a failed finish

I believe there are a few more days left in this Round, but I am calling it quits today. I leave for Kenya in two weeks, and the list of things I have to do between then and now is so ridiculously long that I have no idea how I even sleep at night. So that needs to be my entire focus for the next two weeks – no writing, no blogging, reading only what is necessary (chicken books so I can help my Kenyan friends to raise chickens) and catching up on sleep (even banking some extra sleep for the trip!).

So here are the goals I started with and how I finished. Not much green on this list, but I’m not going to beat myself up over it.

1.    READING

a.    Read and comment on my weekly assigned blog posts as a ROW80 sponsor. Yes, pretty much as scheduled.

b.    Finish reading “Shantarm”.  I am somewhere around page 740 out of 936 pages. I need to finish the chapter I am on and just put it away til I get home.

c.    Finish reading “Twelve Extraordinary Women”. This is for my Tuesday morning Bible study, and considering we average about three weeks per chapter, and skip some weeks altogether, and even though there are only twelve chapters, I don’t know how I ever thought we would finish this. We just finished chapter three!

2.    WRITING

a.    Write two blog posts here and three posts to my other blog, “The Dino Chronicles” every week. I was pretty good posting here two a week, but averaged less than twice a week on “The Dino Chronicles”.

b.    Finish writing “The Early Ministry of Jesus in 40 Days” and do one quick edit of the whole manuscript. Yes, I finished writing it, but no, I only edited half of it. (This list of goals is starting to look pretty bad.)

c.    Write a proposal for my novel. And name my novel! No, did not, as I decided instead to do some editing, but since I didn’t get through an edit of the whole thing, I will say epic-fail.

d.    Write 10,000 words in my new novel and come up with at least a working title for it.  As mentioned previously, I changed this to doing research and writing the bios for the main characters and a loose outline in preparation for NaNoWriMo in November. I don’t know that I can say I accomplished that even.  

3.    REACHING

a.    Have submitted three pieces somewhere. Submitted one thing – a poem to Wilda Morris’s poetry challenge.  

b.    Have posted weekly updates to one of my social media. I still just have to go with a big “no” on this one.

4.    PERSONAL

a.    Nonprofit organization

                                         i.    Get enough donations to pay for my trip in October. I have reached one-third of that goal, which I guess is okay, as my goal was set intentionally high. Let’s say I have enough money to pay my expenses while I am there. I do need to write up a budget for myself though so that I can be accountable to the organization.

                                       ii.    Finalize some sort of itinerary for my trip. No, not so much. All I have is the October 12 date with my Compassion child.

                                      iii.    Host a friend-raiser to get awareness out in the community. No, not at all.

b.    Physical

                                         i.    Work out–seriously- three times a week, in addition to my morning exercises. This was pretty hit or miss. I would do okay for a couple weeks, then fall off the wagon. And then my bursitis would flare up again. All in all I would have to say, another fail.

c.    Church

                                         i.    Get addresses and mentors for our college kids. Since I have the best start to this that I have in five years, I will say I finally accomplished something. I have addresses for nine of our ten college kids and mentors for eight of them.  

                                        ii.    Get addresses and mentors for our military kids. I thought this might be a challenge, as both of our boys just finished basic and last I talked to their parents, they even didn’t have their addresses. I will keep working on it. I have one woman who wants to mentor one of the boys, so that’s a positive note too. So, I’m saying neither a success nor a fail on this one.

And that is where I bid you all adieu until sometime after I get home from Kenya on October 18. I will try to post updates on my trip to my other blog, “The Dino Chronicles”, so follow along there. Or you can like Tumaini Volunteers on Facebook, as I will post there as well.

Hoping you all have a good, strong finish to this Round of ROW80 and look forward to catching up with everyone next month.

The beautiful Kenyan wilderness - see why I can't wait til I get back there?