I posted my 2016 goals. You can see that post here: My Goals for 2016. In order to keep myself motivated and to see where I stand, I thought I would try to give a monthly update on how I am doing with these goals. One thing I realized is that I set way too many goals and I will keep this in mind for next year when I repeat this process.
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Personal Goals:
1. Eat a healthy diet and cut down on the number of fast food trips we make. I am doing a fairly good job with this. While we still pick up food on an average of once per week, I had a three-week stretch in January where we ate all home-prepared meals. This required a large amount of planning on my part, but I was able to do this through the help of Emeals. Every week I try to change our diet up a little bit by eating fewer processed foods or by eating Paleo. My kids have eaten more vegetables this year and enjoy the clean eating and paleo plans on Emeals. This has been great especially for my youngest daughter who ate a large diet of plain noodles prior to these meal plans. While I have not eliminated the noodles completely (this is what she eats in her lunch most days), she is getting a balanced dinner most nights. What has helped tremendously is to have them each pick out a meal every week that they help prepare. This ownership in the meals has helped increase their desire to eat vegetables. My kids actually fought over who ate more than their share of brussel sprouts….true story! (This is the only vegetable they absolutely love, but I’ll gladly accept that.)
2. Exercise daily. Get at least 10,000 steps per day and do at least 3 other workouts per week. I have succeeded in getting at least 10,000 steps each day and have been working out at 6 times per week. Actually, I have reset my goal to between 12,000-13,000 steps per day because I am trying to lose weight. And, I have achieved this for a couple of weeks now. I also have started subscribing to Beachbody workouts online and love it! What I like is that I can keep switching between a variety of workouts until I find the right fit. You can buy the individual products on Amazon (you’ll see my affiliate links on this post) or you can subscribe online through Beachbody On Demand (not an affiliate link). They are offering a 30-day free trial at the time of this writing and I am going to continue with this after my trial. It’s cheaper than a gym membership and much more convenient.
3. Lose 10 pounds. I am down 3 pounds so I am on track for this goal. I initially started with P90x from Beachbody, but this was not working out for me. I know there is an adjustment period when you start exercising, but I wasn’t really enjoying that workout and I put 3 pounds on in one week. I love cardio and this was too much bodybuilding for me. Plus, a good part of the workouts are pull-ups. I have never been able to complete a pull-up and I am not motivated to do so. After a week of workouts of me just hanging there on the bar, I felt it was time to move on.
My body has always reacted well to HIIT (high-intensity interval training) and I switched to Insanity. I lost a little weight and inches the first week of doing that workout, but it killed my knees because it was too high-impact for me at this time. I have now switched to TurboFire and this seems to be the perfect fit for me right now. I actually look forward to doing these workouts and I have lost some inches. TurboFire contains great music and I find Chalene Johnson’s bubbly personality quite motivating. Plus, there is so much variety in these workouts that I don’t think I’ll get bored with it anytime soon.
4. Drink more water. I have increased my consumption of water only because I end up drinking so much water during the Insanity and TurboFire workouts. I still need to be more calculated in reaching this goal. I am going to aim for the 64 oz a person is supposed to drink each day.
5. Read 52 books this year. Not doing so good here. I finished 2 books in January. I am currently reading my 3rd book, but I can already tell I should have said I would read 20 books a year or a set number of pages per day as my husband suggested. That goal would have been reachable and an improvement over the last year.
6. Reach out to family and friends more. Again, I am not making much progress on this goal. My daughters are both involved with a pre-professional ballet company. Because we are getting ready for the big performance coming up in March, much of our family’s extra time has been taken up with this activity. Even though I haven’t had much of a chance to reach out to family and friends, I have been able to cultivate new friendships through my volunteer work in this organization. So, I guess that is some progress. I have gotten to know some fantastic and interesting women through this organization.
7. Grow spiritually. I mentioned in my original goal post that I wanted to find a good devotional to help me focus on my faith each day. Since Lent started, I signed up to receive Dynamic Catholic’s Lenten devotional at Best Lent Ever. I did this last Lenten season and enjoyed it. Once Lent is over, I’ll have to find a replacement. At least, I’m covered for the next few weeks.
8. Crochet or make one thing per week. I haven’t finished any projects, but I signed up for some Crochet-a-longs on various crochet blogs. I have partially completed several projects. My squares pictured here are from the CALs at Moogly and Keep Calm and Crochet.
