November 2023 was taken up with a lot of medical appointments. Which quite frankly, are exhausting.

All that effort to get showered and ready, rushing to catch trains and connecting buses and trams, wearing masks all day. It’s a day’s worth of activity for the sake of sitting down for 10 minutes with some kind of specialist. Usually costing about $200.

Then, when you get home, you disrobe and throw your clothes in the washer in case you picked up any bugs at the hospital.

Even worse, there’s no coffee! And you’re wearing a mask all day.

But as you can see, one time I did stop at a cookie shop, for some belated compensation. (Which reminds me, I wrote a story about a cookie shop…)

November 2023 Highlights

The mastectomy recovery progresses, though there’s some seroma and scar therapy.

The transplant is doing well enough. I had a kidney ultrasound which was fascinating, but proves the kidney is still clearling fluid like a champion. However, the blood and urine tests suggests it’s starting to struggle, so I’m back to reassessing what, how, and when I eat.

And I freaked out a bit about how close Christmas is, but at least I got all my Chrismtas shopping done and posted. Whew!

Just in time for a New Start in the New Year.

Which I’ll be planning next week, along with a bunch of other folks taking Sarra Cannon’s HB90 course, (affilliate link). It kicks off on Sunday 10th December, and over the following seven days, we’re focusing on a particular aspect of the planning progess until we’ve planned the quarter.

Given there’s a plug for my book below, it might seem odd to some that I’m highlighting someone else’s course, but half the fun is doing it with other people. Planning as a team sport!

Shocking month of reading – just two books! It’s not that I haven’t started reading anything, more like I haven’t finished reading anything.

• Dear Writer, Are You Intuitive? • The Empowered Entrepreneur •

And now I’m 8 books behind schedule, wondering how I’m going to catch up.

And if you wondered what I’m doing on the train if I’m not reading, I’m pretty much fully caught up on my podcast rota.

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Goals

I mentioned in the Q3 review the importance of knowing how much time you can spend on the projects. And as a result, planning for “good” and “bad” days.

So, the Q4 plan is to:

• Rebrand my businesses.
• Revitalise the websites.
• Consolidate the online stores0
• .Finish some of the long-term outstanding items.
• Publish six new books
• Get my back catalogue up for sale in my shop.
• Fix up my websites SEO.

With the Keystone Activities of

• Write for at least an hour a day.
• Publish a collection and the five stories contained within it.
• Submit 65 stories to fiction magazines (5/week)

Goal Scoring

As a refresher; the score is a percentage of the times I did the activity divided by the times I planned to. For example, I’m planning to publish 2 books a month, so if I only manage 1, the result is 50%. A “good” score is above 85%. I check in every week, but I’ll only note the averages here.

Goals	SCORE	NOTES
Write at least 50 words each day.	0%	I forgot to add a page into my spreadsheet so I’m guessing I didn’t write anything.
Publish six new books in Q4 (a collection and the five stories contained within it).	0%	Got Security Directorate Dossiers volume 2 out. Hopefully the indivudual short stories will all be out by the end of the year.
Submit 65 stories in Q4	18.46%	2 submissions in Otober, and 8 for November. Just need to remember to put a time block into my weekly plan to get it done!

So that’s me for November 2023!

Overall, I’m feeling positive, though that might be beacuse we’re almost at the end of the year?

How was your November?

As n aside, I’ve been thinking I need to come up with a word for 2024. Anyone are to share theirs?

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Photo of a selection of cookies purchased while killing time until the next train. My favourite was the Honey Crackle cookie. Photo by me!

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You can find more monthly reports on the Life Worth Living page.

You can find my monthly reports and other planning related information on the Life Worth Living page.