Baby Steps and Small Victories

Want to read about any tourist traps in my state? 

Look at that, all organized and labeled. 

You know how some people collect beer steins, or Green Bay Packer memorabilia (that be my husband) or Snoopys (ok, that would be me). Well, I also collect, apparently, travel brochures. You know, those rack cards and city magazines and fliers they have in the racks in the lobbies of hotels and some restaurants? Well, I scoop those up like a crow on roadkill.  

A week ago, last Friday, I cleaned out a file drawer of just those things from my own state. I have two more file drawers full from the other 49 states! Someday I’ll get to those. In the meantime, this past Friday, I cleaned out the next drawer in that particular file cabinet, and it contained a plethora of my writing from twenty to thirty years ago. Found only a few gems. I might share them another time. But on to my goals.

Last Sunday, I posted my goals for the rest of the year, so I’m not going to repost them here now, maybe just the first of each month. My plan was to focus on weekly goals, which means, unfortunately, I have to add another color. Oh, man, this is getting so complex. I did not want to add another color! I did not want this to get complicated.

Ok, so this is what I’m gonna try. Below are my goals from last week. If it is a goal which I accomplished, and it is done for the Round, I’ll highlight it in blue and then drop it off the list next time I post. If it is a goal which was accomplished this week, but I will do it all over again next week, I’ll highlight it in green and keep it on the list. The usual yellow highlight is goal at least worked on and red lettering is not even attempted, a complete fail. If there is no color at all, it’s a goal I just couldn’t work on for whatever lame reason. Is that too convoluted to follow? I’ll try it this week and see how it works for me.

Except, oh dear, I thought of something else. If I am accomplishing goals which I drop of the list, I should be adding new ones, shouldn’t I? If that happens, guess what, no color, just a note that it’s an added goal. Yikes, don’t know if I can do this!

Goals for the week:

A. WRITING

1. Write two posts for my other blog, “The Dino Chronicles”. Done, three actually.

2. Write a chapter on my new novel "New Old Spies". NEW GOAL. I have to start working on this!

B. REACHING

1. Promote myself or a piece of my writing (whether it be promoting one of my books, submitting a piece somewhere, saying something brilliant about my writing on my social media, etc.). Hmm? Can’t think of anything. Ok, so I remembered something, and even though it was actually more than a week ago, I haven’t counted it on this blog yet, so I’m counting it now. A memory from a year ago bounced up on Facebook, where I posted pictures of cases of my novel arriving at my house. So, I shared that and someone saw it and asked to buy my novel. A little thing, but hey. And my sister, bless her heart, sold a copy of my memoir to some guy she knows. Baby steps and small victories, right?

2. Contact three businesses about doing book signings or speaking engagements. I emailed just one library but am still researching other places and adding to my list of prospects.

C. READING

1. Read the daily assignment in “Today’s Light” Study Bible. Done.

2. Read the daily devotion in “Jesus Calling”. Done.

3. Read five other people’s blog posts and comment on two of them. Read six and commented on four.  And by the way, I love and support all the other ROW80 bloggers, but I’ve been trying to read and comment on blogs outside of the group too.

4. Finish reading “The Reunion” by Dan Walsh. NEW GOAL.

D. REMAINING

1. Physical

a. Increase my water intake, averaging 60 ounces per day. Not really very much this week.  

b. Exercise four mornings a week and three evenings. Done, I’m pretty sure.   

2. Home fires

a. Wash the windows in my office. Are you kidding? With the highs in the low 50s and rain almost every day? I might have to forget about this one until spring, due to no fault of my own, except of course, that I should have done it in August.   

b. Clean the closet in my office. Yup, done! Along with those file cabinet drawers.
c. Clean my three drawers of the four drawer file cabinet in my office. NEW GOAL.
d. Scan 20 old pictures. NEW GOAL.  

3. Tumaini Volunteers

a. Promote TV on all of our social media. I wrote a very lengthy blog post about our upcoming project and posted it all over and asked those reading it to share it. It has had 483 views at last count. I don’t know what more I can do than that.

b. Talk to our board about contacting American Family Insurance offices in the area. Our nonprofit’s president and our treasurer both contacted people about that this week. Let’s me off the hook, I guess!

Well, that all looks pretty good for week 1 of the fourth Round. How about you? Have you started the Round out with a bang or a whimper?