9. Finish at least 2 Udemy courses or Skillshare courses per month. I recently completed both a Twitter and an Instagram course on Udemy. I also completed a watercolor class on Skillshare last month. Or, shall I say, I watched a watercolor class in its entirety. Not once did I bring the paints out because I am just not artistic. However, I found the class fascinating and fun to watch. And, while watching it, I decided that painting is not in my future.
10. Participate in the fatmumslim photo challenge and improve my photography this year. Here is another goal I have not addressed very much and I’m not sure why. I haven’t been using my Instagram account very much recently and haven’t been taking any photos. I’ll try to capture more photos in the coming months.
Family Goals
11. Spend more focused time with my kids. I haven’t had the chance to spend a large amount of one on one time with each of my kids. Once the ballet is over in March, I think this will get a little easier. Right now, we are just doing homework when we are together. Soon my kids will have a little free time on the weekends and we can plan more fun family time.
12. Encourage our family to do more for other people. We have been consumed with ballet-related things so I am going to count the time that my family has spent on this as our volunteer work. Again, I was thinking more along the lines of doing things for those in need, but this volunteer work is also important since our kids know we are invested in their interests. In the end, the time spent on the ballet will be worth it and it will be nice to know that many kids will be exposed to ballet by watching the performances.
13. Go on a monthly date with my husband. We haven’t really had the chance to go out on an actual date because of our crazy schedule, but we did schedule in a couple of long walks together.
14. Spend more time reading aloud to my kids. We are still reading Anne of Green Gables, but we are almost finished with the 1st book in the series. Once we finish that, we will continue our read-alouds with the next book in the series.
Household
15. Get my house in order. I have done a pretty decent job with this goal though the decluttering process is rather slow-going. I am trying to develop better habits of doing one load of laundry per day from start to finish and by cleaning my kitchen each night after dinner. I used to leave my items that needed to be hand-washed for later, but these ended up piling up and making my kitchen look messy.
16. Maintain a clean house by using a weekly schedule. We clean our house regularly, but it is always done in such a haphazard way that it stresses me out. So far, I haven’t gotten into a regular routine. I clean my house by putting out fires right now. Whatever needs to get done, gets done in a rushed and disorganized manner.
17. Get my kids more involved with the household maintenance tasks. Hasn’t happened. Soon we are going to have some free time on the weekend where they won’t have ballet rehearsal. Guess what they will be doing instead for a portion of their free-time.
18. Establish a more consistent allowance system with my kids. Hasn’t happened. I just haven’t made this a priority yet.
Blogging
19. Revamp my site to include a better menu at the top. I started doing this, but only added a couple of categories across the top at this point due to the limited number of blog posts I have. I added Education and Personal Finance menus to improve the experience of those who use my site.
20. Post twice per week when possible and allow myself breaks for spending time with family over holidays and when I am rehearsing for a show. Truly, I’m not sure this will ever happen. I’m lucky if I find the time to post once per week. I am making the decluttering of my house more of a priority than blogging right now. And, the ballet commitment has taken up some time. Once the ballet ends, I start rehearsal and I definitely will not be posting much (if at all) during that process.
21. Learn how to monetize my blog. I have added a couple posts which include Amazon affiliate links (including this post), but haven’t had any gains from this.
22. Increase my page views to 5000 per month. My page views have actually decreased over the last few weeks because I haven’t posted anything new.
23. Learn more coding and graphic design skills to help me with the design of my blog. At least once per week, I have spent around 20 minutes on this goal.
Performance Goals
24.Create my performer webpage/resume. This is not a priority right now.
25. Learn how to make vocal recordings. I am looking at some possible microphones to purchase, but that is as far as I’ve gotten with this goal.
26. Perform in two productions this year. I am getting ready to start rehearsal soon for my first production of 2016.
Assessment of Progress:
As you can see, I am doing a great job with some goals and not so good with others. I am happy that I have addressed my health goals, but I need to do a better job at my relationship goals. Other goals can be put on the backburner. I realize that at least for the next several months, I will not be able to post regularly. The ballet will be over soon, but I start my own rehearsals when that ends.
Did you set goals in January for 2016? Did you set too many goals? Feel free to comment below.
