I’m still tracking progress on each goal by month, trying out the new tracking mechanism for the year. And it is helping me visualize my goals better this year…only time will tell if it improves performance though. March should have been a good month for me, as work quieted down a bit and my goals were firmly established, and I did make progress — active on more items in total, upped my “green” rating overall. Mostly though, I’m happy about initial progress on a HUGE “soul” element…see why below!

Progress on Mind: My planning guide is done, printed, and I’ve got my trackers up and running, definitely “green” and I expect it will hover around green for the year (might dip to yellow occasionally). We did get most of our powder room done, although that is more a gift from Andrea’s parents than my own effort. A few things left to do to tick the box. I had hoped to have the ETFs done by now, along with taxes, and more done on sorting books, but didn’t do much on those this month.

Progress on Heart: I continued my support to Andrea on her M.Ed., although that is mostly just making sure she has her night free for her class. I should be doing more somehow, but not sure what that is yet…we usually divide up our chores, and there are certain jobs that are “blue” jobs, like shoveling snow and cutting grass, and some that are “pink” jobs like washing dishes, because I hate washing … and then others that are up for grabs, like laundry. And while I have been trying to do the dishes a bit more (since Andrea has been doing more laundry, a blu-ish job), I don’t think “dishes” counts as career support. I helped out a bit more at the start of the month on Jacob’s nighttime routine, but not so much near the end of the month when a cold and some blood pressure spikes just wiped me out. Equally, I fell off the wagon near the end of the month for making my lunch rather than buying it every day. And I’m annoyed that I haven’t finished the Pontiac website yet. No progress yet on a Remembrance Day party, but then again, it’s MARCH! hehehe I did kick in some cash for one of my universities as a charitable donation, and successfully earmarked it for a specific program to support.

Progress on Soul: My big “success” this month was on a specific goal. I’ve got a mixed history for spiritualism and religion, and to be honest, I’m not entirely sure what I believe anymore. Or, from another perspective, my beliefs are not entirely coherent. So I came up with a unique idea — defining my core beliefs by coming up with 12 questions and asking myself them throughout the year. I’ve started work on coming up with the 12 questions first, which in and of itself is no easy matter. And while this might take awhile, I’ve also enlisted the aid of an expert — my friend Hope is a Catholic military chaplain, and I’m going to grill her like a fish about better questions. Heck, she’s got professional training in this, I might as well bribe her with food and cut my learning curve. As I said when I asked her, I’m not looking for her to give me answers, just help me come up with some better questions. I’m pretty happy with my approach so far, and I’ve got the first few questions starting to shape up pretty well. Look for more blogs on this when I go to answer them. I’ve even recruited friends on FB to help me come up with better questions.

Separate from that, I’ve done a little more work on my business model for writing, and organized myself a bit better for my HR guide (including for the actual cover), but not much tangible to show for it yet. Most of the rest are “reds” as I haven’t done anything on them yet, but I also gave myself a “red” for having a regular “new recipe” cooking night as Andrea and I have defaulted a LOT in recent weeks to not planning our dinners, just mostly doing responsive “day of” cooking that is really unexciting. Need to get back into a better groove for that, as well as ensuring the “new recipe” nights.

Progress on Body: As with January and February, most of March was a washout. And I had a bad experience with my blood pressure spiking near the end of the month — cold and flu remedies can elevate blood pressure, but Tylenol-based ones tend to cause less impact. So, I bopped along taking my Tylenol Cold/Flu stuff for three days and started to feel better, only to have my blood pressure spike and give me really really bad headaches at night. Not fun, and a little scary until I realized what was causing it. In the end, not super problematic, easy to adjust (stop taking the damn cold pills!), but the rest of the first quarter is a wash. Definitely need to be more active, and happy that the warmer weather is starting to appear.

Overall Results

• January: 32 inactive; 0 RED; 0 YELLOW; 2 GREEN = 5.8% for month, 5.8% for year
• February: 25 inactive; 0 RED; 6 YELLOW; 3 GREEN = 8.8% for month, 8.8% for year
• March: 17 inactive; 7 RED; 6 YELLOW; 4 GREEN = 11.8% for month, 8.8 % for year
• April:
• May:
• June:
• July:
• August:
• September:
• October:
• November:
• December:

Onward!