June 20 2019

Goal (Five Minute Friday)

This year I decided NOT to set yearly goals. My bullet journal has been rather ignored compared to previous years because I have no goals I need to track in it. This is my depth year. I am supposed to go back to things I previously tried to get into, but never quite did. I should also be trying to dive deeper into things I barely scratched the surface of in previous years.
I feel like the year is basically going well, but it feels a tad unfocused without the goals to work toward. Goals used to be something I made a list of around the beginning of each new year, posted to one of my groups and promptly forgot about until the holiday season was again on the horizon and I wondered how I had done. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I usually managed to accomplish a few of the goals from my list, but not very many and those were completely accidental or a matter of choosing goals I knew I would do in the first place. This ignoring the goals and thinking they will magically happen is a bad plan, it is really a non-plan.
I think I will be setting some goals for 2020, maybe not as many as in previous years, but at least a few. There is just something about marking my progress in the bullet journal that really motivates me. I am enjoying the lazier year and not having to record everything or feel like a failure. Who knows, maybe I will set one bog goal for the year or each quarter and break it down into manageable steps.
Do you have any advice to share that you have found works well for achieving goals? Oh, please share them. I can use all the help I can get when it comes to goals.

This post is part of the weekly Five Minute Friday link-up!
The prompt this week is: Goal
The assignment: Write for five minutes on the word of the week. This is meant to be a free write, which means: no editing, no over-thinking, no worrying about perfect grammar or punctuation. Just write.

Category: Five Minute Friday, Goals | Comments Off on Goal (Five Minute Friday)
May 23 2019

Review: Everyday Millionaires

If you are a member of the over-fifty club like I am, you are probably pre-occupied with figuring out how much longer you will need to work for a living before you can reasonably retire and do whatever you want with your life. After reading the book, Retire Inspired (affiliate) by Chris Hogan, I began to think about retirement in a completely different way. Chris says that retirement is not an age, it is a financial number. I love that! I have also listened to all of his podcasts and was looking forward to his most recent release that came out in January, Everyday Millionaires (affiliate) by Chris Hogan. After hearing the commercials for the new book on his podcast  a bunch of times I decided I could spare the $20 and buy the book, especially since it came with so many cool bonus freebies and was less than I would likely have paid if I had waited and bought it from any bookstore, and then I wouldn’t have gotten all the bonus things with it. So I caved and bought the book.

I loaned the hardcover out to my sister so she could read it too and thought perhaps we’d have a book club type discussion about it, but I delayed getting started reading the ebook or listening to the audiobook mostly due to technical issues and not taking the time to figure out how to get them loaded onto my phone so I could get started reading. My sister read some of it but I think she got sidetracked and has yet to get back to it. I finally got the audiobook loaded and ready to listen to before a road trip in early April but then next thing I knew, the trip was over and I never started the book. Procrastination is nobody’s friend!

I finally got around to starting and before I knew it I was finished. Whoever said “Begun is half done” was so right! The book was a lot like listening to his podcasts with loads of stories from everyday millionaires. It was really cool to hear how normal people like you and I saved and invested and stayed debt free long enough to become net-worth millionaires. Reading this book really gives me hope that us normal working class people can become millionaires too if we stay focused. I really enjoyed Everyday Millionaires, but I honestly liked his first book, Retire Inspired so much more. I felt like my thinking was adjusted more after reading Retire Inspired than this book. But both books are well worth reading. Best $20 I ever spent and now I have a hardcopy I can loan out once I get it back.

Here are some books by Dave Ramsey that, while a little older, are still super valid and worth reading also.

Have you read these or any other awesome financial books that you would recommend? Please share them in the comments below.

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Category: Book Review, Goals, Money Saving, Review | Comments Off on Review: Everyday Millionaires
May 16 2019

What Matters Most

When it comes to organizing, one of the most important things we can ever make the effort to organize is our lives. Get your ducks in a row. Get your sh*t together. However you say it, you need to actually DO it. I recently had the privilege of listening to my library’s copy of the audiobook, What Matters Most by Chanel Reynolds (affiliate link). None of us is getting any younger. We all think we are too young to need a will. I know I thought this back in the early nineties when our kids were still babies. We loved our kids, so we did it anyway. We went to a lawyer and had our wills drawn up, the whole nine yards. It was such a relief. It wasn’t terribly painful or even all that expensive when you consider the peace of mind it gave us. But here we are some twenty-five-ish years later with the same wills, never giving them a thought. When your life changes and your family grows up, things like our last wishes need to change too. We need to update them to reflect the life stage we are in now, the assets we have the people in our lives. All of these things change with time and as we age.

