A New Year, A New Milestone!

Hello!  Guess what?  A new milestone!

It’s been very exciting to watch the pageviews on the website rise! 

It's also been neat to watch the pace pick up.  It probably won't surprise any of you to hear that most of my recent pageviews were from NaNoWriMo and ROW80-related posts...Hello, supportive fellow writers!

PAGEVIEWS:
1000: May-April (approx. 11 months)
2000: April-September (approx. 5 months)
3000: September-December (approx. 3 months)

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A final look at my ROW80 goals for November and December, 2014:

WRITING-SPECIFIC GOALS
1. Blog Sketches: These were definitely done in fits and spurts.  It was fun to draw more regularly again, and I would often find I wanted to do another sketch for a specific post.

2. Blog Posts (10+ blog posts for November & December Two ROW80/NaNoWriMo update posts & one crafts-based post per week):  I was mostly able to keep up, although life definitely happened.  It's been nice posting more regularly again, though. I need to remember that I can post shorter ideas or updates, too--there's a lot of pressure to complete a long, photographed tutorial or idea piece, which can prevent me from working on new posts sometimes.  And it was much easier to do three posts a week during NaNoWriMo/DigiWriMo, when I had specific word count goals hanging over my head.  By the end of this month, I was (usually) posting one writing update and one crafts post per week, with some short sketch/history posts for random holidays or astronomical events thrown in.
3. Vlog Idea: The vlog idea has not advanced at all; I've been too distracted, and I have poor lighting around here.  I have not devoted much thought to this since a practice video around Halloween.

4. Creative Writing: I have sadly not written any more for my November NaNoWriMo fiction project.  I really liked my characters and their world, so I would like to help them resolve their situation before I forget their personalities and the plot details.  But the holidays and various life things have all taken precedence in December...

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ONGOING SOCIAL MEDIA/PERSONAL GOALS:
5. Tweet more Original Content & Reply to at least one ROW80 post or comment per update interval.

6. Keep Up with Minimum Exercise Goals (3/3/3: 3 sets of 3 exercises, 3 days in a row).

These two goals have been easier to keep up with.  I think in part because social media participation is something I've been wanting to do, anyway, and in part because the exercise goals have been so small.  When I am busy, the exercise definitely falls by the wayside, though.  I skip a few days or do the bare minimum, which is less than ideal.  I had been hoping to increase that goal, not barely meet it.  And I want it to become a way of life, so that I can be healthier and have more energy, so I have to figure out how to increase my fitness in a better and more consistent way.

I have enjoyed the ROW80 system, in that it gives me small, feasible goals to work towards.  But I do think that the goals that got met more regularly were the ones I WANTED to do at the time...And the smaller goals...The other goals got regularly shunted to the side for various reasons.  Life, social gatherings, but also perhaps the fact that those goals were too broad? 

Now that's fine that I didn't meet all the bullets.  Goals change when you actually try to meet them, as you discover what actually interests you as you move from theory to practice, etc.  But for things like fitness and regular creativity, I still want to make sure that those happen, no matter how I am feeling.  So I need to ponder how to restructure my goals for the next round

By the way, the new round starts January 5th, if you feel like participating! There is a sign-up page at the start, but really you can start participating at any time--I joined this last October-December round when I started NaNoWriMo in November and wanted to expand my supportive online community.  There are no obligations except the ones you impose on yourself--most members post updates on both Wednesdays and Sundays, to increase accountability and community engagement, but you can really just post whenever you have something new to say, as I have been doing in December...It still increased my overall enthusiasm and output...Feel free to check the FAQs out!

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Thank you for stopping by!

I hope you have all had a great December.  And here's looking to a hopeful 2015!

--Jackie