Our family decided to write up goals (AKA New Year’s Resolutions) for 2013 and share them with each other. My husband and I talked to the children about how to make their goals SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, timely.) It was very entertaining to hear a six year old’s goals. We can’t complain; they were pretty SMART:
1) I will watch Phineas and Ferb every day until I permanently speak like Dr. Doofenschmirtz.
2) I vow to bedevil my sister at least four times a week until she smacks me in frustration.
3) I will wash my hands EVERY time after using the toilet, AND flush. (Okay, we helped with this one. Now, please, please let it stick.)
Here is a nice little article on helping New Year’s Resolutions stick from the American Psychological Association. It says you should: 1) start small, 2) change one behavior at a time, 3) talk about your goals with friends and family, 4) don’t beat yourself up if you get off track, and 5) ask for support.
In the interest of number 3—sharing my goals with friends, family, and interested readers who stop by my blog—the following are my goals for 2013 in several different areas of my life, starting with writing:
1) Be productive. Complete the rough drafts of two novels in 2013.
This doesn’t include The Scourge, Book 2. That’s already written. I mean to write the rough drafts of two new novels, whether they are in The Scourge world or in a totally new world. I’ve had a few characters knocking around my head for the past year that REALLY want to come out.
2) Read at least one book per month focused on improving my writing, and attend at least one writing workshop this year.
I want to improve as a writer. The more I write, the more I theoretically should improve. But I’m going to help it along by reading a lot more about the craft of writing, at least one of ’em per month. I’m also super excited to attend the Big Sur Writing Workshop in March, co-hosted by Andrea Brown Literary Agency.
3) Go to sleep by 11:30pm.
I’m a night owl. I wrote Book 1 of The Scourge between the hours of 9pm and 1am, and I do almost all of my reading at night. But I tend to stay up WAYYY too late. After a few late nights I’m inevitably grumpy and exhausted the next day, which conflicts with my first goal of being productive. So I’ve decided to give myself a bed time. Luckily I function pretty normally on 6.5 to 7 hours of sleep a night, so an 11:30 bedtime isn’t bad.
4) Cook at least three times a week.
I flat out fail at getting organized to make dinner most weeks, which results in crappy, thrown together meals and then guilt that the children are eating hotdogs or mac and cheese. Again. My husband does better than I do, but I’d like to make it a priority for myself. So I plan to enlist the family’s help in deciding what to make on Sunday, get the groceries, and have a meal plan. I should have done this years ago, but hey, that’s what New Year’s resolutions are about. Trying to make things habits that should have become habits years ago.
5) Be grateful. Complain less if at all. Be positive.
This was actually the first goal on my list, I just rearranged them here to put writing goals first. I wouldn’t say I’m a particularly ungrateful person, but sometimes I catch myself complaining about things that in most people’s worlds, would be laughable. Working with a population of homeless, indigent, and drug and alcohol addicted people makes my heart ache. It also makes me very aware of the many things I have to be grateful for, and that those things were mostly bestowed on me at birth, not earned. I plan to focus every day on being grateful for everything I have, even if that goal isn’t measurable. And on the heels of that . . .
6) Start a family service project that we do once a month.
I would like to do more volunteer work, and involve the kids. Things as simple as going around our neighborhood picking up trash, or bringing canned goods or supplies to the local food bank or the animal shelter. I will schedule the times in advance to be sure we do it.
I have a couple other goals, but I’m going to start with these. If you got through reading all of them, thank you for bearing witness! Now I’m curious, did you make any New Years resolutions, and if so, what are they?
