my goals for the year are pretty much shot:

lose 15-20 pounds? menopause kissed that one good-bye.

15k steps/day. i will say i managed that consistently for a few months, but it turns out 15k/day is a bit high for me for a lot of reasons, including the fact that a lot of what i need to get done is easier if i'm not also trying to get extra steps in. sometimes you have to choose between the rest of your life and working out. when you already work out quite a bit, it's easy to choose the rest of your life. besides, i do consistently manage 12-13k steps a day. i'm quite pleased with that.

read 45. just might make this one. 41 started for 2015 so far, 7 of those i couldn't finish, so that puts me at 34. 11 left. that's one a week. fairly doable. i hope.

the writing pretty much tanked this year. only one year is lower so far (not surprisingly, last year). there are a lot of reasons for this, including actually attempting 5 different projects this year (yea, i can do 2, maybe 3, at once; 5 was a bit excessive), computer problems both at the beginning and towards the end of the year, and several necessary time sucks of various sorts. i finally settled in on 2 in process and 1 revision novel, but too late in the year to salvage much or to reach any of the "get to this draft" goals i had at the start of the year. i'm not a fast writer. what i am is a thorough writer. i like clean manuscripts before i out them out, a lot of which has to do with liking to READ clean books with minimal errors. i admit it, as a reader, i'm not very forgiving sometimes. i want to be sucked in. i want the story to play out visually in my head. i want to see as much of the writer's vision as possible. and that's also the experience i want to give to my readers.

as for alden updates, yea, that's not happened as i wanted. same layout, still has a lot of links that need correcting, and so on. i think have a solution to the problem of timing on those updates and fixes, but since i've just figured it out, i haven't had much of a chance to see if it'll work. with the year almost over, well, at least i'll know if i have a viable solution for next year.

but all that doesn't mean i'm going to wander goal-less for the rest of the year. i have 11 weeks (isn't that kind of frightening?) to....

lose 12 pounds and finally get under 200,

write 40,000 words (and put this year firmly in the middle of the pack in terms of total annual word counts, lower middle, but not at the bottom),

get the 0 draft of one of my in progress books done,

and read the remaining 11 books to reach my 45.

four goals. for very reachable goals. four goals that will be easy to focus on as they fit in with what i'm currently finding the time to do. mostly. that 12 pounds has me nervous. my body appears to be settling out from this past year's menopausal bump that made me plateau for the whole damn year, but it's doing so at one of the more difficult times for me. storm headaches are increasing with the wet weather, and sad is more likely to creep up on me as the sun disappears. plus i've really been having a hard time keeping a consistent handle on my food. on the plus side, when i am on point with my food, i do lose, so i just have to be consistent. this is the one goal that i'll actually have to work at.

one other project on my to do list this year: a new layout for whysper. i kind of hate to see this one go, especially since this has been the worst year for my journal, which means this layout got the least amount of exposure. also, i haven't been playing with the paint shop pro much this year. but it's a tradition to get a new layout up every year, so it's something i need to start thinking about.

hopefully this limited focus for the end of the year means i'll actually get to check something off as done. you know, around all the other stuff i have to keep an eye on.

i had such high hopes for 2015. now it can't be done and over fast enough. between now and january 1st, the goals will be the focus. i just can't deal with thinking about the rest of it at the moment.