Being a food blogger by night, and a beauty blogger by day, I wind up reading a whole lot of posts on a whole lot of things every day. My favorite, and most frequently visited blogs straddle both worlds, allowing me to enjoy them both on a professional and personal level. A Beautiful Mess is one of my favorites in the "a little of everything" category. (Other favs include: Angry Chicken, Soule Mama, and Comme un Lait Fraise)
So this week, while I was visiting A Beautiful Mess, I noticed that Elsie was issuing a special blogging challenge. You know how I feel about challenges, and this one seemed particularly healhy, and fitting for the coming season. Hunkered down and working is my natural state during the Winter months. Though Winter is a little more breif here in Austin than in other places I've lived, sooner or later the weather will chill, the trees will run naked, and I'll lose any and all interest in being outdoors. In other words, I'll be embracing my inner hermit crab. Elsie's challenge to set four simple goals and blog about them through the end of the year sounds perfect. I happen to have quite a few things that I'm hoping to accomplish. Having a due date, and a supportive audience of blog readers certainly couldn't hurt.
So, without further explanation, here they are, my four simple goals for the remainder of 2012:
- Make time to exercise at least twice a week. I make time for a lot of things. Things like baking bread, pickling beets, or planting a garden are important because they keep me happy, but I really need to take some time to make myself healthy as well. After all, the two things are interconnected, right? If I can take two hours to babysit homemade pitas, I can take thirty minutes to do yoga. Priorities!
- Write more. I don't imagine that I'll be able to publish a whole book before 2013 gets here, but if I don't start writing I'll never get the job done. Like anything creative, good writing is a result of constant writing, so I need to make an agreement with myself to write write write. When inspiration strikes, my pen must hit paper every time. I'm hoping something brilliant will appear every 100th or so session.
- Film at least three videos for Mary Makes Dinner. Earlier this year I invested in a camera that takes glorious HD video. I did this with every intention of beginning my own cooking video series. After a few really dumpy test runs I became discouraged and put the project aside. I am determined to get this thing going, and my hopefully achievable goal is to release three videos in 2012, once a month starting in October.
- Find and implement a way to mass produce My Saucy Mustache Beer Markers. If this holiday season is anything like last year's, I'm going to be working my little fingers to the bone, stamping, cutting, and glueing tiny mustaches until all hours of the night. There must be a better way, and dagnabbit, I'm going to find it!
If you'd like to set your own simple goals, and participate in Elsie's challenge, then please visit her original post on A Beautiful Mess. You can also leave a link to your post here too, if you'd like. (Or a plain old comment.) I'd love to hear about your hopes and dreams for the rest of the year.