30 Days of Little L - Day 8

Day 8 - Short term goals for this month and why

Goalkeeper | Erich Ferdinand

So I've never really been one to set goals. 

Like, I have things I want to do, but to sit down and actually make a list of them? 

I used to make New Year's resolutions every year, but I never stuck to them. I don't always see a project all the way through. I tend to flake out on responsibilities that I feel are pointless. Goals seemed like something that just set me up for failure. So I stopped setting them.

Then, recently, I realized I was literally getting nothing done. 

Mostly because Big said to me, "You have all these things you want to do, but you're not doing any of them." Big's not one to mince words, which is good because I'm not either. And also because I appreciate people being straight with me. Makes it harder for me to write off things I'm "doing wrong" as NBD (no big deal). 

"Doing wrong" as if there's a right way to do life. But you know what I mean.

So last year, I decided to start setting goals for myself, but I never got around to it because I was afraid. I hate that I make promises to myself and don't keep them. I hate that I have all these things that I want to do, but don't always follow through. I hate that I started a short story series, and self-published the first part (under a different pen name), and then just left it. BLAH! 

And now here's this challenge. And here's day eight talking about short term goals for this month. And what better way to start than to just fucking start already? 

So! Goals!

1 - Start setting goals for myself and following through on them. Because I owe it to myself to actually follow through on the things I want to do, and because life's too short to not go for broke (Eminem, Marshall Mathers LP 2).

2 - Finish this challenge. On my other blog, I started a couple writing challenges years and years ago, and I still have not finished them. Omg, I started them in 2010. That is ridiculous. 

3 - Make some decisions regarding part 2 of my short story series. When I began writing the series, I decided I wanted the beginning to be told in third person limited from the point of view of each important character. Mostly because once upon a time, I wrote a short story about a car accident from the point of view of each witness, and I really liked the way it turned out. By nature of the beast, there will be some overlap in each part, but so far, I like the way it's going. I plan to finish in third person omniscient when all the characters come together in one place. This raises the question of whether or not I need to include the POV of a character who dies in part 1. His point of view isn't really necessary because he's dead, and his death isn't really even a major plot point (though it did end up being a pretty good hook), but his actions in part 1 raised a lot of questions that I'm not sure I can answer without writing his POV.  So I need to write out his part, and decide if it should be included, or just saved for my own personal use. And that's just one of the decisions I need to make. 

4 - Edit the part of part 2 that is finished. Part 2 is written from the POV of a character that plays a large part in part 1, and it's pretty crazy. When I finished, I realized I wrote it out of order, so I need to rearrange it, and polish it, and then make those decisions I mentioned so I can publish it. 

5 - Get back to doing 30 minutes a day on the elliptical and eating more healthy foods than junk. Once upon a time, Big and I were on this crazy health kick. We were eating right and walking every day, unless we were riding our bikes, or running on the elliptical for 30 minutes. He lost 75 pounds, and I lost 50. We were looking good, and feeling good. We had so much energy, and so much less pain (we both suffer from chronic back and joint pain; his is diagnosed, mine isn't), and we were sleeping almost through the night. 

It mostly started as a way to get us out of the house because we were being harassed by our upstairs neighbors, but then we started to see results and we were enjoying it, so we kept at it. Until we moved, and we were so relieved to be comfortable (until we found out that we'd won the asshole neighbor lottery again) that we stopped for a few months. And then I totaled my bike. And then Big herniated a disk in his back. And then we just never got back to it. 

Now, I'm about 10 pounds under my highest weight again, and I'm in pain pretty much constantly. No one's told me as much, but I often feel like it's the strain of the weight on my frame. Like my frame's really not built to carry this much weight. And, I mean, it isn't, so I'm probably right. So! Back at it again. I'm at 25 minutes a day, right now. I figure I can make five more minutes by the end of the month, no problem.

This series inspired by a writing challenge from Living Off Love and Coffee. Find the full list here.