Halfway!

The year is now halfway over! OMG! How did this happen? I am not ready for it to be July yet! But, since time has yet to consult me on how fast it ought to be moving, I figure it’s helpful to gather all the things I’ve gotten done in one place. Partially for accountability and partially to remind myself that I’ve actually gotten things done this year.

Writing

My primary writing goal for this year is to start querying Cold Burn Goodbye, the space opera novel I’ve been working on for an eternity and a half. The book has now been edited to to the best of my ability and is spending some time with my beta readers, who will hopefully find only small comments which could mean I’d be able to start querying pretty soon after Worldcon. Meanwhile, I’m working on a thriller set 15-30 minutes into the future and hoping to finish the first draft before Worldcon. It’s actually my Clarion Write-a-thon goal to get at least 3/4 of the thing done by the beginning of August. And since I have my vacation all through August, I’m hopeful of being able to finish before Worldcon.

Meanwhile, my secondary goal for my writing is languishing in the pit of despair. That goal was to finish a short story each month and to gain 78 rejections for the year, the cumulative number of each month summed. I managed to finish four stories before the novel priorities ran roughshod over them. I have a number of untouched drafts from Clarion and before, so there’s some hope that I might be able to get at least twice the number of short stories finished during this year. Especially since I’ll want to take at least two or three months after finishing the thriller draft to not having to think about it at all, before starting revisions. We can be pretty secure in the fact that I won’t be finishing 12 short stories this year. I might get the rejections after I finish the next two or three short stories.

Knitting

The primary knitting goal for this year was to finish two WIPs (Work In Progress) per month. So far this year, I’ve finished 7 pieces, two of them newly cast on pieces. I’ve also cast on two other pieces, one of which fits into no plans. But it’s going to be a very cozy sweater when it’s finished and I’ve been meaning to make sure that I have more cozy sweaters for next winter. Given that I’m about to cast on for another cozy sweater today in my efforts to complete Eat.Sleep.Knit’s Yarnathon, it’s a bit dubious whether that other sweater will get finished this year.

Speaking of, my secondary goal for this year is to compete in and finish ESK’s Yarnathon. It’s an event full of yarny goodness that the store hosts every year, with knitting challenges galore. This year’s theme – Around the World – has the pattern challenges from around the world. It’s the most fun I’ve ever had buying yarn and that’s saying something. This year, my projects include the Inara Wrap from Aussie designer Ambah O’Brien, What the Fade?! by US designer Andrea Mowry, and that cozy sweater? A Canadian Classic, Notre Dame De Grace by Veronik Avery. This is the one I’ve been looking forward to the most. I have this gorgeous blue-grey Madelinetosh that I’m using for it and it’s going to be so sweet.

Habits

The habit goals for this year are a bit more nebulous. One of them was to publish a blog post every Monday, and that I have done. The other big thing was to spend at least one Pomodoro on writing tasks every day. My current streak on 4theWords is 71 days long. I’m not 100% sure how I did before I started tracking there. I know I faltered early in the year, but I’m honestly not sure how badly.

Beyond that, my Duolingo streak is at almost 200 days, I’ve managed to budget extra payments to our mortgage on all but one month so far and I’ve done a number of classes on various things like productivity, ethics as they apply to super heroes, podcasting and various other topics. The only habit I keep consistently falling down on is exercise. To help with this, I signed up for Helsinki Midnight Run, which should help motivate me to actually keep up the pitiful training I’ve done.

What next?

Next, I try to make the working and the training and the fun more consistent. I’ve been trying to make myself leave the computer at 8 PM every weekday and it’s been a hard time. The idea is to work two hours every weekday and maybe four on the weekends and days off. No more, no less. I think, if I could do that consistently, then I could get more done, but also manage to avoid burnout. So here’s to looking forward and getting shit done!

How has the first half of your year gone? What do you want to do differently going forward?