It’s Sunday night and I’m one-week into this madness I’ve put in front of me for the next year. Let’s do a wrap up.

The goal is to write 500 words a day and run at least 20 miles a week. Since January 1, I’ve covered 22.3 miles (not counting the 4.3 I ran tonight) and wrote 4,522 words (not counting however many words this post turns out to be).

I ran six of the seven days and wrote every night – averaging 646 words a night. I published multiple blog posts both here and on my personal site (Dryuary: 3,448 DAYS IN) – and I started a new essay.

I penned a letter to myself  dated for the end of this year, naming all of my 2017 accomplishments as if they had already come to pass – an idea I got from Facebook’s VP of global marketing Carolyn Everson.

Everson says she’s been doing it for four years and that it’s been a “game-changer” for her:

For the past four years, I have written an annual vision statement: essentially, a letter to myself dated one year in the future, outlining all of the things I have accomplished in that year. I write — in acute detail– what I have enacted across the three elements of my life: my personal initiatives, professional goals, and community service work.

(If you read her write up on the practice, she talks about sharing her letter with her colleagues and family. I’m not going to share it with my workmates, because, well – just no, but I will read it to my husband tonight while he’s trying to fall asleep.)

After dinner out with friends Friday night, I was too exhausted to write any coherent commentary. Instead, I put together a list of all the writing projects I have saved in my “Working Drafts” folder – blog topics, a number of essays, and my WIP. I gave a synopsis for each project and made bullet points for next-steps to push the projects across the finish line. I then rearranged the list according to the work I want to finish first.  It’s nothing anyone else will ever read, but it was more than 500 words – and it felt productive.

I also registered for the Notre Dame Holy Half Marathon, my first half-marathon since April 2015.

It’s been a good first week. Tonight, I’ve been thinking about how I want this week to compare to the last week of the year. My running routine is good, and my miles will go up as I get closer to training for the race across Notre Dame’s campus April 1.

It’s my writing that most needs my ever-loving care and attention. I continue to put off what I want most in my life – writing about things that matter to me – until everything else is done for the day. It’s 10:43 and I’m just now hitting 450 words.

The first thing I did today was turn on CBS Sunday Morning and watched an interview with Iggy Pop. I went shopping for my daughter’s birthday and treated myself to BITCH Magazine, Runner’s World and a book by PopSugar.com founder Lisa Sugar. I ran. I folded laundry. I looked at a pair of grey suede wedges on Nordstromrack.com, then found the same pair cheaper on eBay, so I treated myself again. I cleaned up after dinner and I soaked in a bath, reading my new book.

It wasn’t until the kids were in bed and there was nothing else left to do that I finally started a blog post to meet my 500-word-a-day goal. And even after I got here, I still clicked from one tab to the next – Facebook, Twitter, email. Distraction. Distraction. Distraction.

To get the things I want in my life, my writing has to take on a bigger role in my day. It can’t be the thing I do once everything else is done. It has to become the thing I do before doing anything else.

This is what I want different by the end of 2017. I want to practice what I’m trying to preach to myself here and make my “More Words” more of a priority within my day.