Note: This should have posted yesterday but did not.
It is March Third and time for the first review of my Groundhog Day Resolutions. First I’ll review the status of each and then make some observations.
My first resolution was to continue with the Bradbury Challenge reading portion. From Groundhog Day, inclusive, to today, exclusive, I had read one essay, one poem, and one short story every day but one. On February Ninth I read the story and the essay but missed the story. Give most of the poems in my collection are short this was laziness and poor planning.
I have found the most helpful thing in staying on track is picking a specific volume of stories, essays, or poems and reading from the front to the back in order. With two or three items left in a volume I pick and lay out its successor. This avoids a problem I had the last time I tried this with just picking something each day. I have deviated three times. Twice I read the poem I came to in the November/December 2017 Analog while it was my story source. Yesterday I read an essay outside In Defense of Sanity, the volume of Chesteron essays I am working through.
I am on pace to make my reading target 95% of the days from Groundhog Day to December Twelfth.
On my second resolution, to write a story a week, which is also part of the Bradbury Challenge I have already failed for the year, barring a sale of a short story. Again my target was 95% but that would require missing only two weeks and I have already missed three and might miss this week as well. This week I did make progress on the short story I am writing, however. I did say if I wrote and sold a short during the resolution period I would count it as nine stories for the eight I didn’t have to write to get one good story in fifty-two.
Finally, on my third resolution was progress was easy. That is to run a 5k by December Twelfth. I have selected one, The Run Under the Lights at Lake Lanier. From that I can track back training days to start the Couch to 5K program. This past month I also started tracking with my Fitbit again and have made 10,000 steps a day more often than not. This includes an hour or so walk at lunch each day. I’m going to ramp that up slowly with the goal of being to 12,000 when I start training.
I would say I’m two for three. Which brings me to two thoughts.
First, I asked last month if these three were too much or too little. I would say both. There are other things I am want to accomplish such as working on my model railroad, learning more of the flute repretrior, and reading the St. John’s College seminar reading list. I have caught myself using “those weren’t in the resolutions” as an excuse to not work on them if I hadn’t made progress on the actual resolutions. Perhaps I should have had four or five. Yet I am completely failing on my second resolution.
That leads to my second thought. On resolutions one and two I think the fixed percentage target was a mistake. After all, why should I worry about the second as I have failed. A better method would be to use grading by percentage. If I do it 90% or more I have an A, 80% to 90% a B, and so on. Right now I am failing the second but could still pull out an A if I do not miss another week. A B, which would be at least 35 stories, is still in reach.
The third resolution will remain pass/fail.
I did intend to post the actual readings with this update but realize it will be long and unwieldy. I’m going to add a page for Bradbury Readings. After the initial 2/2-3/3 load I will update it on the n/n days. I also intended to post on Saturdays when I did not finish a story but have not been. I don’t think it would be useful so I do not intend to start. When I do finish a story between now and 12/12 I will post a title and word count.
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