Week 2 check-in

Yeah, I know. It’s only been 1 week since I started my New Year’s resolutions, but since we all usually forget them by February, I thought I’d post each week how I am doing with them. 

This past week has given me a lot of progress towards my goals.

Personal

*4-mile race in March.  I only ran once this week, but that’s better than the last 3 weeks, so that’s progress.

*52-week blog. I got 1 blog done last week and this is number 2 for this week, so I’d call success so far.

*Cook 20 new recipes. Last week’s meals were planned before I started this resolution, so we will start this week with a new recipe that I’ll share later.

*Read 1 book/month. I finished Eat, Pray, Love this week and completely loved it. I know I am one of the last people to read this, but I am usually so far behind I’m used to it.

House

*Redo loft and guestroom by June. We got a good start on this goal on New Year’s Day by making a trip to Ikea for a new desk for me. We pulled out the doors to the loft closet and put  my new desk in there, which frees up room in the loft to make it a spare bedroom. The current spare bedroom is a disaster right now with stuff from the loft closet plus our Goodwill donation pile. I’ll post pictures when they are both finished, but here is the desk that we bought for my closet office. Plain and simple, but it will be dressed up later.

*Clean closets by March/clean and organize garage by June/frame pictures. 0 progress. See goal above for where my house work has been focused.

Photography

*Learn Lightroom 3. I finished the Scott Kelby book this week, but I haven’t put much practice in with the software yet.

*Learn more about composition. Most of my camera shots this week were just simple-mom-catching-the-moment shots so I didn’t worry about composition too much.

*I’m combining my lens goals into 1 goal. I designed my lens buying plan for the next 2 years based on when I will need them. Its cold and crappy outside so I decided I needed a wider-angle lens for inside sooner than I needed a longer lens. So I ordered this lens and it should be here by tomorrow (depending on the weather). I will then buy the 85mm f/1.8 by summer when it can be used more outside. The longer zoom lens will come after Christmas because I don’t really need it anytime soon. After I’ve completed more of the focal lengths, I will then sell my 50 mm f/1.8 and purchase the 50mm f/1.4. Hopefully after I’ve purchased those lenses, I will then be ready to upgrade my camera body. We are looking at almost 2 years from now so I’ll wait until that time comes to decide what I’ll buy. I’m glad I have a plan in place so as long as the funds are there, I’ll be getting a new lens about every 6-ish months.

So, overall, I think I’ve made great progress towards my goals so far in 1 week. I know I can’t work on every goal every week, but getting a bit of almost all of my goals done this week was a nice way to start.