Quarter 3 Goals

And trying to hit reset on my day-to-day life

Back at the end of 2023, after I had been laid off, I was in a round of interviews for my current employer and one of the interviewers asked me a question. I don’t remember the exact question, but it was something along the lines of how do you get over a bad sales interaction or day?

While I don’t remember the question exactly, I do remember my answer. “Every moment is an opportunity to start over if you need to do so.” A new conversation, a new day, a new week.

Today is a new week, a new quarter, and tomorrow is a new month, and we’re halfway through the year, so it feels very on the nose to set some goals up for the new quarter.

​Most of my goals are focused on preparing for my book to come out in November, and while I like to think my pen name is the cooler version of me, my pen name and my books don’t make up all of me. There are other things, mainly looking at clouds, but I have a job, a life outside of the internet that I want to take care of, too. And I need to remember that. I feel like this year has just been about me existing passively, and I don’t want to live life like that but I’m so freaking exhausted.

So some of my goals are about reinvigorating myself, in a few different ways, getting my health in check. But also goals are about books, duh.

Last week, I spent the week at my parents' house, jokingly calling it my annual "vacation." I still worked my day job all week, so if that doesn't tell you the state of things in my life, I don't know what does. But while I was there, I sat down to really go back through the HB90 method. For those who aren't familiar, HB90 is a 90 day goal-setting system really tailored for authors. Anyone can use it, but the creator is an indie author, so plenty of references to writing and publishing.

With HB90, you break your goals into three big goals, and then break those down into projects and projects are broken down into tasks. For instance, if my first goal is to "prepare Project Whisper for release in Q4", then some projects might be "read through the current draft" or "write draft 3" or even "send book to beta readers" (some of y'all will probably be reading it before it comes out).

I can break those project down into specific tasks, like "send book to this specific person."

So I'll take some time this week to refresh myself with goals and rest before I start working on draft 3. I'm hoping for the most part this will be a quick draft, just some edits, I'm hoping it's not a total rewrite. But I'm here to share goals for the third quarter and to basically make myself accountable (if you know me in real life, please feel free to call me out on my nonsense when I'm floundering in a month).

Goal One: Prepare Project Whisper for publication in Q4

Projects for Goal One:

• read through current draft

• outline some changes

• write/edit draft 3

• read through draft 3

• send to readers

Goal Two: Get back to marketing and posting on social media

Projects for Goal Two:

• Grow Instagram (hoping to hit 800 followers this quarter)

• Grow Tiktok (since it's not going away, why not. Hoping to hit 200 followers this quarter)

• Grow this newsletter (social media is all fine and dandy, but having your own list of people who care is important)

• start marketing plans for Project Whisper

• update my website cause it's getting digitally dusty from lack of attention

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Goal Three: Reinvigorate my life (or in the words of Ariana Grande, "might fuck around and elevate my expectations")

Projects for Goal Three:

• Get back to moving my body

• read at least 30 books on my TBR cart (I have an actual bar cart stuffed with books to read)

• clean out my clutter

• get caught up on doctors' appointments

I think goal three is full of projects for the rest of the year, not just this quarter, as I need to get out of my funk. Summer is when I'm supposed to be thriving, not in this mess. So I'm taking it step by step to get out of this loop I've created and break through.

Or die trying?

I hope not, but I know I need to desperately change my life and be better. Take better care of myself.

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