January 2019 Goals

Happy New Year!!

I’ll be honest, Monday was a rude awakening for me. I’d been playing catch up on administrative and marketing tasks for five days straight, and guess what? Monday was another full day of it. *waaahh!!* *crying face*

That’s the writing life, though. It’s not all writing!

So how was your Christmas? What did you enjoy the most? Or did you have a hard holiday? Some years are like that.

I was not my optimistic self this December. Sometimes I just get gloomy for no apparent reason. I babied myself. Read a lot. Watched Holiday Baking Championship on Food Network. Spent a lot of time with distant family members (yay!). Oh, and I took the month off from tracking calories. The nice thing? I’m in a good groove with my eating habits and only gained a few pounds over Christmas week which promptly disappeared as soon as I resumed my normal diet. I have noticed my back aches more when I don’t work out at least three days a week, so I’m thankful to be back on track with my DVDs.

Let’s see how I did last month.

Jill’s December 2018 Goals:

• Revise and polish Christmas novella.
• Finish Christmas shopping.
• Take time off after the novella is finished to refill the creative well.
• Create my 2019 Production Plan.
• Workout 4 days/week and stay in calorie range most days until Christmas week, when we have 70-billion parties with decadent food!

How did I do?

• Christmas novella revise and polish? CHECK! Finished it early. Woohoo!
• Finish Christmas shopping: CHECK! Took me until right before Christmas Eve, but I did it.
• Take time off to fill creative well. SORT OF CHECK. I took time off, read, relaxed, but I didn’t really do much to fill my well. It was more like crashing and burning…
• 2019 Production Plan? CHECK! I’ll tweak it each month, but I’m happy with the overall plan.
• Health stuff. NO CHECK. I did NOT workout 4 days/week. My body is scolding me!

Jill’s January 2019 Goals

• Finalize A Meddled Match: Resort to Romance Series to prepare for February launch! This includes setting up promo, sending out ARCs, uploading to Amazon, etc…
• Replot and draft rest of book one in the new Love Inspired series! It’s now going to be a Christmas book releasing this December. Aaah!
• I’m the 2019 president of Maumee Valley Romance Authors, Inc. and need to do several administrative tasks to start the year off right.
• Health: Log calories daily in MyFitnessPal, stay within calorie range, workout for 30 minutes 4+ days/week.

Side note: My health goals are the same each month. I know some of you are trying to get healthy this year. Two years ago I made the decision to stick to a lower calorie diet without drastically changing what I ate. I also committed to exercising 4-5 days per week. Within six months, I’d lost 20 pounds. Ever since, I’ve consistently kept off 15 pounds. Last year my weight fluctuated 3-4 pounds on any given month, but I stayed below the 15-pound loss mark. I’m happy with that!

I’m not telling you this to brag–I’m telling you it CAN be done. I realize we all have different struggles. You may have significantly more weight to lose or you just can’t seem to take off the last five pounds. You might have physical issues preventing you from certain exercises or foods. I get it. I still want to encourage you. Small decisions every day add up to big results. For me, being consistent has made ALL the difference.

How did you do last month? What are your January goals?

Have a terrific day!