Thursday 13: Goals for 2011, a Review

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At the end of 2010, I did a review of the goals that I set at the beginning of the year. Not only did it give me a great way forward for 2011, but it really showed me what I was able to accomplish during the year, what I focused on, and what turned out to not be so important to me. So, again, I'm doing a review of my goals for the previous year and setting a way forward for 2012.

1.  Establish my business.  This ended up not happening. Around the three-month mark, we got some fairly devastating news that derailed the jewelry business ... and then I just ended up closing it down and moving on with life. Frankly, I haven't made a single piece since this summer ... oh, well. On the upside, our devastating news turned out to be not so bad. It's manageable, at least.

2.  Sign with an author's agent. This didn't happen either. I spent an extraordinary amount of time at the beginning of the year trying to get in touch with our agent, and she basically disappeared on us. I'm going to go ahead and believe that she didn't contact us because the publishing market is CRAY-CRAY right now and didn't want to promise us anything that she couldn't deliver. (Don't burst my bubble.)

3.  Edit a novel. Wow, I'm oh-and-three so far. This didn't happen either. Instead, I started writing a new novel. But for real this time, not just by participating in National Novel Writing Month. And you know what? I'm confident in this one.

4.  Move. Finally, something that we accomplished!! We didn't go south (well, to the South) like we had originally planned, but things changed. We just got the HELL out of our old place and into a new one that, amazingly enough, is closer to the beach. And a good German restaurant. AND a Hawaiian restaurant!

5.  Take a girls' weekend. Hmm. This should have happened, but I decided to go away with my husband instead. I know, spending time with the Hubster instead of my friends, such a shame.

6.  Get into print. Define "print." This is a problem that I had this year. For me, "print" means on actual, tangible paper, and not something that you can print yourself from a website or word processing program. But the publishing industry has changed SO MUCH over the past 2-3 years that many, many (ok, most) people are considering online forums as legitimate publishing outlets. If that's the case, then congrats to me! This article on Smoked Salmon Deviled Eggs made the front page of Blogcritics.org, and I have six other articles up there.

7.  Finish my writing course. Um ... they kicked me out for non-participation. Clearly, I did not accomplish this goal.

8.  Get down to my fighting weight. Yay, another one that I finished!! In May, I undertook a hard-core journey to lose the rest of my baby weight (and then some), and I did it! By August, I had lost kind of a lot of weight (more than my toddler weighs, let's just say that) and dropped four pants sizes. (Yes, four.) Granted, I put ON some of the weight over the holidays, but no big deal. I now know how to lose the weight relatively painlessly, and my hubby is undertaking the journey with me starting on Saturday. That's love.

9.  Get Girls at War up and running. Yo, I don't know what happened with this. Wait, yes I do: our agent stopped calling and we lost confidence in ourselves.

10.  Get my products into a bricks-and-mortar store. Since I closed the business, this goal became obsolete. I did try, once, to get stuff into a store, but when I failed hard, I stopped. Clearly, I'm not cut out to run a crafty business. Or, if I am, I don't love it enough to put forth the blood, sweat, and tears to make it really happen.

11.  Net $1000 this year. See #10.

12.  Improve my mood. Hmm. I go back and forth on this one. On the one hand, yes, I'm much happier now than I was 12 month ago, and I know that's a direct result of making good decisions for our lives. On the other hand, I still find myself being moody, irritable, and sometimes loud and shouty. It's a work in progress, I suppose.

13.  Take a gymnastics class with Malia. Ha. I did this, but only on a technicality. See, Malia turned 3 in October and therefore didn't need a chaperone. This was good, because I couldn't leave Petra by herself in order to accompany Malia in the class. I signed Malia up for her unchaperoned class, but I was warned that the class wasn't fully formed yet and she may have to switch days. We showed up on the appointed day, and sure enough, no unchaperoned class. We were invited to stay for the chaperoned class, however, so we did. I spent 45 minutes chasing both children around a gym and trying to keep them out of the foam pit while dressed as a Responsible Mother for Ana's first day at her new school. Hilarity ensued.

Three (or five, depending on how you look at it) out of thirteen. Not my finest year of accomplishing set goals. It's okay, though, because even in definitely accomplishing three goals and maybe accomplishing five, I still made myself a better person.  (I think.) I can say with confidence as well that moving was the biggest, best thing that we did for ourselves this year, as a family. We are all happier and healthier, and even if we didn't do anything else, I'm SO GLAD we managed to get out of the hellhole in which we were living before.

Happy 2012.

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