Happy Thursday! I’m amazed to be turning to the next page in my desk calendar already – February flew by inhumanly fast this year, but it was a great month. I want to take a breather and take a look at how I’m progressing on my #101in1001 goals. You saw what I accomplished in January, and now here’s the February update:
#1. Done Jan 2013.
#2. Done Jan 2013.
#3. Done Jan 2013.
#5. Start my own side business. I launched K.C. Saling Studios this month, offering limited professional photography services! I ran a small photography business when I was in grad school and I thought that relaunching it would be a great way to not only improve myself as a photographer but to help folks out in the local area {granted, the pros do better work than I do because I’m just starting, but I’ve been provide some special event photography for promotions and such}.
A snapshot of my professional site – I’m still improving it, but it’s up and running!
#6. Done Jan 2013.
#13. Redesign both blogs to better fit my personal style. It turns out my personal style only really has time to create content for one blog, so K. C. Saling.com was launched on 8 Feb 2013. A lot of my content was limited or took a back seat because of this, but it’s been a great relief to me to not be working so hard to churn out content. Blogging alone does not make you interesting – living life and then talking about it makes you interesting {or so I think!}.
My latest blog and website design focuses on a little bit of everything, but especially on telling stories.
#15. Done Jan 2013. I launched “Living YOUR Happy Ever After” last month and then reinvented it as “In the Lens” to help it fit in with the rest of my subjects. I’d love your feedback on the feature – do you like it? Are the profiles interesting, or could I be doing something better? Do you think I would use the space better covering something else? Your opinion matters {see my On Writing section if you’re curious why}.
#16. Establish an editorial calendar for blog features. This became a necessity after I condensed down to one blog. In case you’re curious, here’s my general format and the topics I like to write about: Monday ~ random topics, Monday Morning Gossip, Tuesday ~ being social, teaching, mentorship, Wednesday ~ recipe of the week, cooking savvy, health tips, Thursday ~ in the lens featurettes, Friday ~ Friday style – glamour, beauty, health, fashion, and design, Saturday ~ weekend thoughts and the reading list. Again, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this! Too regimented? Or does it work?
#19. Done Jan 2013.
#21. Done Jan 2013.
#34. Raise money for at least one charitable cause. I completed the Run Ranger Run challenge today with a grand total of ## miles completed, and our team managed to raise a bunch of money for disabled veterans this month! I’m so proud to have been a part of this venture! I’m going to continue my fundraising into next month as I continue to train for the Run for Autism race taking place through downtown Manhattan on St. Patrick’s Day ~ please check out my page here if you can help!
I’m raising money for the Organization for Autism Research by running the NYC Half!
#60. Complete a 30 miles in 30 days challenge. Killed it thanks to Run Ranger Run! Now that I managed to run ## miles in a month {and a short month no less!}, my continuation of this goal is to run 100 miles in a month!
#65. Establish a professional portfolio. You can find my professional photography portfolio on my photography site. I’m adding to it every day, and soon I hope to add other design elements. Stay tuned!
#74. Wipe and sell/donate old Macbook. This one was actually easier than I thought it would be. I just had to wipe it because one of my husband’s work friends wanted to buy it off of us! Since we cut him a deal, that got us a little more going out money, but since I’ve got my iMac running on all cylinders still, that’s all we need.
#84. Done Jan 2013.
So far, that’s a total of 15 goals accomplished and $1500 set aside into the savings account! It’s amazed me that I’m able to save as much money as I am – I think all the goals that have me working to simplify my life have me realizing that I really don’t need to be doing all the shopping I was doing before, the effort to eat healthy has me really watching how much food I buy at the grocery store {and has us only going out to eat for special occasions!}, and tightening down on the amount of money we have available to spend has made us both spend smarter.
Saving has actually been a joint effort with the hubby, who is working to help us save as well, and we saved enough these first couple of months in order to put another one of our goals into action. We’ve been dying to go on an Alaska cruise, and we were able to book passage on the Disney Wonder this summer! And that beats the heck out of buying shoes and purses, if you ask me