forestofglory

It's the middle of the month so it's time to see how I'm doing at my goals for month.

1)Write fic or Lady Business posts on 15 days.
I have written on 7 days so far. I was hopping to front load this goal bit more since I'm going to have less time to write later in the month. Oh well. On the other hand I posted the fake book review fic!

2) Finish the second shirt
Done! (Picture via Instagram)

3) Sew some reusable gift bags
I've got all of these cut out, and I have even sewn one!

4) Rec a thing everyday
So far on track with this. (I'll post another batch of recs here in a few days)

5) Winter Break and Winter Holidays
None of the holidays my household observes have started yet, but I have laid in a supply of potatoes and Hanukkah candles. Winter Break starts at the of this week.

6) Finish the intro section in An Introduction to Literary Chinese
I'm a little behind where I'd like be having not quite finished the 1st of the two remaining lessons. I'm not sure why it's going slowly.

How is your month going so far?

Somehow its December already. So its time to look back on my goals for last month and set some new goals.

Here are the goals I set for November:

1) Thanksgiving and Thanksgiving Break
Thanksgiving went really well! I was able to invite my parents a few local friends and I got to feed people! I also did a good job of enlisting help with cooking and not over doing things with my wrist. The kid was sadly sick for all of her break so we didn't do any expeditions.

2)Write fic or Lady Business posts on 15 days.
I wrote on 16 days, mostly on my reviews of fake books fic which is now around 3k words, and still very fun to write.

3) Sew two long sleeve shirts for the kid
I sewed one and got started on the second. I keep over estimating how much sewing I can do in a month. here is a picture of the shirt I did finish.

4)Complete another classical Chinese lesson, stretch goal: complete a second one
I did great at this I finished lesson 13 in A New Practical Primer of Literary Chinese then did lesson 6 in An Introduction to Literary Chinese and even a bit of lesson 7. Switching back more beginner lessons was nice because suddenly things where a lot easier, which means that I've learned something!

November had lot going on. Our house was painted which was very noisy, the kid was sick a lot, my mother in law had cataract surgery. I deliberately set myself smaller goals than I sometimes do because I knew that the painting and the surgery would make things more difficult. However I did succeed at my scaled back goals!

December is always a busy month so I'm going to keep setting scaled back goals for this month. My December goals are:

1)Write fic or Lady Business posts on 15 days.
Keeping it a smallish number of writing days again

2) Finish the second shirt

3) Sew some reusable gift bags
Since my wrist isn't so good traditional wrapping paper has been difficult for me, so I thought I would make some drawstring bags to but presents in. I have lots of good fabric for this!

4) Rec a thing everyday
I love recing stuff and social media has been a bit quieter so I'm going to try to rec a thing every day in December. (Where a thing can be fanfic, profic, non-fiction, visual media, tea, sewing patterns, something else I haven't thought of yet.) I plan to cross post between Twitter and Mastodon and use the tag #DecRecs.

I posted about this yesterday and several people are going to join in and rec things! I'm very excited! (I have already bought two ebooks and added several things to my marked for latter)

5) Winter Break and Winter Holidays
The kid has two weeks off school, and there are several holidays happening this month

6) Finish the intro section in An Introduction to Literary Chinese
This is lesson 7 which I've started on and lesson 8, so not a huge amount. I think I can do it!

I hope you all have a wonderful December!

It's November already!

Here are my October goals and how I did on them:

1)Write fic or LB posts on 20 days. Stretch Goal actually post something!
I only manged 16 writing days, but I did post two things. (Short and Sweet: Collections and Anthologies and My Very Own Star)

2) Baste Chicken baby quilt
I made the back for this but didn't get any further.

3) Sew a garment for the kid
I completed a dress! (picture on Instagram)

4)Celebrate the kid's birthday!
After the the celebrations mention in the last goal post we also had small outdoor birthday party which went well. Fun was had and cupcakes where eaten.

5) Halloween!
I didn't end up making much for the holiday this year. The kid wore an old costume my mom made for me, and she asked someone else to help with the cookies she brought for her class party. I did design a pumpkin which R helped me carve. Trick-or-treating went well too!

6) Two more Classical Chinese lessons
I struggled with this and only manged to complete one

Between my wrist problems and getting a cold I wasn't able to get as much done as I hoped. I'm still learning my new limits and I don't like it. For next month I'm going to try setting less ambitious goals.

1) Thanksgiving and Thanksgiving Break
I'll be hosting a small family Thanksgiving and the kid will have the whole week off school.

2)Write fic or LB posts on 15 days.

3) Sew two long sleeve shirts for the kid
Going to use a simple pattern I have made many times before, so this should be easier than last months dress.

4)Complete another classical Chinese lesson, stretch goal: complete a second one

Also this month we are having the outside of our house painted and my mother in law is having cataract surgery.

I hope you all have good November!

