Goals update

On my other blog at the beginning of this year, I made a list of goals. As I'm about to enter a crazy month and my money is disappearing, so I want to take a tally of how this has gone.


"Professional" goals

• Make an album with my band.
• This is the one that's farthest along. We've been recording the album in most of our spare moments for the last seven weeks, though we have been sidetracked by Song Fu, concerts and a commission project. We're trying to continue having fun, but it's hard.
• The "recording" part is a bummer, certainly. But the good stuff is: album art - for which we hired a local illustrator and a local photographer - is going well! Now we just need to write the liner notes and line stuff up and hope everything is proofed and mastered in time for the CD to be ready at the release show.
• I didn't get the new songs done that I was hoping to have done. Argh.
• Learn how to make a web application & learn enough of a language to do a sample project. Do the same with web design.
• This is... happening. Ish. I'm doing a lot of reading still. There's a PHP book I like. I had been reading a PHP book that was doing a very poor job of appealing to my "learn stuff" senses. In general, learning without structure/classes/help is hard for me. Also, time. 
• Make a documentary (with filmmaker M_ V_- one of my informational interview subjects)
• I'm failing at this one! I'd like to blame the people who haven't called me back, but I can't really. I should call them again.
• Take classes in computer programming.
• I am doing this! Thanks to my Alma Mater and a crazy-awesome professor, I'm in a "learn Java by programming games" class that is both helping me learn how to program Java and getting my head around programming in general. I really like it.
• Train and volunteer in community radio.
• I give myself an "A" here. I have already had my voice on the radio *twice* interviewing people, and I am taking occasional trainings that are awesome. The people at the community radio station are a little scary at first, but I've come to like them a lot and I think they like me too. Which is awesome. I really like radio and I am learning a lot about it.

"Personal" goals:

• Write and send letters
• Try writing fiction
• Learn how to cook
• Throw more parties/events
• Plan and take travels to: Grand Canyon, Alaska, Prague

I haven't even started on any of these. Maybe I will "when I move into my new house," I tell myself.

Things I have done that I wasn't planning on:

• Social media consulting (for multiple clients!)
• Freelance writing (I could almost make enough money on this to pay rent! Unreliably!)
• Managed a band T-shirt sale- orders, production, and shipping.
• Plan band shows in California and British Columbia
• Find a new house, apply for and get it, thus creating a lot of work for myself in sorting/packing/moving everything I own.

Alright, this post was relatively useless other than as a way to track my own progress, which is important because yesterday I watched more than three episodes of How I Met Your Mother.