womantalk.org

The piece I’ve always missed about setting New Year’s resolutions has been going back and reviewing my previous year’s resolutions. Now that everything is filed by category on this here cyber information file of mine (the blog), the problem is neatly solved. I put “goals” in my search box and instants later I have the goals I wrote a year ago, and even the goals I wrote four months previous to that.

And interestingly, last January, my first post of the year was also after a brief writing  hiatus.

(Btw, we had a wonderful holiday with my family on the east coast with lots of post-able moments, and I will try and catch up with that as soon as I am able. It was difficult to find the time and focus to post in a house with ten people, and harder still wrenching my laptop out of my vacationing husband’s hands. Plus there were so many oscar potential movies to watch!)

So this year I will continue with setting five goals (two personal, two business, and one health) for a three-month period rather than for the whole year. Upon reading my goals from last year I was surprised to notice that I had achieved most of them exactly as I had written them. For instance I wanted to have several clips published. No problem, done – except that none of the clips I wrote last year had my byline! (All of the art pieces I wrote in 2008 were “art capsules” for ArtScene.) So, now the challenge is to write my goals more carefully, because clearly I get what I ask for.

Personal

1. I did actually accomplish my goal of clearing our every single misc. box from under my desk, bed, and closet. But that niggling pile in my inbox never seems to go away. So my goal now is to clear the top of my desk and filing cabinet on a weekly basis.

2. My second goal last year was to see art every week, and while it didn’t happen every single week (Christian’s loathing of the car put a big crimp in this one), I feel pretty good about the amount of art I did go see. I have pretty firmly established a regular art routine, so I also consider that goal accomplished. My new goal is also for Christian: I’d like to get into the wilderness and hike every week. Daily is ideal, but once a week is realistic; and if not into wilderness, at least into nature or a park-like setting.

Business

3. I wrote the original goal of making a $1000/month as a writer in August, was doing it by November, and then clarified that I wanted to be writing published pieces (rather than just promo material), and was doing that soon as well. So, to be crystal clear, I’d like to be making at least $1000 writing a month – ideally for a magazine, and about art or parenting – and get credit for it. Hmm, we’ll how that goes because at the moment I am only making about $200/month with my writing.

4. This goal has traditionally been about increasing my hits on womantalk – but I’m still just holding steady at just over 100 hits a day. I need something more concrete here: I will move womantalk.org over to its own site by April 1 (the address will remain the same). I’m not quite sure why, but I am tremendously intimidated by the thought of hosting my own website. I’ve owned (and paid for) a space for womantalk for over SIX months…

Health

5. Now that the baby is becoming more active and still nursing, my weight naturally drifted back down to my pre-pregnancy weight of 120. Great, but I don’t look the same. I’m the same weight, but the weight’s in all the wrong places! So I definitely need some toning here. I’d like to be doing yoga (Bikram on my ipod) at least three times a week. Wait, realistically I would be thrilled if I were doing yoga once a week. And it may turn out to be pilates instead. My friend Maya said that that Stott Pilates that she has been doing three times a week has changed her body more dramatically than any other exercise regime she has done in her life – including when she did Bikram yoga 5-7 times a week! How’s that for a ringing endorsement? I have the DVD sitting on my coffee table at this very moment. I’m looking forward to trying it this week.