So I drank water. And I Looked at camcorders. What I didn't do? Meet writing goals at TB, write anything for CC, outline or write the first chapter for the novel contest. I don't even know what I'm writing about for it yet, and the deadline is next Wednesday. Yikes.
This week, then. "Easy" goals first:
- 2 hours writing for TB, even if it's only one article, every day.
- Drink water
- go to my appointments
Medium goals:
- 1 article for CC
- get travel site set up, write text for homepage.
- Do research for other site/ blog ideas- keywords, competition, perks, etc.
Stretchy/ reachy goals:
- Write chapter for New Voices competition
- Write $500 worth of articles for TB
- Spend 1/2 hour a day on learning spanish
- Write "pages" information plus 5 articles for travel site
I think that looks good. I *can* do all my easy goals, though one will take more work. I should be able to do at least 2 of my medium goals, and I'm shooting for at least 1/2 of one of my stretchy/ reachy goals. It's like a goal within a goal. Oh well, one thing at a time, right?
I think I kind of got confused by two pieces: "this week”’s goals and "write $500 worth". I am not sure how much each article pays, but $500 in a week? Yikes indeed. Those are the goals I would call cop-outs. They are achievable, sure, but not under normal circumstances. And especially not under current circumstances, so they sit there looking pretty to allow us to not achieve something. If you can write $500 worth of articles, then I stand corrected and apologies are due...
ReplyDeleteWhat I am trying to say is, even your stretchy goals are, well, stretchy, maintain them actually stretchy'able and not impossible/very very unlikely. Your other three goals seem reasonable (for an outsider looking in). Also, do you have any rewards (other than being paid so you can afford to pay for a roof, food, and other bare necessities)? Without getting complicated, you could implement a reward/punishment system where if you achieve XYZ goal, you can go ahead and cheat on an extra bag of chips, but if you don't achieve said goal(s), then you can't cheat for 2 weeks.
As far as learning Spanish... It is my native language, and the best resource I had for learning English were a composition of songs and song lyrics you can sing along to (no better way to pick accents and pronunciations) and movies with or without subtitles. If it's a movie you have seen before (in English), more power to you. And of course, video games. (I learned more English from Zelda than I did in 3 weeks of private school English class, no joke). You mentioned you are a gamer, and albeit there aren’t that many online games fully in Spanish, there are quite a selection of Super Nintendo, N64 and even PS1 games that have been translated to Spanish that you can take advantage of. And play from your computer. *wink wink*
It's *possible* to write the $500 worth- they're available, and it breaks down to about $70 a day. If I can get a writing flow going, it's 6-8 hours work each day. It's actually my goal because it's what I *need* to make. It's more of a wildly unlikely one, I admit, but if I shoot for 500 and manage half, I'm that much closer to meeting my real goal of paying for my own food and rent without having to borrow money.
ReplyDeleteI don't have formal rewards, and I'm very bad at punishing myself. They're all pretty solidly locked to income, also- if I work I can afford to spend $5 on gas to go downtown and hang out with friends at a bar. If I don't work, I can't.
I hadn't thought of video games. I like the method over at all japanese all the time, so movies, music, and TV are already on my list, but I don't know that I'd have ever thought of video games. I'm all about free resources, so I'm using the Foreign Service Institute language resources, too- books, tapes, workbooks (where available)- because they're all public domain, and free. Also, I live in a neighborhood/ town with a good sized Spanish speaking immigrant population, so I'm sure at some point I can trade talking in English for talking in Spanish, and there are opportunities to speak Spanish in everyday life. Well, when I leave the house there are...
Play console games on my computer? *I'd* never do anything like that...