2025 Snowflake Challenge: Day 4: Goals

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

Challenge #4

Since this is the start of a new year, this challenge will be to set your own goals!

My goals fall under the categories of Reading, Ficcing, Poetry, Crafting, Health & Fitness, and Personal.


Reading

Two reading bingos. One is by kingtoken (here). The other is by garonne (here).

Ficcing

For January: four updates to my BTS animal hybrid WIP Bunny, how does your garden grow? Complete fic on 29 JAN (Lunar New Year)

For January: one fic to celebrate National Puzzle Day (29 JAN)

For January-March: 11 updates on my BTS soap opera Ungrateful [Fridays + 18 FEB (jhope birthday) + 9 MAR (SUGA birthday)] Complete fic on 9 MAR.

For October: Participate in spook_me Challenge

Poetry

Write 52 poems. [I am using Jo Bell's 52: a year of poetry-writing prompts]

Read 52 poems.

Crafting

For February: Valentines for Happy Mail friends

26 collage spreads

4 jigsaw puzzles

Health & Fitness

Yoga or stretching daily

For November: 5k Turkey Trot

Exercise: MOTN (More Often Than Not=4 out of 7 days OR 16 out of 29/30/31 days, my unit is week or month)

Lose weight.

Personal

Eat fair trade chocolate [this greatly reduces my chocolate consumption and encourages mindful eating]

Put phone in kitchen before going to bed

With my fancy planner, I am going set a small personal goal a week. For example, last week's was 'finish year-end cleaning campaign' which I managed to complete this week. And this week's is 'mix essential oil into usable spray' but that will have to be moved to next week when more snow is cleared, and I feel more comfortable going out and buying supplies. One of them will be 'hem new pants.' And 'attempt to sell Minisculus' soccer shoes at used sports equipment shop.'

Comments

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

Thank you!

Yeah, I think there are some products it's easier to make the choice than others. I may try coffee next.

[fred_mouse]

Where we are, coffee is relatively easy and we've been doing it for years -- all the local supermarkets carry the Oxfam brand. But chocolate is near impossible. I'm aware of one brand, and I can almost never find it. It only has three or four options, in how dark, and I would take any of them if they were around. So hopefully this means that you'll find coffee easy to source.

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

I don't care for dark chocolate so that limits my options a lot. So I have been ordering from Theo's and they usually have at least one holiday-themed milk chocolate option. I am trying to use it to not buy chocolate at all. Or just buy a few bars once a season (rather than a big bag of Hershey's every time I go shopping, which is what I was doing before I read this book about the chocolate industry and it really made me think about how to do two good things at once, reduce my sweets consumption and not support exploitive companies more than I have to).

I think coffee will be easy when I sit down and try to find one I can find easily that I actually like the taste of and isn't prohibitively expensive because me and my son's father both drink coffee every day so we use a lot of more of it, and it would be harder to cut out completely compared to chocolate.

I'm sure there are other foods I could work with but my sons are growing and they eat so much and food prices are really, really going up in the US.

[fred_mouse]

I hear you on how much kids/teens eat. I still cook ridiculous amounts of food, and all of my kids are adults.

I suspect that if you are able to get fair trade chocolate that coffee will be the same amount or better available. But 'not prohibitively expensive' is a tricky bit.

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

I went again to my closest organic store (called SPROUTS) but...I just couldn't find anything that was Fair Trade AND not crazy expensive AND seemed like something I wanted to drink (and I don't know how to use those bean machines--maybe that's something to try another day when I have the 'try new thing' spoons). I thought about ordering from Equal Exchange. I have tried their chocolate. It was good but I only bought it once.

[fred_mouse]

Oh, that sucks. I've been buying Oxfam coffee for well over a decade, and I don't look at the price compared to the other coffee, because it is still much cheaper than when I had a habit of buying barista coffee multiple times a week. But it is available in our supermarkets, rather than from speciality stores.

It helps that I drink black coffee, and have never developed much of a refined palate. I like my coffee dark and bitter, and all the options go like that when brewed in a French press!