PERSONAL

• FITNESS – I have begun a physical fitness regime with walking and my average step count at the beginning of the year was around 4000 a day.  Now I’m walking 4 days a week, 10K steps minimum. I walked 29 of 31 days in Oct – my longest streak. I have lowered that to 4 days a week and added strength training and Somatic Yoga.
  My weight has dropped 10 lbs. since October. At this same consistent rate, I would be at 158ish by Dec 2025. I also started semaglutide shots in January 2025. So, I do expect my weight to drop faster but there are no guarantees.  I’m shooting for 150ish. I took KP.org Healthy Eating 101 for Food Nutrition and am starting 102 in January 2025 to keep my diet as a focus.
• GUITAR/LANGUAGE Training – I maintained a 642-day streak in Spanish using DuoLingo and lost the streak in DEC 2024. Boo. Now I’m on day 22 in Jan of 2025. I purchased Tony Polecastro’s TAC community subscription training for Guitar. And have a course by Great Courses on how to learn the guitar.  Attacking that goal from different angles. I’ve also requested my brother and sister to join. But so far, no takers. I’m going to try for 3 days a week instead of sporadically.
• READING – I have read 39 books this year per GoodReads. I finally broke down and read Brandon Sanderson’s Fantasy trilogy Mistborn. I wish I had read them earlier. I burned through the first 2 novels by Rebecca Yarros from The Empyrean Series. The 3rd comes out in Jan 2025. Reread the all-time favorite of Melissa Goods Tropical Storm Series and David Webers Honor Harrington Series. Overall 14354 pages read. Also, for my audible novel reading, I found Mercedes Lackey’s Arrows Trilogy and had to listen to it. I’ve listened to great romances and a few unexpected enthralling novels like Jojo Moyes: The Giver of Stars.  I also purchased many self-care novels per Scott’s advice on self-improvement. I’m in the middle of The Joy Choice by Michelle Segar PhD, learning how to Achieve Lasting Changes in Eating and Exercise. They are huge books.  It will take me a while because I want to understand what they are talking about, but I’ve set a goal in 2025 to get through at least five of them. The overall novel reading for 2024 was fiction consisting of lesbian romance and rereading the favorites.
• SLEEP – my Apple sleep was not tracked as I took off my watch to charge at night. Not sure how to fix this as it is a habit now. I have insomnia in the evening hours, and I wind up doom-scrolling.  I’ll be reviewing a sleep module with Scott Young’s Foundation course this year.  Hopefully, I’ll be able to track down a great method to get deeper sleep. I’m also on some sleep-help progesterone for my HRT for Menopause. They do help me sleep once I’m out. 
• MONEY (aka-Fico Score) – my Fico has gone from 669 (Fair) to 652 (Fair) over the year.
  Note: All three credit scores rose but my Fico went down.  Not sure how that works. I’m currently showing:
  Experian 678 (2024 score 705)
  Equifax: 693 (2024 score 698)
  Transunion: 715 (2024 score 722)
  The idea behind tracking my Fico score is to improve it over time.  My goal in 2024 was to pass 740 (into Very Good).  However, I had some debts that arose and kicked my butt (i.e. Solar True-up/PGE billing, and basic interest). I did not qualify for the HELOC I needed, so now I’m looking at a VA refi.  My interest is 2.25 and it will quickly move to 5.6 or something else ungodly.  But something has to change. My debt-to-income ratio for DEC is at 80+%. Last year I ended the year with 45%.  Huge change.
• COURSE/LEARNING – I purchased the Scott H Youngs Foundation Course for $1299 this year and joined Dani Abernathy’s Book Coaching Rooted Mentorship for $2500. Both are about what I was spending on smaller courses and leaving me with no additional money to spend. I didn’t get any certificates.  However, I’ve completed four modules of Scott’s course for self-improvement, and I’ve been coached by Dani since Feb 2024 on my upcoming novel.

What went well? My personal growth was on the fairly good side of what went well scale. I read a lot, I was active, I am learning from a book coach, and I’ve lost some weight. Weight watching – Started 2024 208lbs, currently weighing 198 lbs (Oct thru Jan). I stopped intermittent fasting and started a physical fitness program that will maintain my weight whatever the level. Now I’m reviewing and adjusting my diet and food intake with a nutritionist. My Meditation went up to 261 total sessions in 2024, where it was 202 from last 2023). About 1047 minutes (up to 1443 from 397 last year) (average length 6 minutes). This is a great trend. I improved my cardio. I walk 4 days a week. I’ve also begun bowling again. I track food and weight and daily workouts. 

What didn’t go so well? I have more debt which I’m having to reactively focus on in 2025. And considering the money I’m putting out for guitar I only spent about a month playing. My Mirror Time for LuluLemon Mirror (Strength, Dance, Cardio, Stretch, Bar, Boxing, Yoga, and Pilates) was way down. Maybe 5 sessions all year.

What am I working toward? Physical health weight loss, money improvement, guitar lessons, and learning more about food and sleep. My sister bought me a music boxing tool. Gonna set that up to try. I’m still tracking my habits and increasing my strength training program. I need to train my dogs in 2025. I want to improve my deep sleep pattern.

WRITING

What went well? I posted 49 blogs and 26 chapters of a new Spirito the Canid Warrior novel (a spin-off of Drayton Saga).  An estimate of my writing speed is 475 words per 30 minutes, on average.  So, a 100K word count novel still takes 125 hours (25 days if I write 5 hours straight each day).  This is an improvement from last year’s 400

1. I worked on five novels: 
   • Trena, The Memory Reader (previously known as Cavel’s Colt), SF Fantasy, (Finished, in edits) 38 chapters,  WC 96980.
   • Spirito, the Canid Warrior, SF Fantasy (unfinished 26 of 45 chapters complete) WC 52358.
   • Third Temptation is in edits. I sent it to a beta and was given revisions.
   • Soldiers in Arms, Lesbian Historical Romance (Unfinished, 16 of 25 chapters)
   • NaNoWriMo Challenge (Total wc 50k) Winner but mostly did rebel with Trena and Spirito novel revisions.

What didn’t go so well?

• I didn’t gain any followers by posting a free novel. I’m just not sure how to gain followers. I will need to publish more novels.

• Sparrows Legacy, SF Fantasy was posted on Kindle Vella and they are closing that venue. I have to recapture it and save it in Scrivener. 

What am I working toward?  Learning how to edit better and writing a good series that readers will obsess about. I bought Dragon Naturally Speaking for $600+ So now I need to get my dictation process going. I would like to create a few Canva video(s), possibly 5.