Let’s check in on how I’m doing on my goals…Spoiler alert — the big news is under the yellow goals!

Starting with the Blue / Mind goals, I’ve done a bit on both of my two big goals: re-engaged with astronomy (Mercury and Venus observing with the naked eye, collimated my scope, charged batteries, and sorted out my astro gear) and exchanged emails with the contractor for the kitchen renovation –> green for the past two weeks. On day-to-day stuff, I’ve started using the tracker, organized a photo book, did a partial backup, and enrolled in a Coursera course, but nothing official on the Honey-Do list, photo scanning, or ripping –> yellow for the past two weeks. On my bucket list, I started doing some origami, but nothing on photography, knitting, juggling or the meteor shower –> yellow for the past two weeks. Overall, I’d rate my mind goals at YELLOW for my early progress.

For the Green / Heart goals, my first big one has been re-engaging with Jacob. I have had two Boys Nights with him, although the project one was a bust. I had hoped to make snowflakes with him (construction paper with hole cut out for a picture, trimmed edges, wool on top) but I described the project to him on the weekend, and he did it without me, so he had no interest when it came to Boys Night to do it again. He liked the idea apparently, and couldn’t wait. This past week though we had an impromptu games night while Andrea was at NAC, and when we were done, we talked about what he likes in various games and what he wants in the game we’re going to design together in February. It’s a decent start. But I’m not stepping up for the night-time routine as much as I had intended, so overall of yellow. For the random acts of romance, my second big goal, I have to grade myself a Red so far…Andrea and I have done a few more things together, but it all came to a screeching halt on Saturday night when I was sick, and had to bail on our NAC date. Fortunately, a friend was able to go at the last-minute. Between the two, I’ll give myself an overall yellow so far. For the day-to-day activities, I’ve organized a wings outing for this coming week, updated the AstroPontiac site for the WP software, did a bit of work on my social campaign for November, and researched a bit of my charity plan. Nothing on siblings, corn roast planning –> Overall yellow. Which gives me an overall yellow for the category.

For the Red / Body goals, I pretty much suck. I’m way behind on my exercises and I’ve done almost nothing on organizing my physical journey — overall flaming red. On the day-to-day stuff, I haven’t got myself organized for french nor found a new dentist or doctor, but I did do my sleep test when my squirrels were knocking at the door, so I’m giving myself a yellow. However, I did nothing on organizing myself to give blood, use a rappel/zipline, or for a polar plunge, so again RED. Which leaves me with an overall red for the category.

Despite my “failures” above, I’m not really surprised. My priority for this month so far has been my goals in the Yellow / Soul category. I’ll go in reverse order, as I want to save my writing challenge to the end. I hit the ground running on my creativity challenge in the day-to-day stuff, working on clip art, two goals memes, finding a  Daddy and Jacob project, posting photos from December, doing a photobook, and designing trackers for goals and the Creativity Challenge itself. On blogging, my goal was 10 new blogs; I did 32. In 18 days. For reviews of TV episodes, my goal was 10 for the yearly average but my Creativity Challenge boosted that temporarily to 25 for two weeks –> I did 35. With more pending. I’ve only done 4 memes so far, out of my 200 for the year, but I didn’t really expect to start this soon. I’m about 2/3 of the way through the first book (Monogram Murders), I’ve completed 11 entries in my Gratitude Journal with an impressive 8 entries in a row, and I’ve tried out 2 recipes with Andrea. And as mentioned, Jacob and I are working on the game design I wasn’t planning on starting until February. On the other side, nothing on movie reviews or book reviews, or the photography / movie weekend / HR guide. Nor have I done anything on my Spiritual questions quest for the year. Nevertheless, if this was my only progress for the month, I’d still give myself an overall Green. That list alone is enough to give me a sense of accomplishment.

But all of this has been a side-show to the main attraction, which is my ultra-scary, how-the-heck-am-I-going-to-reach “500,000 words” goal. Working it backwards, that’s 10,000 words a week x 50 weeks. So I have to put up about 10K words a week to stay on track.

Week 1 launched with a vengeance — 2 memes, 8 gratitude entries, 9 reviews of TV episodes, 26 posts, 35 e-mails, and innumerable numbers of Facebook posts and some other projects combined to give me, wait for it, 24,620 words, with 19,500 coming just from the blog. Week 2 was a bit slower, and I confess I didn’t meet my writing target — I only accumulated 7054 words, with 5500 coming from the blog and the rest coming from Facebook, emails, TV episode reviews and memes. But overall? My grand total for the two weeks is 31,674. Not including a few reviews and things that will post in the next few days already. That’s two-thirds of my previous total on the blog over the last few years, and way above my yearly average alone. That’s a big GREEN for the category by itself, although the others were already green.

So, summing up, Yellow / Yellow / Red / Green. Since my green is as impressive as my red is sucky, I’m going to call it a very promising yellow so far. I have to admit, I’m surprised. I lost momentum after the first 11 days, as I started week 2. And this week I’ve mailed in my performance in a few places. Yet, overall, it’s already looking promising for my month-end report, with two more weeks of progress to come!

I like this new PolyWogg 4.0. He’s a productive little tadpole. I feel almost giddy! 🙂