Goals check for the week of June 3

I had a great week last week!  I had a horse show to get Panama ready for, which meant lots of riding, and I did a reasonably good job of balancing that with working on my novel.  I also did all this while still balancing a day spent with my mom on Wednesday.  I like the feel of having had a balanced week, where I managed not to neglect any one thing.

NaNoWriMo in July

The last couple of years, I've been doing Camp NaNoWriMo, which is the summer version of NaNoWriMo.  This year it is being held twice: The first session was in April (when Script Frenzy used to be), and the second will be in July.  Signup for the July session just started on Monday.

Goals check for the week of May 27

Last week was a wildly successful week, at least as far as my novel goes.  For the first time, I actually worked on my novel pretty much every day (except for Sunday -- I rested on the seventh day, ha!).  As usual, though, doing well on one goal meant sacrificing in other areas.  I am beginning to think this is not necessarily a sign that I am not able to balance my goals, but that I am not able to balance my expectations of how much I can cram into my life and still succeed at what's important to me.

Happy 1,111th post

I love hitting interesting milestones on my blog.  I just noticed this week that my next post would be my 1,111th post.  I've been keeping this blog since December of 2005, and although it has changed a lot over the years -- from just general blatherings to a more focused writing blog -- and I've gone through periods of writing more and writing less, I always like seeing these milestones as they pop up.

Goals check for the week of May 20

Happy Memorial Day!  I have a rare day off today, where I don't nanny OR babysit at any point during the day, but I do plan on getting some work done here at home (novel work).  I hope everyone else is enjoying their holiday.

Last week felt quite busy, but also surprisingly productive, considering how many other demands on my time I had.  I still haven't gotten around to working on my websites or blogs, not to mention some of the other writing projects I wanted to work on this year, but I got a lot done on my novel -- the thing I want to be most productive on.

Goals check for the week of May 13

I thought last week was going to be more productive, but it turned out it wasn't.  I wrote my goals check-in on Wednesday, and on that day I was spending a lot of time on my novel, so it felt like the week would be a good one.  But the truth was that I hadn't accomplished much Monday , and I went on to accomplish very little on Thursday and Friday.  As I said in my post yesterday, how I start the week -- how productive I am on Monday -- seems to set the stage for the rest of the week, and I simply wasn't productive last Monday.  And since I have my riding lesson on Thursdays, and often other responsibilities on Fridays, waiting until Tuesday or Wednesday to get anything done is generally bad policy.

Starting the week off right

Sometimes I think how I start the week off sets the mood for the rest of the week.  I often call Monday my "recovery" day -- recovery from my busy weekends, that is.  If I can stay home on Monday and get work done in the morning, I feel like it puts me in a good place for the rest of the week.  But if I have a lot of other demands on my time on Monday (as I did last week), one thing often leads to another, and I feel like the week is almost over by the time I finally sit down at my desk.