Hello and happy 2013! How were your holidays? We celebrated by buying a house. Yep, we are homeowners, and even though the deal went down mid-December, we only spent approximately four nights that month in our new house. The rest of the time, we were celebrating Christmas with family in McMinnville and Bellevue. It was a lot of driving, a lot of stress, and even though I had to back out of my awesome New Year’s Eve plans to recuperate a little, getting to spend New Year’s Day getting our house in order with my husband was worth it. Rooms are a lot bigger when they aren’t buried in boxes!
So, now that the house is moved into, furniture has been acquired, internet has been set up, and I’m running high on the mojo of a new year, Ruby Bastille is back!
I’m not big on concrete goals, especially not resolutions, because I tend to not get them done. NaNoWriMo is always a miserable failure in which I crank out 1000 to 1200 words a day for the first two weeks, and then quit. Promising to work out more lasts a month or so – until I get sick. To avoid failure, I don’t set goals, which means I’m missing out on a lot of accomplishment. This list offers some ideas for setting and keeping good resolutions, and it challenged me to think about where I am right now, where I’d like to be, and how I can get there.
So rather than setting resolutions, I came up with manifesto for 2013, combining the abstract and concrete things I most want to get done this year:
1. I will believe that what I have to say is worthwhile, and I will remind myself when I doubt myself. The feeling that I had nothing important to say contributed to my blog hiatus, but I’m back, and I plan to be back for a while.
2. I will remind myself that being young doesn’t mean I have nothing to offer, and just because someone has already said something doesn’t mean it’s not worth repeating.
3. I will finish writing a book. I will set up a review schedule with Kevin to hold me accountable.
4. I will read 25 books.
5. I will continually check my life for mediocrity, and take healthy steps to reverse it.
What are you hoping to accomplish this year? What tips do you have for staying focused and getting it all done?
Ruby Bastille 
LOVE your first resolution! That’s something I really want to work on too.
Yaay, Laura’s back! A manifesto is a terrific idea, though I’ll have to write it down and hang it somewhere I’ll see it every day. Trouble is, a time comes when one becomes so accustomed to seeing a reminder one forgets that it is there! Maybe I’ll attach it to something easily moveable, like a magnet, and move it every time I look at it.
Yeah, I’m finding that I keep forgetting about by 101 in 1001 list. Moving it around would be a good way to keep working on it.