Personal Goals Archives

Posted on May 1, 2017 by Vicki — Leave a comment

Another month gone…

I’m in holiday mode again. It’s May Day bank holiday here today, so even though Easter seems like just yesterday, we’re enjoying another long weekend, and I didn’t even think to get my weekly round up post done yesterday. (*Ahem* If I’m honest, it did cross my mind briefly last night, but by that point we were binge watching Dexter on Netflix and enjoying rather nice bottle of red 😀 It’s all about balance eh?!)

This week saw me making a start on the summer specials – Lemon Verbena Confetti. I’ve not got round to taking a photograph of this year’s version yet, but this is a photo from last year to give you an idea…

The Lemon Verbena fragrance oil smells absolutely amazing, but it’s such a fast mover that I was in two minds whether to use it again this year. In the end my (and my customers’) love for the fragrance won out, and last Thursday I made two batches. It was worse than I remembered 🙁 I’m in the middle of writing a post about it, and I’ll definitely have some cut photos of the recent batches by then.

The rest of the week was spent fulfilling orders (inc one for a brand new stockist, Crumpton Hill Farm Shop in Herefordshire), end of month accounts and wrapping & labelling for the monthly Porthmadog Craft Fair on Saturday, including these:

Botanica (Lavender, lemon & lime essential oils)

Serenity (Patchouli, orange, lemon & ylang ylang essential oils)

This week we also enjoyed the fourth birthday of the littlest Soapminer but I’m ever so glad such important birthdays only happen twice a year!!

Oh, and guess what? I actually read a whole book in April! Yep, I managed to finish The Girl on the Train yesterday and it’s definitely whetted my appetite to read more.

Goals. Should I or shouldn’t I? January through to March, one of my monthly goals was to read a whole book. Failed on three counts. In April I had no goals whatsoever and I read a book. In February and March I wanted to create a wholesale linesheet, or at least put all the information into one place for customers to access. Didn’t happen either month, but in April I managed to post about the Core Range. Is it just a coincidence or am I subconsciously sabotaging my own efforts when I have a ‘goal’ to achieve? Why would I do that though? Am I asking too much of myself? Perhaps I should just have the one goal until it becomes a habit and then introduce another… On a personal level that’d probably work well, but I need to be a little more productive and proactive workwise, and push myself a little more, not less…

So here’s the deal – I’ll give myself just one personal goal, and that’s to read a book (I so very nearly wrote ‘two books’ before I realised how utterly ridiculous I was being :-D) My challenge now is to find a book that will grip me as much The Girl on the Train. To that end I did a quick ‘what should I read next if I liked…’ Google search, and I now have 7 books on order with my local library. I’m hoping that at least one or two will arrive pretty quickly and I can make a start.

Workwise there are a few things I want to achieve, alongside the regular restocks, and I don’t think I’m being over-ambitious here either:

Get my facial bars out to testers
Make trial batches of lipsalve
Get back to posting on the blog at least eight times during May

I also have another 200 mini guest bars, for three different customers, to be cracking on with this week and my regular Tuesday (tomorrow) night session has been hijacked by an meeting that I’m expected to attend, so I’m having to bring my soaping session forward to tonight in order to have soap to cut at my regular Thursday night soapmaking presentation. Juggling, always juggling, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Thanks for reading, I’ll be back soon with more soapy updates.

Posted on March 2, 2017 by Vicki — 4 Comments

The Sad Story of February’s Goals…

Remember a month ago when I posted about my success regarding January’s goals? It had been a good month but, was I too full of hubris? Was I perhaps a little smug? Were February’s goals desperately ambitious and unattainable? I can only assume so because, my friends, February was a washout. Suddenly (seriously, without warning :-D) the end of the month arrived and was devoid of goal success.

