Last Year's Goals and Resolutions--How Did I Do?

Not too well, unfortunately. I was an ambitious one when I made the list! Let's see the results:

2009 Resolutions and Goals

Personal:
1. Lose another 5 pounds. I lost 5 last year, and if I’m careful I won’t gain it back before Spring. I need to lose another 5. Didn't lose, but didn't gain.

2. Start an Ebay store and an Amazon used book store. I have stuff I never use. I have books I don’t need. I can make money, at least a little bit. I just need to get it going. I didn't do this, although I did get my new CD on CDBaby, and learned how to put PayPal buttons on my blog so I made a little progress.

4. Read at least one book a week. Nope. I started well, but then as storytelling and gardening picked up, I went back to my old habit of reading for research and not for pleasure.

5. Take a walk at least once a week. I did walk more than in past years, and took short walks almost daily at work, but not a good weekly walk.

Home and Farm:
1. pay more attention to replanting so we use more fresh food. We did this, with really good results.

2. raise more chickens and turkeys. 25 chickens, 10 turkeys so we can be more meat self-sufficient. Done, although we ended up with only 5 turkeys.

3. get more deer in the freezer. Boy did we do this one! We have plenty for ourselves and a few other people.

4. be more careful—don’t cut down plants that have cost us money, and don’t waste just to “clean up.” Weeds are better than wasted money or food. This one was Larry's and he did so-so. He cut down the new blueberry bushes--again. But the cherry tree we planted survived. He's dangerous with a weedeater.

5. build a new greenhouse. Done. We bought a simple to set up portable greenhouse and raised almost all our plants this year.

6. find a log building to move. No luck here, although we've looked.

7. wassail the apple trees! Done, and what fun it was!

Writing goals:
1. send three children’s stories to publishers. Did not do, although I started editing three stories. Wait, I take that back! I did send three to a contest--does that count?

2. submit one item per month for publication. No--I submitted more than in past years, though.

3. write more—go back to the “Wednesday night” routine. It worked. Did not do, darn it. This year maybe?

4. finish 2 of the started stories. Finished one; it won second place in the WV Writers' contest.

6. create another book of poetry. Did not do, but am talking to a publisher about one. Does that count?

Storytelling goals:
1. Produce a booklet of my programs to send out to libraries and schools. I have many programs I can do, but I don’t have them in a coherent package complete with pricing. Get it together, and start sending to one county at a time. Use this to replace the newsletter. It will be more useful, and the blog is taking over for the newsletter anyway. I did part of this. I completed the booklet of programs for libraries and sent it to 45 libraries in the state. The result was more storytelling work for libraries this past summer than any other year.

2. Finish my CD, plan another one of children’s stories. Done.

3. Develop at least 3 new stories. Done.

4. Learn three new ballads. Done.

There you have it--some successes, some failures, some in between. There are many things we did that were not on the list; priorities change as the year goes on, so what seemed important at one point was bumped by something more pressing or opportune.

Now that I've reviewed my list, it's time to write this year's goals. What to put on it? That's food for thought today.

How about you? Do you make a New Year's list of what you want to accomplish? Connie at WV Fur and Root wrote an introspective post about her efforts over the past two years; like my lists, hers are a mixed review of what happened and what didn't. But if we did not try and did not allow ourselves to change our priorities, the list would become a burden and not an inspiration for progress. So we try and try again, and occasionally along that path we have some success.