Short and Sweet: Collections and Anthologies

Thanks to writing up my goals yesterday I was reminded to ask again for someone to read this over, and owlmoose kindly offered to help last night. So here it is!

I'm back form camping, it was very fun and also exhausting! I'm now home and showered and it's been October for a few days so it's time for monthly goals

Here are my goals for September:

1) Continue wrist treatment
Post OT things continue to be up an down. I can do things though, I have to be more careful than I really like. Still its vast improvement over not doing things

2) actually finish the rainbow quilt top
I did it! Finally! And I think it looks awesome. Pictures on Instagram and Twitter

3) Post something on ladybusiness
I read over and edited one of my wips, but then didn't send it to anyone for editing. Instead I got distracted by my fic wip.

4) Finish a second draft of my current fic WIP
Not quite, I wanted to write all the missing bits before considering the draft complete, and I made progress on them but didn't finish.

5) Do two lessons in one of my classical Chinese textbooks
Done! I got to start the Assassin Retainers section in A New Practical Primer of Literary Chinese by Paul Router which is exciting for me!

I would have liked to do better at my writing goals, but I feel ok about how well I did on my projects in September. here are my goals for October

1)Write fic or LB posts on 20 days. Stretch Goal actually post something!
Rather than trying to finish things I'm just going to try to keep making progress. A writing day counts if I write at least 3 sentences or edit and least a page.

2) Baste Chicken baby quilt
I'm making up this quilt top for a new baby arriving in my community this winter. I have all the materials already. i want to baste it (basically gluing together the layers before I sew them together) before the rainy season starts as its an outside task that I can't do when its wet out.

3) Sew a garment for the kid
This will probably be the dress she picked out fabric for last month which I have already cut out, but I'm also planning some long sleeve shirts for her.

4)Celebrate the kid's birthday!
I have already committed to nice dinner on the day of and family party for with other fall birthdays

5) Halloween!
This can be fairly low key I hope. I need to figure out a costume for the kid and take her trick-or-treating

6) Two more Classical Chinese leasons
Planning to do some more Assassin Retainers!

I hope you all have great October!

Hello everyone. Last week was the first week in years where I didn't post anything here. I have been a bit overwhelmed (Nothing too serious, just lots of little things)

Since its the beginning of a new month let see how I did on last months goals.

1) Continue wrist treatment
Well I got the steroid shot (turned out not be be cortisone, but a different steroid that I forgot the name of, beta-something) Anyway it helped a lot! My hand mostly doesn't hurt now! However I'm scared to do too much and mess my wrist up again, so I'm still rather limited in what I am doing. But I am typing a little and that seems to be going ok.

2) Back to school
This is going well. The kid seems to be enjoying the school year so far, and we've mostly gotten into a routine.

3) Write on ten days
I did great at this! A friend cheer/beta read my messy draft and I was able to work on the second draft, and write on 14 days! I was right that doing some more writing would make me feel better too. Also editing stuff on my phone isn't has bad as I thought it would be.

Goals for next month:
1) Continue wrist treatment
I've got a OT appointment a week for today, so I suspect that there will be ongoing exercises.

The next goals are all assuming my wrist continues to improve

2) actually finish the rainbow quilt top
This is so close! I just need my wrist to be ok enough.

3) Post something on ladybusiness
I have a couple of things drafted or partially drafted so hopefully I can make this happen

4) Finish a second draft of my current fic WIP
I've made some progress on this already! There's still some major problems to fix, but hopefully if I keep working on it slowly but steadily I can fix it.

I don't want to get too ambitious, so I'll stop there for now. How is your start of September going?

ETA: I know I said I didn't want to get too ambitious but I thought of one more thing
5) Do two lessons in one of my classical Chinese textbooks
I've been able to write enough to finish up the lesson I was working on before I got put on strict rest. While I was resting I studied a lot of vocabulary on Skritter with my phone so I'm a bit ahead and can work on either textbook for the moment! I'm not sure which lessons I'll end up working on, but I'm excited to get back to my textbooks!

Well it's the start of a new month so I guess it's time to look back at my goals and see how things went. Here are all the goals I set myself at the start of the month

1) Ongoing Wrist issues

This pretty much took over my month after I got prescribed prolonged rest for three weeks. This ment using my dominant hand as little as possible. The three weeks are up now, and the problem is not resolved so I'm awaiting further instructions

( Read more... )

Thanks for all your responses to my last post! My wrist is doing a lot better now.

It's the middle of the month so I'm going to take a look at each of my goals for the month

1) Write something for ladybusiness
No progress. Mostly due to my bad wrist. Still hoping to work on this in the second part of the month

2) Write fic on 15 days
I have written fic on 6 days. Which it's bad in terms of meet my goal. However I'm frustrated by how many of those days I just wrote the minimum three sentences and had to stop because of wrist pain or because of lack of focus. I want to make more progress on this fic! I want to finish the terrible rough draft, so that I'm done with that part!

