June Wrap-Up/July Goals

First of all, yes I understand that this was supposed to go out last week. I honestly have no good excuses, so my deepest apologies to all of y'all.

Second of all, whew! What a month! It's taken me a while to realize that it's already over. Two of the weeks were just a blur as my family had a crazy turn of events. I thank each and every one of you for your prayers for my family. They were certainly felt during the time. I have additional thoughts about it all down below.

Thankfully, the Lord was watching out for me and somehow made it so I wouldn't make super crazy goals for the month.

But let's review what I did:

~Writing~

1. Edit Short Story. Yep, that's taken care of!

2. Celebrate Blogoversary. Again, taken care of. Thank you all for making it a smashing success! Congratulations to Julia for winning the giveaway!

3. Participate in GTW's 100-4-100. So about this... I completely failed. I did do well for several weeks, but when my grandma passed away, life went crazy. But I do plan on pressing onward now that I'm feeling much better, but unfortunately, I was not able to participate in the fullness of the challenge. Thankfully, Jules managed to keep her end up despite my failures and I have started to get back into it, though far too late for it to matter much towards the challenge.

I will note that it has helped us progress much further into SSaS and I've had a ton of fun with it so far!

4. Participate in Rosalie's Flash Fiction Dash. Also a super fun challenge that I was able to participate in. I had a lot of fun and it seemed like y'all enjoyed my story.

~Reading~

Continue smashing down on my TBR. LOL, nope. Didn't happen. I did read, but not near as much as I did in May.

I read a grand total of 1.5 books in June.

DragonFire by Donita K. Paul

An excellent read. It's always a sincere pleasure to get back into this world! Though honestly, people are so mean and impatient with Kale. They expect everything out of her, but don't show her how to give everything. Like, she's still a kid and expects her to know how to use her talents without any prior training!

And Cress by Marissa Meyers. I got halfway through this, then #lifehappened. But I'm going to work on finishing it up now that life's settling down again. Also, don't you just love taking pictures of library books? That lovely glare and reflection. Yeah, just #instagramgoals

~Life~

Finish three more college courses. So I'm pretty much done with them. I just need to take the final tests and then those will be done. That frees up July for the most part, which is awesome because #campnano

Anyway, as far as other life updates/thoughts, I had a crazy month. On the 10th, my dad got a call that my grandma had a stroke, so he drove down to help the rest of the family out. She was then moved from the hospital to hospice and passed away that Tuesday. My dad came home on Wednesday and we all went down on Friday for the funeral. 

I'll tell you that I learned something important during this ordeal: there are both hateful people and loving people and only one of those dispositions matter. We came in contact with several hateful, spiteful people that threatened to make a bad situation worse. But God's love was greater and He placed people and events in our lives that made the entire thing all the more worth it. While I'm sad to see grandma no longer here on earth, I'm glad it all happened and there are several reasons why. 

1. A family relationship that was strained for years is now reconciled and much stronger than imaginable all because of the circumstances. I praise God for this above just about anything because His name is glorified and this relationship is something that is vital to the health of the family going forward.

2. This next story blows my mind, y'all. My immediate family and I were at the funeral home just standing around when in walks a lady  from our church and her daughter. I couldn't even begin to describe the looks on my family's face when we saw them. Disbelief. Shock. Overwhelm. All of these are too small of words to describe how we felt. They drove over four hours to be there just so we wouldn't be alone. That, ladies and gentlemen, is by far the most loving, kind act anyone has ever done for me besides Christ's death on the cross. The moment they walked in, it felt like the weight of the world was lifted off my shoulders. Just having them there made me comfortable and relaxed. For the first time in a long time, I felt truly wanted and loved. And I'll tell you one thing, that act was so appropriate for my grandma's funeral, when the unintentional theme throughout the service was talking about her Christ-like love and selflessness. #mindblown

3. Grandma was spared of a lot of pain. Her passing was painless, we think. She was about to go through a surgery and who knows what else because of a tumor in her colon. Because she is now with the Lord, she doesn't have to go through that painful ordeal. And beyond that, this is what she's wanted above all else in life. If I could only ever say one thing about her, it was that she was not afraid of dying. She believed in the Lord and that her faithful Savior would bring her safely home. And y'all, she's safely home now. And really, during her funeral, I think I was more jealous of her than sad. 

I want to thank y'all for your prayers during this time. I'm feeling much better now and life is getting back to normal, so I should be back to blogging full swing. 

I don't really think I have a ton of goals this month, but here's what I know I'd like to complete:

1. Participate in Camp NaNo. Again, I have a time goal seeing as I have several projects I'd like to work on. And again, my stupid self would really like to get to 40 hours in a month. For the past two camps, I've had the same goal and I've changed it both times because I just couldn't reach it. We'll see if this time is any different. But I'm so excited about this round because most of The Order of the Pen is participating. The cabin's going to be crazy good!

2. Finish draft five of The Dawn of a Hero. Jules finished her alpha read and her feedback was much less than I thought it would be! So yay me! I'm probably just going to do a high-flying edit this time around and then submit it to The Order of the Pen for a beta read. We'll see how it goes.

3. Write at least 25k of The Fall of Chemmit rewrite. Esh. I haven't touched this story much in years, so it'll be interesting to get back to it. I know the original storyline needs a lot of work, but now that I'm in a good place with tDoaH, I feel like it's time to address it again. So as long as I make some sort of progress on this draft, I'll be all good!

4. Read something. Wow, super specific. But seeing as I had a difficult time reading this past month, I want to be kind to myself by not expect too much. But I have several books that I want to read, so at least I'll have plenty of material to choose from. Plus, I just got Fawkes in the mail and I am so excited to dive into it! It's so beautiful!!!

Insert my infernal screaming

5. Study with the extra time. I've planned it so that I can take this month off from serious studying, but I still would like to get some work done so that I have less to do in August when I get back into things full swing.

Anyway, those are my goals this month.

What about y'all? What sorts of goals did you complete this past month? What things have you learned about life? How's life going for you? Let's celebrate!