Happy New Year!
Jan. 1st, 2012 08:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fenchurchHope everyone had a fantastic New Year's Eve! We spent it with some friends, playing boardgames and eating way too much food.
I know that traditionally, New Year's is for resolutions, but I've always preferred to go with goals... specific things I think I actually stand a chance of accomplishing if I apply myself or regular activities with an end date (even if that happens to be December 31st). There's really never anything hard... mostly things I've been thinking of doing for awhile but have never quite found the motivation to actually tackle and others that I've just needed to spell out for myself somehow.
So, these are mostly off the top of my head over the past few days (yeah, so now you can see why I like setting goals for the year... not too good at that thinking ahead thing).
1) Actually participate fully in![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
photo_scavenger, posting a photo a week for the whole year.
2) Get caught up on Doctor Who by my birthday (I fell behind a few years ago and have never quite managed to get current again).
3) Start and complete an Independent Study course.
4) Start piano lessons again (okay, this is a bit of a cheat... my piano teacher is finally back after being gone for three years and is starting up teaching again later this month), with the addendum of practicing piano at least once a week and be able to play Christmas music again by next December.
5) Helprackham finish the home improvement projects we have planned.
6) Finish my current Geocaching streak, finding at least one cache a day until 4 March 2012.
7) Finish at least 25 Books. For the past few years, I've set it at 50 and unfortunately I only finished 18 books in 2011 (one fewer than 2010! Ack!). So, I'm scaling back. Hopefully, with the Kindle, this won't be too hard to surpass. I still can't believe I managed to get out of the habit!
8) Exercise at least 30 minutes a day, five times a week. I was doing that pretty reliably until this last year when I started slacking off. I blame all the traveling I ended up doing. I was still exercising, just not quite as regularly.
9) Remember to send out birthday cards or greetings (if online), even if they end up being a bit late.
10) Post at last one update on Livejournal a week!
And speaking of books read... yeah, I totally failed at my goal of 50 for last year. As I mentioned, I only ended up finishing 18... not even making it to the 19 I managed in 2010. It's not like I'm not reading... I'm reading magazines and the internet and, well, fanfic. But it's not the same! Although, technically there would have been 19, but I just couldn't make myself finish Five Red Herrings by Dorothy Sayers.
1) Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman* - January
2) The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan - 9 January
3) 8.4 by Peter Hernon - 10 January
4) It's Not the News, It's Fark by Drew Curtis - 31 January
5) You Might Be a Zombie and Other Bad News by Cracked.com - 15 February
6) Eleven On Top by Janet Evanovich - 28 February
7) Mistborn: The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson - 4 March
8) Death of an Outsider by M.C. Beaton - 6 March
9) Arrows of the Queen** by Mercedes Lackey - 29 March
10) Twelve Sharp by Janet Evanovich - 10 May
11) Lean Mean Thirteen by Janet Evanovich - 3 June
12) Fearless Fourteen by Janet Evanovich - 29 June
13) Ghost Story by Jim Butcher - 2 August
14) Heat Rises by Richard Castle - 3 December
15) Dear Me: A Letter to my Sixteen-Year-Old Self by Joseph Galliano - 6 Dec
16) The Revenant by Sonia Gensler - 18 December
17) The Well of Ascension by Brandon Sanderson - 27 December
18) The Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan - 30 December
* This one was technically a reread, but since the first read-through was right before the car accident and I discovered later that I actually couldn't remember it at all (except that I liked it), it's sort of not really a reread, either.
** This one was definitely a reread. I don't remember why, now, but I had a yen to give it a read again... I think it was getting discussed somewhere on LJ or in a forum at the time.
Crossposted from my Livejournal
I know that traditionally, New Year's is for resolutions, but I've always preferred to go with goals... specific things I think I actually stand a chance of accomplishing if I apply myself or regular activities with an end date (even if that happens to be December 31st). There's really never anything hard... mostly things I've been thinking of doing for awhile but have never quite found the motivation to actually tackle and others that I've just needed to spell out for myself somehow.
So, these are mostly off the top of my head over the past few days (yeah, so now you can see why I like setting goals for the year... not too good at that thinking ahead thing).
1) Actually participate fully in
photo_scavenger, posting a photo a week for the whole year.2) Get caught up on Doctor Who by my birthday (I fell behind a few years ago and have never quite managed to get current again).
3) Start and complete an Independent Study course.
4) Start piano lessons again (okay, this is a bit of a cheat... my piano teacher is finally back after being gone for three years and is starting up teaching again later this month), with the addendum of practicing piano at least once a week and be able to play Christmas music again by next December.
5) Help
rackham finish the home improvement projects we have planned.6) Finish my current Geocaching streak, finding at least one cache a day until 4 March 2012.
7) Finish at least 25 Books. For the past few years, I've set it at 50 and unfortunately I only finished 18 books in 2011 (one fewer than 2010! Ack!). So, I'm scaling back. Hopefully, with the Kindle, this won't be too hard to surpass. I still can't believe I managed to get out of the habit!
8) Exercise at least 30 minutes a day, five times a week. I was doing that pretty reliably until this last year when I started slacking off. I blame all the traveling I ended up doing. I was still exercising, just not quite as regularly.
9) Remember to send out birthday cards or greetings (if online), even if they end up being a bit late.
10) Post at last one update on Livejournal a week!
And speaking of books read... yeah, I totally failed at my goal of 50 for last year. As I mentioned, I only ended up finishing 18... not even making it to the 19 I managed in 2010. It's not like I'm not reading... I'm reading magazines and the internet and, well, fanfic. But it's not the same! Although, technically there would have been 19, but I just couldn't make myself finish Five Red Herrings by Dorothy Sayers.
1) Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman* - January
2) The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan - 9 January
3) 8.4 by Peter Hernon - 10 January
4) It's Not the News, It's Fark by Drew Curtis - 31 January
5) You Might Be a Zombie and Other Bad News by Cracked.com - 15 February
6) Eleven On Top by Janet Evanovich - 28 February
7) Mistborn: The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson - 4 March
8) Death of an Outsider by M.C. Beaton - 6 March
9) Arrows of the Queen** by Mercedes Lackey - 29 March
10) Twelve Sharp by Janet Evanovich - 10 May
11) Lean Mean Thirteen by Janet Evanovich - 3 June
12) Fearless Fourteen by Janet Evanovich - 29 June
13) Ghost Story by Jim Butcher - 2 August
14) Heat Rises by Richard Castle - 3 December
15) Dear Me: A Letter to my Sixteen-Year-Old Self by Joseph Galliano - 6 Dec
16) The Revenant by Sonia Gensler - 18 December
17) The Well of Ascension by Brandon Sanderson - 27 December
18) The Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan - 30 December
* This one was technically a reread, but since the first read-through was right before the car accident and I discovered later that I actually couldn't remember it at all (except that I liked it), it's sort of not really a reread, either.
** This one was definitely a reread. I don't remember why, now, but I had a yen to give it a read again... I think it was getting discussed somewhere on LJ or in a forum at the time.
Crossposted from my Livejournal