3) Read the intro and do lessons one and two in An Introduction to Literary Chinese by Michael A. Fuller
I'm doing great on this! I've read the intro done lesson 1 and started on lesson 2! If things go well I might be able to do part of lesson three too. And since there's less vocab I've manged to start learning everything through lesson 4 and I'm feeling a lot less stressed out by not being able to keep up.

4) Finish the purple section of the improv rainbow quilt. Stretch goal: Finish the top
Some progress here. (It's hard to judge how far along improv pieces are) This has been slowed down by the wrist as well.

5) Transition to summer vacation
This going well. School is out for the summer. We had one week with no camp where we did a lot of expeditions and things. (When to the park, the libary, on a hike ect) This week she stared a day camp that she's really enjoying so far.

6) Ongoing Wrist issues
This goal is to remind myself to take care of myself, and be forgiving of myself if I can't meet all of my other goals because of it. I am frustrated with how slowly writing and sewing have been going. However I'm am also resting my wrist a lot and I even sent a email to my PT to inquire about possible further treatments.

So things are going ok goal wise. A bit slower than I'd like in terms of writing and sewing but I'm hopeful that with my wrist feeling better I'll be able to do more things in the second part of the month.

How is your month going so far? How are your projects going?

Hello! It's time to check in with my goals for the month, see how things are going and maybe reevaluate some things.

1) Write fic on 20 days
So far I have written on 10 days! (Most of those I've written the bare minimum of three sentences which my jerk brain does not thinking is really enough, but I'm trying to ignore my jerk brain). Also I manged to finish and post a fic for the first time this year. I'm thinking of starting another short fic to take breaks form the slow going longer project because I enjoyed working on this one.

2) Finish the improv rainbow quilt Finish the blue section of the improv rainbow quilt
I've made good progress on the quilt but I've been slowed down by my wrist. So since I don't want to push my wrist too hard I've scaled this goal down.

3) Figure out what's next in Classical Chinese
I did this! I have decided to get another text book (An Introduction to Literary Chinese by Michael A. Fuller) and work through the introductory section of that. I just need a bit more exposure to the basics before I continue on with harder stuff.

4) Family Trip to Santa Cruz
This was last weekend! (and is the reason this update is few days late) It was good trip, I didn't get heatstroke, I did get in the water, and go on a ride, and see some redwood trees. And most importantly the kid loved it.

5) Wiscon
I have not yet cancelled my plane tickets and hotel room for this, but I continue to be unsure if I'm actually going! I will be on two online panels though. And the price of an online membership just dropped to $25! There's going to be a lot of great content online, so consider attending!

6) Take better care of my wrist
I'm working on it. I'm trying to spend lots of time resting, and I bought a new brace for sleeping and I think its helping. (I should maybe check in with my PT but I haven't yet)

How is your month going?

It's a new month! March has some issues that have made it harder to get things done. At the start of the month I experienced and lot brain mush and wasn't able to focus, then this last week my wrist has been really painful and I've had to rest a lot. But I did ok at my goals. Lets go over them.

1) Write fic on 20 days
Done! A writing day is three sentences or more which is low bar, but I find often that three sentences is enough to build up a bit of momentum so I can keep writing. I've been working on a long fic that I'm not sure I want to finish, and I also started writing a sequel to what is probably my least popular fic. That one I think is finishable though. I don't usually work on more than one WIP a time so that's been interesting.

2) Post essay about my research process
"Fanfic Research Methods: A Case Study"

3)Work on Improv Rainbow quilt
I finished both the orange part and the yellow part of this! It was fun to work on!

4) Do lessons 8 and 9 in A New Practical Primer of Literary Chinese by Paul Router. Stretch goal: Also do lesson 10.
Done, just under the wire as I finished up lesson 9 yesterday.

5) Hugo Nominations!
These where due March 15 and I was able to nominate some stuff!

6) Get medical attention for my wrist pain, and if given exercises to do at home do them regularly
I thought I was doing well at this but I had a relapse this week. Possibly I used my wrist too much. So while I've been good about the stretches I need to be more careful.

I completed all my March goals! Given how the month went I'm proud of myself!

Here are my goals for April

1) Write fic on 20 days

2) Sew two pairs of shorts for the kid
I took the kid to the fabric store and let her pick out fabric and patterns for two garments. She wants two pairs of shorts which I haven't started on yet.

3) Do lesson 10 and the lesson 6-10 review in A New Practical Primer of Literary Chinese by Paul Router. Stretch goal: Also do lesson 11.

4)Spring Break
Spring break is next week which feels early to me. I have some fun small expeditions planned with the kid, like going swimming. It should be a busy week

5) Passover
I might actually have Seder with people outside my household this year! I'm hopeful but keeping an eye on the numbers. Also looking forward to doing some passover cooking!

Hopefully this month will be less full of set backs than last month!