Reflection: January 2011
Saturday 29th January, 2011 - 12:44pm with 0 comments
This coincides with the Monthly Goals: January 2011 post. I’ve decided that in the last few days of the month, I will have a look and see how my goals are going and how the month went.
So the month overall was fantastic, probably because I’m only looking at the 22nd January when I met Ben Jorgensen… but hey, that pretty much made my month. ♥
My goals probably went better than I expected, considering Rachel said that I was being way too ambitious. The goal I worried about the most was 9) Reach 15,000 words in my novel. I didn’t think I could do it, and I imagined I’d struggled. Well, now I’m just past 16,000 and it felt good to complete that goal. In fact, it was the one I finished first.
I actually thought I’d struggle a bit with the books, because I was about two weeks into the month and I’d only read one. These are the books I read:
- Sun At Midnight — Rosie Thomas
- The Pilot’s Wife — Anita Shreve
- Deenie — Judy Blume
- Four Letters of Love — Niall Williams
- A Clockwork Orange — Anthony Burgess
They were all worthy reads. Four Letters of Love really, really dragged on, though, and referred too much to God. Deenie was your typical teenage read, a great book but I wished it had gone a little deeper. A good ending, as Blume always does.
I loved Sun At Midnight; probably the best book out of the five. Really moving, unique and inspired me to write more for my own novel. I can’t imagine the research that went into that book, I could imagine the whole book playing in my mind. A Clockwork Orange was rather dark; I could really empathise with the protagonist. The language was hard to tackle but I’m really, really glad I attempted reading the book. :D
All my poems are at Aquapheric.net; I wrote exactly 20. Those who regularly read my poems will notice similar themes across a few, but some stood out to me as being different. I love it when I have different poems; I feel like this challenge made me want to write something different:
- Oh, the times and places you’ll go — this one refers to the Doctor in Doctor Who
- TCP/IP — a humourous one about my internet dying
- The Epiphany of The Greater Good — a rather terrible attempt at Shakespeare!
- a300 radeons — another funny one about my laptop crashing
All the quoted ones on the poetry page are based on events relating to the 22nd January. :) Found again, my last poem in this challenge, is probably my favourite. I put a little more thought into it. It’s about Armor For Sleep and how much their music inspired people.
So yes, the interruptions this month and things that stopped me from really achieving the ten goals was being bothered at night by people, things happening at home, my wireless playing up, and my laptop playing up. Nothing too serious but keeping these in mind I’ve got 5 offline-related goals and 5 online-related goals lined up for February. ;)
Since I’ve given myself until the 5th February to complete any remaining goals, I will be able to finish 6) Sleep before 12:00am on 25 days which now stands at 20/25. I have decided that I will have until the 5th of the next month to finish the goals if I don’t finish them within the month. (The 5th is James’s and my months/anniversary.) If not, they will be added as an extra goal for the next month, and I must start the whole goal over.
Admittedly I did cheat and some times I didn’t fall asleep before 11 or 12 but I was either in bed at that time, or getting ready for bed (which doesn’t take me long). I’ll have to work on that. Cheating not allowed. :P
That’s a big enough recap!
Posted on: Saturday, January 29th, 2011 at 12:44 pm
Categories: Plans
Tags: 2011 · Armor For Sleep · Ben Jorgensen · books · January · Monthly Goals · poetry · reflection
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