So, here’s how bad it was:

Create a wholesale Line Sheet. Wholesale enquiries are increasing and this is a high priority ‘must have’. Oops Still need to do this asap
Make a test batch of facial soap Oops Still want to do this asap
Make 3 Spring Special soaps Oops Have decided against this – I’m struggling to keep up with the core range at the moment
Post 8 times on the blog Oops Only 6 posts in February 🙁

The personal goals weren’t much better. I was aiming to run 50km during February, and actually managed *ahem* 12km. I seriously lost my running mojo very early in the month. I’ve missed it though, and have arranged to go with a friend tomorrow morning, so hopefully I’ll get back into it soon enough. I also wanted to read more. Well, I have read more, but still not a whole book, so back to the drawing board with that one too. Lastly, I wanted to do some baking. Well that much I did do. I make a rather lovely Victoria sponge (but rubbish photograph) for my mum’s birthday, and a couple of batches of Welsh Cakes (which I’m going to post about very soon!)

So, a couple of small wins in a big sea of ~~fails~~ un-met challenges 😀

I’m not, however, despondent. By no means. I’ve been ridiculously busy during February. I’ve taken on two new BIG wholesale customers, and I’ve been snowed under with making, wrapping and labelling. It’s all good stuff, but it does feel like I’m running to stay still, so I firmly believe that goals are still a good and necessary thing, helping to keep me challenged and moving forward. To that end, I’m going to reset last months business goals, excluding the one about Spring specials:

Create a wholesale Line Sheet. Wholesale enquiries are increasing and this is a high priority ‘must have’. ASAP…
Make a test batch of facial soap
Post 8 times on the blog

And as far as personal goals go, I’m going back to basics – run 30km and read a book. That’s it. I’m taking part in a Library Bingo Challenge which is encouraging me to get to the library more often, and which might motivate me to find the time to read more often, but I’ll post about that another time.

Wish me luck! I’ll be back soon – I will smash that ‘8 post goal’ this month LOL

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Vicki — 1 Comment

Goals: February 2017

February will see an increase in the pace of restocking the core range of soaps and (finally) bathbombs. In addition, the plan is to:

Create a wholesale Line Sheet. Wholesale enquiries are increasing and this is a high priority ‘must have’. ASAP…
Make a test batch of facial soap
Make 3 Spring Special soaps
Post 8 times on the blog

On a personal note, I have these (particularly un-SMART goals). I’m going to run 50km this month, read something (yep, that’s deliberately vague as I have. absolutely no idea what yet – better decide soon eh?!), and do some baking. I LOVE baking but never seem to find the time. Maybe a cake or two, maybe some cookies, I don’t know, but I WILL bake two somethings 😀

A short post, but it gives February some structure. Thanks for reading and keeping me accountable!

Posted on January 10, 2016 by Vicki — 4 Comments

2016 Personal Goals

I don’t do resolutions. Haven’t done for years. I can’t be bothered with airy fairy statements like ‘I resolve to get fit’ or ‘I resolve to learn a new language’ blah blah blah, which never seem to come to anything (for me, anyway)

I do, however, like the idea of having specific, measurable goals, and while I’ll cover my Business goals for 2016 in another post very soon, I wanted to share with you my two personal goals for this year. (Not least because I’m hoping that having to update here will make me more accountable!)

My first goal is to run 1,000km during 2016. Before having children I used to be a regular runner, but that was over six years ago, and I’ve been feeling recently that I want to regain my previous fitness levels. On paper, 1,000km seems a lot (especially as I ran a total of 93.5km last year!) but I really think it’s doable – it equates to 19.2km a week, or 83.3km a month. This week I’ve run 14.5km over four days (rest days on Wed & today – Sat) and I’m planning on going again tomorrow, so I’m on track:

and the distance I run per week should increase as I get fitter. That’s the plan anyway!

My second goal is far more sedentary – I plan to read 12 novels. Compared to how much I used to read, it seems a paltry number, nevertheless it will probably be a harder goal to achieve than my running one (I had the same goal last year and I read 4 (4!!) novels all year) But my evenings are almost always spent working – be it soapmaking, wrapping/labelling soap, paperwork, marketing etc etc etc. Add to that two young children, exercise time (see above!) and a part-time day job (with related compulsory coursework/study) and time for reading suddenly becomes rather hard to find. I hope to squeeze in half an hour reading at bedtime before my eyelids start to droop!

Number 1, and currently on my bedside table is Life after Life by Kate Atkinson:

Anyway, that’s it for now. Once again it’s approaching midnight and I’m nowhere near bed. Oh for more hours in the day lol!

Wish me luck, and let me know what your goals and/or resolutions are for 2016 🙂