Last week absolutely flew by! It was a productive and balanced week — filled with work time, crafts, fun, friends, and lots of yummy food — but looking over my goals, I was feeling a little discouraged. How could I feel so productive all week, but then have so many uncrossed-off goals at the week’s end?

Then I found this amongst my school papers:

It’s my “mind-dump” to-do list from the past couple of days. Whenever I have a lot of little things running through my mind, I like to get out a piece of paper and write everything down, which usually helps clear my head so I can focus better on my tasks for the day. This list is filled with tasks big and small — grading to finish up, a specific email to send, housekeeping chores, a fellowship application to finish up — and it was quite long! I was really happy to find this and see all the items crossed off, because it reminded me that I actually did a great job working towards my goals this week. Some weeks just have more unexpected tasks crop up than others do, and sometimes surprises take precedent over the goals you set at the beginning of a week or month. And that’s okay.

This week, I finalized some paperwork about my thesis defense, submitted short stories to three journals, went out on a date night with Mike, got together with friends for a lovely catch-up visit, talked to one of my young writing mentees over Skype, prepped for a workshop I’m teaching in a few weeks to fellow graduate instructors at Purdue, sold a couple of chairs via Craigslist, made pumpkin pie and a batch of chocolate-covered pretzels, started a Valentine’s Week series on this blog … all sorts of good things that were important and fun and necessary, but hadn’t showed up on my goals list for the week.

All this was also a good reminder that I tend to over-reach at times with goal-setting, biting off more than I can chew. In the past couple weeks, I’ve been setting ambitious goals to work on my YA novel manuscript AND revise large chunks of my thesis. It just isn’t happening. It’s not possible for me to do both, at least not right now when I’m working on broad, sweeping revisions to my thesis that require a lot of rewriting and additions of brand-new material.

So I’m stepping back a little and reassessing my writing goals. For the next three weeks, I’m going to focus all my attentions on my thesis novel and see how far along I get. I think I’ll feel better about my writing goals if I’m celebrating the work I DO get done, not feeling guilty about the writing I don’t have time to do {for me lately, the YA novel manuscript.} And from a practical standpoint, it is easier for me to immerse myself in one large project at a time. Trying to work on two novels at once left me feeling drained and a little lost between the different worlds, storylines and characters I was creating.

So, that’s my big changes for goals this upcoming week! Have you ever needed to step back and reassess your goals? Is anyone else like me, sometimes biting off too much at once?

Here’s how I did on my goals from last week:

• write 10 more pages of my YA novel
• revise next 4 chapters of my thesis novel {worked on some major revision, but it’s a little slower going than I thought it would be}
• blog about Week 5 Act of Kindness Challenge & complete it myself this week
• finish reading & blog about 7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess {finished reading this; blog post coming soon!}
• finish reading & blog about The Secret Keeper
• finish the scarf I’m working on
• clean out & organize filing cabinet
• mail out my Valentines

Here are my goals for this upcoming week:

• revise up to page 60 of my thesis novel
• blog about Week 6 Act of Kindness Challenge & complete it myself this week
• blog about 7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess
• clean out and organize filing cabinet
• knit 25 rows of the new scarf I’m working on
• make 3 changes/updates as part of the #28DBC

And here are some recipes on my menu for this week:

– tilapia with pineapple salsa
– chicken with stuffing in the crock pot
– teriyaki meatball bowls
– mini hot cocoa cookies

What are your goals and meal plans for this week?

This post is linked up to Menu-Plan Monday!