Things I'm (Still) Trying to Get Done

For the past three years I’ve had the same three major goals in life. I’ve been very clear about them, and I’ve focused on them, thought about them, researched and googled them, planned, schemed, and plotted. And I’ve made some headway toward accomplishing them. But these goals are some tough suckers. 


 "Knox Goals Notebook," by Jamie is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Briefly here they are:

Write.

I’m not sure where I’m going with this. I have dreams of writing for a living, but that is so far away that it really is just a dream right now. Over the past year, I’ve been writing more and more frequently, and several hours a week, at times. But it’s not steady and predictable like I’d like it to be. I want to be able to count on pounding out a minimum of thirty minutes a day or a minimum word count—maybe one thousand words. It hardly matters what the minimums are at this point, I’d just like to know there will be a minimum. I’d like to count on myself to write at least five days a week, but I’m not there yet. There are still too many things that keep me from writing. For several weeks in May I wrote regularly and for a good period of time every week. Then June hit, and things went crazy at work, as things do in June, and I didn’t write a word for five weeks. Now things are less crazy at work and I’m back at it, which is something. But I don’t want those breaks to happen. I’d like to find a corner of my life where I know I’ll write every single day for at least twenty or thirty concentrated minutes, even when things are crazy. But I’m not there yet.

Improve my back health.

I don’t plan to dwell on this. No one wants to hear about someone else’s aches and pains, especially if there’s no miracle solution attached, which (spoiler alert) there isn’t. I’ve posted previously about my back, what’s wrong with it, what I’m doing about it, what I think is helping, blah, blah, blah. Here, I just want to acknowledge that it’s a constant focus in my life, and it needs to be, but I don’t plan to talk about it much.

Lose weight and get fit.

Not being able to exercise with abandon (see previous paragraph) makes this goal a lot harder. As far as meals go, we’re pretty low-carb at my house, but for me that’s an all or nothing situation. I waver from being sweetener- grain-, and alcohol-free, to swimming in junk food that I refrain from sharing with my husband, because he would not thank me. So I’ll be trying out another Whole30—the land of no sugar, no grains, no alcohol, no legumes, no dairy—hopefully very soon.

I can’t believe I just said that like I meant it.