I don’t want to spoil the book, but I will say that this book is written by someone who went through the worst and lived to tell about it and use it to help others learn from her mistakes or oversights. She even includes a 31-page checklist that you can use to get your own sh*t together before you find you needed to but never got around to it.

There is a website called Cake that helps you through the process and gets you started.

If, like me, you still have work to do in the Get Your Shit Together department, you really SHOULD read this book. This book was published 3/19/2019, so it is likely to be the most current book on the subject. Do you have to read the book? Of course not, but it is an excellent book, so why wouldn’t you read it. Ms. Reynolds has shared the most painful part of her life with us (when she was too young to have to deal with this sort of thing) in order to show us how important this is. You could just click on all the links, download the checklist and work your way through it, but it won’t seem as imperative to get this stuff done if you don’t read the book. If there is ANYone in your life that depends on you or that you depend on, just do it. Do it for them, do it for yourself, but you need to do it.

Each of the links on this page leads to an awesome resource to help you through this process. By sharing them with all of you in this post, I can no longer use the excuse of having forgotten or lost them. With any luck, I will have spurred at least one person to get their sh*t together because I took the time to share this subject with you here.

Feel free to check back in with me and keep at me until I can honestly say everything is in order and up to date. Hold me accountable, please! I have mentioned to Hubby that we REALLY need to update these legal papers, and sooner rather than later. Maybe we need to make a list of all the things we have been putting off that we need to do during a typical business day and then make the appointments and take that day off work together and just get it all done. Our reward for a day of doing stuff that sounds like something less than fun could be dinner and a movie afterward.

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Category: Book Review, Depth Year, Goals, Organizing, Planning, Review | Comments Off on What Matters Most
March 7 2019

Finding Time for Hobbies

Do you have hobbies? Do you make time to enjoy your hobbies regularly? Maybe you are like so many others who wish they could fit in the time for their hobbies but just don’t know where to find the time.

A few years ago I decided to find help with finishing the crochet rug I had started in a class but then got busy and put it away to finish later. The problem was that when later came, I couldn’t figure out how to pick back up where I left off. I decided to take it to my family’s Thanksgiving gathering and ask my Aunt Mary if she could help me figure out how to finish the project. She wasn’t used to crocheting with such a huge hook, but the stitches are still the same and she took one look and knew it was a single crochet stitch, but I had no clue back then. She got me started and I kept going until it was finished that day. I decided then and there that if I was going to crochet I would have to do it regularly so I wouldn’t forget again. I didn’t start any other crochet projects for a long time, and by the time I did want to do another rug, YouTube was a thing.

YouTube is amazing for teaching you practically anything you want to learn and you can rewatch or pause and step your way through the video as often as you need to until you know what you are doing. If one person’s way of demonstrating a crochet stitch doesn’t work for you just look for someone else demonstrating the same stitch.

So you are wondering no doubt if I am completely off topic or if I am going to share ideas to help you find time for your hobbies after all.

1 Find Events to Attend

When I started that second rug, it went well enough but the rug ended up looking like an infant-sized basket instead of a flat rug. I found a group that met once a month at my local library that would offer help if needed and let me meet others who also knitted or crocheted. You can read about How I Learned to Crochet if you like. I found two more groups that all meet once a month for about two hours. I rarely crochet at home, but I look forward to meeting up with these three groups of fellow yarnslingers and this means I can get about three hats a month crocheted for charity if nothing else.

2 Give Up Social Media 

Now don’t panic and start throwing things. You might just want to give up one form of social media for a month and see how it goes while still using the others. Maybe you could just declare an hour or two a week a social media free hours and use that time to work on one of your hobbies. We could all stand to cut back on the scrolling through our feed thing.

3 Find a Friend and Make a Hobby Date

Maybe your hobby is running or swimming or trying new flavors of ice cream or scrapbooking. I bet you have a friend who also enjoys this hobby or would like to get started. Make a date and do only hobby-related stuff. If you don’t have a friend who enjoys the same hobby, see number 1 above and make a new friend.

4 Teach Your Hobby

Maybe you need to make a little extra so you have a part-time job. Maybe you just want to share the love of your chosen hobby with others. Either way, you could teach it to one person or sign up to teach a class. You get to share something you love and spend time doing it at the same time.

5 Hobby While You Wait

Maybe you want to find more time to read, knit or draw. These are all things that could be kept in a tote bag or backpack specifically for those times when you find yourself waiting at the doctor’s office or the pickup line at school. You can also do these things while sitting and watching

6 Find a New Hobby

If you are finding it hard to fit your current hobby into your schedule, maybe you need to find a new hobby that is easier to fit into your schedule. Be open to trying new things.

