Image Description: an illustrated picture, the background of the picture is a peacock-blue, while the foreground is dominated by the image of an archery target-stand with three arrows lodged within a series of aiming-circles printed on the target stand.
Quarterly Goals:
~Write one Stim Toy Review post per month (try to post on a Monday)
I really struggled with this goal this quarter. I don’t think it’s because of a lack of source material, I’ve got plenty of stimmy stuff to write posts about, I think it was more about time-resources. I’d tell myself, “I’ve got plenty of Stim Toys to talk about, that post will be easy to do, I should delay doing the easy task and work on the harder tasks first.” and I suppose the “harder tasks” this quarter were the Stationery Quest posts.
In order for me to write my Stationery Quest posts, I have to go to the store, take photos, come back, write the post, describe the photos, publish. I know they don’t look like I put a lot of effort into them, however, because of my ADHD and my current mental health status, it takes a lot of mental energy for me to make those posts. So, it makes sense that my STR posts got put on the back-burner, however, I’m looking to change that this quarter.
~Write one Weekend Notes Review article (get better at linking to articles and self-promotion)
Goal Accomplished –
~The Flour Pot Cafe
~The Coffee Club, Bacchus Marsh
~The Immigration Museum: The Mahatma Gandhi Exhibition and “British Migrants: Instant Australians?” Exhibition
Write one Recipe Yum article per month (get better at linking to articles and self-promotion)
Goal Not Accomplished – Goal Level is at Meatloaf Standard
~Oat Biscuits
~Easy Banana Bread
~Write and publish a minimum of four blog-posts per month on Ambiguous Pieces
Goal Accomplished – On average, I’m publishing 6 Blog-posts per month, which is good but it’d be better if I could organise those posts more consistently. I’m always running behind on my posts so I tend to publish them as soon as I’ve finished them, which isn’t always cohesive nor does it resemble a predictable routine. So, I’m aiming for STR posts on Monday, Book Review posts on Tuesday and/or Thursday, and Miscellaneous on Saturday and/or Sunday.
Bonus: Spoonie Living, a Tumblr-blog that focuses on Chronic Illness and Disability, asked me to write a separate post on finding a Specialist Doctor for Adult ADHD. My post has a rather… Aggressively Australian focus to it, however, I felt it was very important to point out these differences. Not all countries have an unlimited supply of Adult ADHD Specialists. Here’s a link if you’re interested:
~Getting Care For Adult ADHD in Australia by B.R. Kyle
~Film, edit and publish one video (via my YouTube Channel) once a month
I wanted to make twelve videos this quarter, I only made two, that’s a pretty big difference there. I’m going to try and do some better planning, I think I should come up with a list of videos, and then film them in batch instead of one at a time, which doesn’t really seem to be working for me. Right now, my life still doesn’t have a predictable routine, so that makes it harder for me to work on my creative projects.
Quarterly Booklist:
Books Read: 20
Books Read from Quarterly Booklist: 0
To be honest, I’m doing pretty badly with the whole Quarterly Booklist thing, as I predicted in my last Quarterly Goals post, I read a whole bunch of books that weren’t even on my list. But I did read books and I did enjoy them. I’m considering giving up and removing the Quarterly Booklist function in my Quarterly Goals section of my Bullet Journal as it doesn’t appear to be helping.
Image Description: a silhouette picture of a woman, wearing Victorian-era clothing and wearing a top hat. Her hair is braided into a plait and she is also holding a folded up umbrella. The background is dived up into three segments: rose-pink, white in the middle, then rose-pink again.
July: Dystopian and Apocalyptic Fiction
~The Keeping Place by Isobelle Carmody
Available for Purchase: Amazon | Audible | Book Depository | Kobo Books
~Illuminae by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff
Available for Purchase: Amazon | Audible | Book Depository | Kobo Books
August: Contemporary Fiction
~My Sister Rosa by Justine Larbalestier
Available for Purchase: Amazon | Book Depository | Kobo Books
~A Thousand Perfect Notes by C.G. Drews
Available for Purchase: Amazon | Book Depository | Kobo Books
September: Humour
~Reckoning: A Memoir by Magda Szubanski
Available for Purchase: Amazon | Audible | Book Depository | Kobo Books
Image Description: an image with a black background and white text. In the centre of the image is the text, “RMFAO Genre Challenge”, at the edges of the circle there is more text, “2018” in pink text on either side of the image.
July: Dystopian and Apocalyptic Fiction
~On The Edge of Gone by Corinne Duyvis
Available for Purchase: Amazon | Audible | Book Depository | Kobo Books
~An Ember In The Ashes Sabaa Tahir
Available for Purchase: Amazon | Book Depository | Kobo Books
August: Contemporary Fiction
~The Rest of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness
Available for Purchase: Amazon | Audible | Book Depository | Kobo Books
~The Things I Didn’t Say by Kylie Fornasier
Available for Purchase: Amazon | Book Depository | Kobo Books
September: Humour
~Laughing At My Nightmare by Shane Burcaw
Available for Purchase: Amazon | Audible | Book Depository | Kobo Books
~My Booky Wook by Russel Brand
Available for Purchase: Amazon | Book Depository | Kobo Books
Life in General – Events and Updates:
~In April, My sister gave birth to her second child, everything went fine, and my sister and nephew were able to come home very soon (my sister has an immense dislike of Hospitals, which is understandable).
~I own a car now and it still feels weirds saying/typing that. My partner and I purchased a car for myself because he was concerned my lack of a licence was impeding my ability to get a job. I didn’t have a job when we bought it, so the whole process at the time gave me a lot of anxiety, there were a few problems that occurred when we first bought it, but it seems to have worked well so far.
~At the end of May, I got a job at a Call-Centre in Melbourne CBD, it’s informational orientated (people call up for information) and not commission based, so I’m not selling things over the phone (I could not sell things to anyone face to face, let alone over the phone). The job is complex and multi-layered, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed with so much information, however, it’s still early days just yet. I have to remind myself not to bite off more than I can chew and try to and pace myself.
Musical Obsession: My Latest Ear-Worms
With regards to radio, my partner listens to Triple J a lot and I’m not particularly fussy (although I tend to channel surf when I get bored). On the drive home from Hawthorn, we were listening to Triple J – Home and Hosed and I liked one of the songs I heard. I looked it up and found out that it was Ten Leaf Clover by Slowly Slowly. I don’t know a lot about the band or its discography, I just really like this song, my favourite lyric is “The best of intentions make the worse mistakes” (super relatable).
Another song is I’ve found trapped in my head on a semi-regular basis is Ubu by Methyl Ethel. Honestly, the video clip for Ubu is super-weird, but it’s just so darn catchy. As a side note, the original music clip contains flashing lights, so I’ve included a link to the audio version instead.
So, that’s it for me, this post is already long enough. If you want to talk about your writing and reading goals, feel free to leave a comment, or you can leave a link to your own post/video you’ve made.
Ambiguous Pieces 