May Goal Updates

The last two months flew by, and I really did try to sit down to write this post for both months. Sadly, time ran out. How are you all doing your New Year’s Resolutions? Are you still working on them? Have you already accomplished them? Do you still remember what they are?

Here we are in May, and so far it has been beautiful in Seattle. Even though I have not written about my 2015 goals for the last few months, I have been working on them, and many exciting new developments have taken place. Additional, I have made some changes in my goals, and I am finding that some of the goals are becoming part of an even larger plan. I don’t want to go into too much detail about the “larger plan” here, because I hope to write a dedicated post on the subject in the near future. However, the abridged version is, which I’ve already mentioned in previous posts, that Jeff and I plan to some land out of the city and become as self-sustaining as possible. As the year has unfolded, we have been focusing seriously on this goal and taking steps to change our lifestyle accordingly.

Action Steps for May

1) Become more self-sustaining/make things myself instead of buying them
We’ve done some exciting stuff recently. We started making our own mayo and stopped buying it from the store. It’s been an experience, but I am happy to have one more of my items in my refrigerator that is homemade. However, the most exciting thing we started doing is making our own cheese! I am working on a post about this subject, so I won’t go into details here. For May, we will continue to work on making cheese. Also, we have decided to take the plunge and get some egg laying chickens. May will be research and development. We’ll need to build the coop and a stronger fence for their run. Plus, I want to be as well versed in the chicken keeping business as possible before we bring our birds home.

2) Run 480 miles in 2015
I’m running again! April I managed to run a total of 18 miles! Okay, I know, not so impressive. But it’s a start. And, that is the most miles I’ve run in a month so far this year. My leg is doing well, and I’m still focusing on strength training. I’ve only run 60 miles so far this year, and at this rate I won’t make this goal. However, there’s still plenty of time. I’ll just have to run as many miles as I can and come as close to this goal as I can.

3) Run a 10K
Not much to report here. I have set a goal of running my first 10K in November. Hopefully this will give me plenty of time to train. I am slowly building up my distance, but since I just started running, this goal will take some time. I ran my first 5K of 2015 in April, and I will run another one this Sunday.

4) Make this blog better
Wow! Jeff did some major research on photography. We built a light box for our food photos. Don’t know if you had a chance to check out the last post, but I think the photos look so much better. I still feel I have a long way to go, but I’m feeling good. I’ve been writing like crazy. Although most of it doesn’t go up on the blog, I do feel it has been helping. This summer I plan to start looking into purchasing a better camera and this month I am taking a photography workshop.

5) Take good care of myself
I’ve been feeling great. Eating well and exercising. My migraine problem finally seems to be resolved. Overall, I feel that I just need to keep focusing on eating well, exercising and only drinking alcohol once in a while.

6) Start my own freelance grant writing business
I’m changing this goal slightly, expanding it actually, to starting a writing career. I would eventually like to earn a living by writing. I could do this with my grant writing, but I am working on other things as well. I still need to get around to fixing up my resume, and should do that this month. Additionally, I have been doing research for a book I am working on. This month my action step is to finish reading Food Justice, as part of that research.


There you have it, my “where my 2015 goals stand” as of May and my action steps for the month. Have your goals for 2015 changed at all? Is it time to consider making new ones or maybe recommitting to the ones you set for yourself in January?

A sneak preview!