I love goal setting. I'll do goal work any time of the year, because goals and the routines that come with them are vital to my productivity. Without goals, I'd spend all of my free time dorking around on the Internet and playing Guild Wars 2 for a week at a time. Not that I've ever done that... *cough*

The last couple of years I've been late in setting my New Year's goals. Last year it was February, this year it was the middle of January. Maybe next year, if the trend continues I'll actually make it to January first or a couple of days before. In this post, I'm going to break down my 2017 goals, talk about my progress, including a check-in I had with myself in July, and then go into my 2018 goals. This post is going to be long, and it's more for me than for you (it's pretty much all about me), but for those who want to stalk me er, get to know me better, taking a look at my goals is a great way to see what drives me.

I am blessed to be at a time in my life where I don't have to work full-time and I don't yet have children to care for. This won't always be the case, and I am determined to take advantage of this stage of my life to educate myself and to develop time-management skills and habits that will serve me in the future.

Goals of 2017

Family/Romantic

My family goal wasn't exactly lofty--just to keep spending Sunday afternoons/evenings with my husband as date days. We started the year off strong, but by July had fallen out of the habit. When I revisited my goals in July, I made a point of making it a priority again. We had to cancel a few times when other social or work things came up later, but that was relatively rare. We spent most of our time watching anime, eating popcorn and banana ice cream, and talking to each other. We watched a lot of anime.

I also suckered my husband into making goals with me in 2017, which proved to be a fun date activity, but there were definitely some areas where he just made goals to keep me happy. So maybe don't push your spouses to make goals with you unless the goal is relevant to them and they enjoy doing it, like financial milestones, or when you plan to have kids.

For our fourth anniversary we went on a hike in a park that I had never visited before---which I think is just a couple of miles away from my parents' house. Gofigure.