This is the third of four check-ins that I’ll have for the 10 goals that I made for 2013. Be sure to check out my original post for my 2013 goals, my first 2013 goals update and my second 2013 goals update for more context.
I say this all of the time, but time really does fly. This quarter’s goals update really snuck up on me. I had to take a moment to realize that it was indeed time for my last update before the end of the year.
Without further ado, let’s see how reaching my 2013 goals are doing on the last check before the finish line:
1. Run in four races.
With moving and getting settled and going to Europe, my hopeful Fall race plans have fallen by the wayside. Four races just aren’t going to happen this year. However, all was not lost, as I did participate in the Philadelphia Color Run in July. It was way fun! Almost four races worth of fun!
2. Cross off five flux list items
In my last 2013 goals update, I was hopeful that I would be able to cross two race-related flux list items off of my list. I’m on track to cross off the “Read at least 1 book every month for 12 months” item, but other than that I’m not sure what else I will accomplish.
3. Read thirteen books
SUCCESS! I reached book number 13 at the beginning of June, which means I’ve officially met this goal for the year.
Here’s a list of all of the books that I’ve read:
- Salt: A World History
by Mark Kurlansky
- Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly
by Anthony Bordain
- Water for Elephants
by Sara Gruen
- The Meaning of Wife: A Provocative Look at Women and Marriage in the Twenty-first Century
by Anne Kingston
- The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible
by A.J. Jacobs
- Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead by Sheryl Sandberg
- A River So Long
by Vallie Lynn Watson
- Let’s Pretend This Never Happened: (A Mostly True Memoir)
by Jenny Lawson aka The Blogess
- The Mobile Book (Smashing Special eBooks)
- Somewhere Inside: One Sister’s Captivity in North Korea and the Other’s Fight to Bring Her Home
by Lisa & Laura Ling
- The Great Gatsby
by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Responsive Web Design
by Ethan Marcotte
- HTML5 for Web Designers by Jeremy Keith
- CCS3 for Web Designers by Dan Cederholm
- How to Be a Woman
by Caitlin Moran
- The Hunger Games
by Suzanne Collins
- Catching Fire
by Suzanne Collins
- Mockingjay
by Suzanne Collins
- Coming Clean: A Memoir
by Kimberly Rae Miller
- Into Thin Air
by Jon Krakauer
4. Understand my camera
During my trip to Europe, I took thousands of pictures! Which means that I used my camera quite a bit. I have really gotten a handle on the pre-set settings and how to adjust those. Now, the final frontier will be mastering the manual settings.
5. Redesign Living in Flux
Success! While an artist’s work is never done, I have successfully gone through refresh #1 and #2 of Living In Flux. This site is always a work in progress, so even though I know there will be updates in the future, let’s consider this one achieved!
6. Start a side business
This goal has still been on a serious hiatus! I have a feeling that I’m going to eventually run out of DIY projects to do around the house and when that happens, I’ll be itching to start something new. Maybe that’s when this goal will happen.
7. Become a better writer
As with some of my other yearly goals, I think this is not the best S.M.A.R.T goal. There’s really nothing in it that helps me objectively know that I’m actually achieving it. That said, I could use metrics like site statistics to help judge if my writing is improving. However, increase or decrease in site statistics isn’t just indicative of writing ability – it’s much more complex than that!
8. Pay 20% of my student loans
It’s taken a couple of months since moving, but I’m finally going to be able to start contributing more to my student loans. I’d been paying well over the monthly minimum, but I’m going to start to be able to contribute even more than that! I don’t think I’ll quite hit 20% paid off this year, but think that I won’t have any complaints by the time all is said and done.
9. Build a $10k emergency fund
My progress on my emergency fund has been dismal, to say the least. In fact, I’ve actually gone backwards since the beginning of the year. Reaching this goal is out of the question for 2013. Maybe I’ll hit the $10K mark next year.
10. Visit four new states
There’s a possibility that I’ll end up in one new state this year, but my plans aren’t final for that. As a consolation prize for not meeting this goal, I did go to a new country! We visited Spain on our recent Eurotrip. Visiting a new country has to count as like 4 new states, right?
