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It's been seven weeks since my “Forward motion” post about various largely unplanned self-improvement projects that I had embarked on. Time to check in on how they're going.

Sorting and putting away vast stacks of papers.

I got about 98% done with this, and stalled. Then there were people coming over, and I moved the remaining stacks back onto the floor of my room. Sigh. But I've pulled them out again, and am planning to try to finish this this weekend. More unfortunate is that I haven't kept up with the plan of dealing with mail as soon as it arrives. But I have gotten a bit better about that than I was before.

Walking more often.

Haven't walked on treadmill, but have been walking to work two or three days a week. Downside: That's just about the only exercise I'm getting. Upside: It's a lot more exercise than I've usually gotten in the past couple years.

Eating less meat.

Still true. I continue to have small amounts of chicken or fish in some contexts, but mostly am making vegetarian+eggs choices. (This has always been true at home, but in the past I've often defaulted to chicken or fish at restaurants and such.)

Flossing almost every night.

Still true, though it's still not a firmly ingrained automatic habit, even after six months.

Learning some Spanish.

Still going through the lessons at duolingo.com, which I still like a lot. The hardest things for me so far are (a) remembering to make the adjectives match the nouns in number and gender, and (b) remembering which words get accent marks and which don't. Oh, and (c) keeping track of how possessive adjectives work, though I've read that linked-to page enough times now that it's beginning to sink in.

Asking for help when I need it.

I'm still not good at this.

Finally making some long-delayed purchases.

Got to a certain point and kind of stalled. But I did just call the handyman in to fix a bunch of stuff, most of which I've been putting off for years, so that's in the same kind of home-improvement progress ballpark.

Working on my will.

Stalled. In particular, still need to write up a living will/advance healthcare directive.

Trying anti-anxiety meds.

Have been on low-dose Zoloft for about six weeks now. Still seeing no positive effects and some minor negative ones. Have had several conversations with knowledgeable friends, both medical professionals and people who've been on it, so I know more or less what my options are, so no need to provide advice. Haven't yet decided whether to proceed with any of those options or not.

Spending less time on Facebook.

My success with this has varied considerably. Spent a couple days last weekend off FB entirely; am back now, but am trying to be casual and relatively limited about what parts of it I spend time on.

Doing more fiction writing.

Had a writing day last weekend, am having another this weekend.

There were also a few items on the list that were completely resolved rather than ongoing things: Getting back lost vacation time, getting my annual physical, getting my taxes done early. I mention those here only for completeness. Oh, and because the physical indicated that my bad cholesterol is too high and my good cholesterol is too low, so I need to do something about both of those things, but haven't worked on that yet. (Except inasmuch as walking to work more often helps with the good cholesterol.)

There were three things on my near-future list; I haven't even started the first two (going through more boxes of unsorted papers, getting my house cleaned regularly), but I've started the third (hosting writing days again) and hope to make it a more regular thing. Though I've said that many times before.

Two more items that weren't on the list last time:

Learning to draw better.

I'm taking Katie Roberts's online art class, and enjoying it. Was drawing every day for a while, either in the Paper iPad app or on actual paper; have missed several days lately, but still trying to make this one of the activities I default to when I'm looking for something to do. I'm not very good at any of the art stuff yet, but I'm learning a lot, and I'm trying to learn to be patient with being a beginner. (Most of my life, I've given up fairly quickly on anything that I wasn't immediately good at.) ...Also recently got out an intro calligraphy set that has been sitting around untouched since high school or so, and started learning the basics.

Reading instead of playing computer games.

I posted about this recently; the short version is that I'm trying to make my default activity reading an ebook instead of playing an iPad game. It's working pretty well so far; I haven't played any of the most addictive-to-me iPad games in a week and a half now, and I've been reading a fair bit. Don't know if I'll manage to keep that up, though.

So overall, it seems like I'm doing pretty well with most of these things. Which kinda surprises me; I was half-expecting to stall on more of them. But I'm pleased.