January 2006 I: Happy New Year!

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I apologize for the lateness of this posting and for the lack of posting since Dec. 11. A stomach virus, the holidays and my crazy mad dash – still not over – to get The Genre Traveler out, has put my blogging on hold.

I believe that you can learn a lot about life from taking a look back once in a while. When it comes to goal making and keeping, it’s a good idea to look at the goals you made in the past and see how you did. This way you can learn how to make your goals for the future much more successful. For example, did you make too many goals for the year? Were you too ambitious for the amount of time you had? Did you not make enough goals? Were you too timid in your ambitions?

As an example of what I’m talking about here, I’ll go through the exercise of looking at what I posted as my goals for 2005. Due to my car accident in April, 2005 was not quite the year I’d hoped it would be. I wanted to:

• Clean out my online files. I started this project, but then got side tracked with more important and urgent projects.
• Digitize more of the paper in my office. I didn’t even start this project. Still want to, though.
• Complete my Travel Writing correspondence course. I almost made it. I read all the material and done most of the assignments. I just have one turn-in assignment to do and I’m done.
• Learn Spanish. Well, I learned enough to understand the gist of what people were saying when I went to Spain. Having dyslexia, languages are hard for me and I just didn’t have the time or motivation once I was hit by that van.
• Write and publish “Your Perfect Pie.” Done! My family members received a special edition for Christmas and I’m now working on getting it into e-book format for sale to everyone else!
• Take a couple of more writing classes. Oh, well, the thought was nice.
• Get a short story published for money. I had to put that one on hold for this year.
• Get some non-fiction articles published for money. Again, I had to put that one on hold for this year.
• Read, read and read some more. Well, made a small scratch in that one – long plane flights are a boon to your reading goals! I’ve completed all my subscriptions and have only renewed two, so I should be able to catch up this year.
• Be more regular with this blog. Well, in 2004 I had 12 postings, about once a month. In 2005, I posted 19 entries, almost twice a month. Mission accomplished!

What did I learn from this exercise? I’m way too ambitious. One of my goals in my 2006 goal planning is to be more realistic about what I can accomplish in my “spare” time. I’m a little behind on my planning for 2006, so I’ll post this year’s goals in the next entry. Then, next January, we’ll see if I have improved.

What about you? Did you write down your goals for 2005? Have you taken a moment to see how you did? No? Well, get going and write down your goals for 2006! It’s never too soon to start making progress in your life.