Seeing as I revised my 2019 planning and combined my 2017 and 2019 goals and themes in April 2019, a 2019 Mid-Year Review hardly seems worthwhile.

But I feel like 2019 to date has sucked big time, and while I’m pretty sure that’s just recent events overshadowing the rest of the year, it’s a good idea to take another look to see if it has actually been as bad as it feels.

2019 Mid-Year Review

My 2019 vision was of a prolific writer, making a good living.

And my mission was to entertain and share my wisdom by writing prolifically and publishing widely.

Virtue/Goal Reviews

My combined virtues and goals from April:

Beauty

Body

My health, in general, has become more of an issue this year. I’m not walking enough, not sleeping enough, not eating enough of the right food and I’m eating too much of the wrong food. And my weight keeps increasing.

And while transplant rejection is not the issue we thought it was, the kidney is ageing and deteriorating, and without consistent, dedicated and focused effort on my part is unlikely to last much more than five years.

Rating: 🙁

I was recently reminded of Reuben Meerman’s TEDx talk, The Mathematics of Weight Loss, and that 84% of human body fat is exhaled as CO₂, and the rest as H₂O. So more emphasis on eating less, moving more, and breathing (or gasping) more.

Presence

I sometimes wonder why my hair is such a big focus for me. Perhaps because the high doses of immune suppression made half of it fall out and it never really recovered.

Rating: 🙁

The way I see it, topical treatments and dietary changes might make a difference. But given that eight years later, I’m still taking the drugs that got me into this situation, hoping for significant change is probably a waste of time and effort.

It might just be my mood right now, but I’m going to call it. It’s time to move on and learn to live with this “new” hair.

Home

I put this back on the goal list because I felt like I was living in a pigsty, and nothing was getting done. And while we’ve crossed some things off our to-do list, for the most part, nothing is still mainly the baseline.

Rating: 🙁

Part of the problem is trying to fit everything in. I still struggle with establishing and working within the kind of daily and weekly work routines you get from paid employment, and they don’t leave a lot of scope for home renovation projects. I’m going to leave it in, and try to figure out how to take “holidays” to do the renovations.

Garden

I haven’t been actively working on the garden (the time thing, and also at the moment, the weather thing). But it remains something I need to do.

Rating: 😐

I think it might be time to give up on the 2017 garden plan and start writing a new one.

Friendship

Friends

At the Emerging Writers Festival, I was reminded that friendship is a mutually beneficial relationship between two people. And while you can reach out to as many people as you like, it won’t work if they don’t want to reach back to you. Fear of rejection works both ways.

Rating: 😐

I’d still like to make new friends, but as I work from home, I need to make more of an effort to get out there and meet more people. And all things considered, I’d like to meet more writers, so I think the next thing to do is find (or start) a more or less local writers group.

Creatures

Lots of birds and lots of possums. We were even blessed by an echidna.

Rating: 🙂

I can see things I could do in the garden to help the situation, but nothing major.

Contribution

I feel like I’ve really lost the plot with this one.

Rating: 🙁

A while back, in my rich working for others days, I had a charitable works program, and I think it might be time to take a more structured look at what I could be doing to contribute more.

Pleasure

Adventure

I’m not sure I’ve been as adventurous as I could be…

But I wrote 10 new short stories, and made 20 publication submissions.

Rating: 🙂

Recharge

According to goodreads, I’ve read 50 books (64% of my target). They count all of them equally and some of them were quite short.

And I am managing to abandon the computer by 7pm, but I don’t always turn it off.

Rating: 🙂

Wisdom

Growth

Not doing much in the way of cultural visitations, though I’m reading widely. Though to be honest, there’s not much point learning if you’re not applying.

Rating: 😐

I’m not exactly sure what to do about this yet.

Overall

So my gut feeling appears to be correct – the year so far has mainly sucked. Beauty and friendship bombed, pleasure’s going well, but wisdom could go either way.

I think the order is still more or less correct, but I’ll just move pleasure back to the bottom of the list

How has the first half of 2019 gone for you?

You can find more progress reports at the Project Worthwhile Life page.