7 Find Common Hobbies

If you have hobbies in common with those you are already spending your time with, you can all hobby together. Maybe the family could go hiking together on weekends? If you are looking for something you can do with others, look into Letterboxing or GeoCaching. Both are fun ways to explore your area and get a little exercise and fresh air.

Category: Goals, Planning | Comments Off on Finding Time for Hobbies
January 3 2019

Year in Review – Goals

Here is the list of my 2018 Goals.

FAMILY/FRIENDS
Spring Break Cabin Trip (March 23-30) (Read More Here)
London Trip(September 21-29) (details and photos)
College Avenue Stitchers (1st Saturdays) (10/12)
FlyFests (2nd Saturdays) (12/12)
Knit & Crochet It Forward (2nd Saturdays) (12/12)
YarnSlingers (3rd Tuesdays) (11/12)

HEALTH/FITNESS
Sleep (6 hours/night) (57/92 this Qtr) 61.9% (258/365 = 70%)
Water (6 cups/day) (86/92 this Qtr) 93.4% (324/365 = 88%)
Cardio (3/92 this Qtr) 3% (Achilles Tendon trouble since 7/1) (73/365 = 20%)
Strength (0/92 this Qtr) 0% (no excuses really) (4/365 = 1%)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

HOUSE
Finish Cleaning Office (cleared table from the hall that I piled office stuff on)
Backup Floppy Disks to Iomega Drive (ALL 434 DONE! as of 4/24)
Paint Table for Porch (DONE! as of  4/29) (See proof here)
Master Bedroom (work on it) (destruction is done) (See proof here)

We have decided to Reclaim Our Home, one room or area at a time.
We turned our daughter’s old bedroom into our Reading Room.
We decluttered and cleaned the Landing, Garage and the Basement!

FINANCES

Pay Off Car Loan (DONE as of 7/17!)
Pay Off TAN (making monthly payments) (12/12)
Pay ALL Bills on Time (so far, so good) (12/12)
Save $6,000 for London Trip (scraped it up somehow)

We cut the cable and saved over $200/month!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

GIVING
Donate 36 Crocheted Hats (55 DONE!)Donate $ to NaNoWriMo (November) (DONE!)
Gift Wrap for DAR (I missed the signup and they didn’t need me by the time I volunteered)

I have also added crochet edging to 6 baby blankets (30″x30″) this year and taught a great group of ladies how to do this as well. All blankets will be gifted to family or charity. I made 10 soap sacks too!

FUN/HOBBIES
Get Family Tree Maker (just have to decide which computer now) (gifted to me!)
Update My Genealogy Websites (ALL DONE! as of 4/16, see Karen’s Kin)
Setup a Way to Sell my Crochet Online (got Etsy Store up and posted 30 listings/49 pcs total)(Sold 2 hats!)

Got a My Heritage DNA test kit for my birthday (reviewed it)

PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT
Read 100 Books (107/100) (DONE! see GoodReads for specifics)
Complete Modern Mrs. Darcy Reading Challenge (12/12)Read 3 Personal Development Books (21/3)
Update Resume (DONE and currently job hunting) 

BLOG
1 New Blog Post/Week (Thursdays) (105 new posts in 2018!) 
Continue Five Minute Friday Posts (My blog says I have written 81 FMF posts in about 18 months)

YOUTUBE
Continue to Add Content (video clips posted throughout the year) 
Try to Film Bullet Journal Flip Through (I filmed it!)
Try Being On Camera with Someone for a Virtual Write-In (still thinking about it/didn’t happen)

I did test Google Hangouts with my adult son who lives in another city
I took a free class (May 11-15) to learn how to edit videos and have posted a few to my IG feed

WRITING
Complete NaNoWriMo (November) (DONE) See wrap up
Read 3 Writing Craft Books (DONE 4/3)
Take 3 Writing Classes (1/3)
Submit 3 Guest Blog Posts or Magazine Articles for Publication (DONE)
Write 3 Contest Entries (DONE)
Thursday Night Writing Group (42/52) LOVE this group!

Word counts are steady but not as much as I’d like. Pretty much just writing blog posts, resumes, and cover letters these days.

How are you doing on your goals so far this year? Is there anything we can help you with? Let us know in the comments or email me through the contact form.
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Now to start figuring out what I want to accomplish in 2019, because this setting goals things works pretty well in my humble opinion, at least when you check in and hold yourself accountable by posting your progress for the entire world to see. Give it a try, I double dog dare ya!

Category: Bullet Journal, Crochet, Goals, NaNoWriMo, Travel, Writing | Comments Off on Year in Review – Goals