Mid-Year Goal Update

I just want to thank everyone for the kind comments on my last post. Thanks for letting me get a little bit personal and spiritual here, and thanks for all the well-wishes on my family's behalf. I am so grateful for your positive support.

I know, I know, none of you could possibly care about how I'm doing on my New Year's Resolutions. You probably don't even remember what they are (oh look, here's a friendly link to remind you). Obviously this is all just for my personal benefit, because I always find it useful to give myself some mid-year accountability and motivation to keep up on my goals.

However, I was pretty low-key on the goal setting this year. I anticipated a rough year, so I was trying to be generous with myself and not set the bar too high. At this mid-year reflection point, I actually think I may have set the bar too low. I've already finished nearly every goal I set, so I think I'm going to have set some new goals, because I need something to do for the rest of the year (besides gestate a baby), right?

So here's the update:


1. Graduate with a Master's Degree - Check!

2. Get Pregnant - Check!

3. Read 24 Books for Pleasure - Check! I surprised even myself and hit 24 books by the end of May.

4. Go on a Pre-Pregnancy Diet - Check, and honestly, fail. I'll elaborate a little on this one. If you remember, this was not a lose-weight-before-I-gain-weight kind of diet, it was more of a see-if-diet-can-help-prevent-nausea-during-pregnancy kind of diet. I did all sorts of research online, and there's all of these holistic health sites out there that swear if you increase healthy proteins and eat clean and take magnesium supplements and do all this other stuff in the months before-hand, that you'll have a magically happy pregnancy. The science behind all these claims in dubious at best, but honestly, I was willing to try anything to have a better pregnancy than my last one. I did magnesium sprays and ate natural grass-fed beef and ate as healthy as I could and exercised, and like I mentioned before, I was in a really, really healthy place before getting pregnant. The healthiest I've been in my life, so I had really high hopes. And then the first few weeks of my pregnancy were pretty good. It was week 5 and I was still eating salad! I thought, This is it! This is going to be my good pregnancy! I'm not going to be sick for this pregnancy!... But then, right around week 6, I crashed and I crashed hard. I crashed so hard that I called my mom up and begged her to fly to Houston and stay with us for a few weeks because I just couldn't handle life (and she did, and she totally took over and became my personal nanny/chef/house-maid/lady-in-waiting for two whole weeks, and it was awesome, but she left Monday, and I'm devastated). So anyway, all I can say about those special pre-pregnancy diet claims is that they may work for some, but obviously my body just hates being pregnant, and I don't think anything is going to change that.

5. Apply for Ph. D Programs - Ugh, still not ready to talk about this one. I'm not thinking about this until August anyway, so I'll tell you more about it then.

Right, now, so I suppose that last goal there is a bit of a big one, but I've finished the rest! And obviously applying for grad school won't take up all my time for the rest of the year (at least, I hope it doesn't, because that would drive me crazy!), so I need some new goals. Just a few, because, mind you, I'm still in the thick of awful, miserable, pregnancy sickness.

6. Read 50 Books for Pleasure - Okay, so this isn't a "new" goal so much as it's an adjustment of goal number 3. Honestly, I should've given myself more credit at the beginning of the year, because 24 really was setting the bar too low. But can I read 26 more books this year? Even while pregnant (historically, I read less when I'm pregnant)? I'm pretty optimistic I can do this.

7. Write a Book - I'm thinking about participating in NaNoWriMo again (we'll see how I feel when we get to November), but I actually have an idea for a book! Not a novel, so much, as more kind of a heavily fictionalized memoir. I don't think it will turn into much, but it is an idea that I'm excited about, and I think it will be good writing practice. So I want to get a majority of it drafted out and written this year, before I have three children (!) to take care of.

8. Throw Myself a Birthday Party - I feel a bit silly making this a goal, but I'm worried if I don't make it an official goal, that this idea will sort of fizzle and not come to pass. I haven't had a true, honest-to-goodness birthday party in years. As an introvert, I tend to prefer quieter celebrations, usually just a special date night with my husband. But I'm turning the big 3-0 in September, and I kind of want to go all out for it (and by all out, I mean, just host an actual party). So, it's becoming a goal.

And that's it! I'll be checking back in at the end of the year (and probably in between) for goal updates, so you have that to look forward to. Yay!