resolute, 2010 edition

Happy New Year! Before I get to resolutions for this year, I wanted to follow up on the resolutions I made for 2009.

1. Be less obsessive about the blog. I think I succeeded on this one. Partially out of necessity, after I started work at a job where I can’t hang out with my blog during the day at all, but I was doing pretty well with it by spring.

2. Read more books. No, I failed at this completely.

3. Be more peppy at work. This was a pretty dumb resolution. I think I succeeded at it in large part, but then I, you know, got laid off anyway. I do my best to be in a good mood at my current job, but it’s not always possible. Of course it hardly matters, because everyone else is working too hard to notice what kind of mood I’m in.

4. Find an answer to the problem with my dad. Success. Except now there’s a whole new can of worms I don’t know how to deal with.

5. Finish the fairy cross-stitch project. FAIL. I worked pretty hard at it, though, and got a lot more done. Maybe I’ll manage it next year.

6. Get aggressive about my book. Also FAIL. But I did work hard on an additional book, and wrote the entirety of a third.

7. Save more money per month. I did okay at this. I saved a goodly amount of money this year, and I’m putting something into the kitty just about every month. It’s just so SLOW. I think that’s why Americans save money so poorly: it takes too long to show results.

8. Judge less. Kind of a hard one to decide. In some ways yes and in some ways no.

9. Do yoga as often as I can! I’d call that one a success.

10. Go to the movies more often, and watch movies at home slightly less. This was probably the most successful resolution on this list. I took every opportunity I could to go to the movies, and I LOVED it. I hope I can keep that one up. I’m not sure I watched fewer movies at home, but that’s really okay.

11. Give more to charity. Fail. I never got around to microlending. I gave a lot of clothes, and a buttload of stuff from my garage, and a little bit of money, but I was hoping I’d be a lot more generous than I was. Something else to strive for.

And this year’s resolutions:

1. Be honest. Because we will have to have a lot of conversations with BF’s parents and my parents this year about money for the wedding, which I am projecting for March 2011, I am going to try to make this the mantra of the planning process. Being honest in my everyday life is something I’m always striving for – being honest or keeping my mouth shut.

2. Work harder on the house. I need to do better at keeping it clean, at getting rid of books, at decluttering, so on. I’d like to figure out how we can have the window treatments cleaned (long story), and figure out a solution for the flooring, but that may have to wait for another year.

3. Write more. I haven’t put fingers to keys with the intention of writing fiction (or memoir, or essay) since August. I have the weekends, and I usually wake up earlier than BF, and I usually spend that time just fiddlin’. I want to write, need to write. Just this morning I finished reading a published novel that was not very good at all and I know I can do better, but I need to put my money where my mouth is.

4. Find some private yoga clients. I don’t know at all how to put this desire into action but I feel like that will get the ball rolling on money, a teaching career, etc.

5. Find a different job, or a way to give up full-time work.

6. Decide about massage school.

7. Write more about struggles with diet and sex. These are issues about which I have a lot on my chest that I want to get off, but I’ve been putting off talking about it here or even in private journals, because it takes time and effort and these are things I don’t have a lot of. I want to explore it, though, write through to solutions.

8. Embrace a life lived bouncing from commitment to commitment, or, conversely, figure out how to spend more time at home. I am not happy going from work to class to yoga, or from yoga to lunch out to errands to the movies, or whatever. I like to go from home, to one place, back to home, rest for a while, and then maybe to another place. My job and my life right now demand that I live with bouncing around, and I’d like to either change the job and life so I don’t have to do it, or get comfortable with the bouncing.

9. Don’t stop the music. For the last few months I’ve let music back into my life as fully as it was in the old days, and oh how I have loved it. I don’t want that to end, I want to keep discovering new and old stuff that I love, keep allowing it to be a giant part of my life.

10. Stop being embarrassed with myself. I am so easily ashamed of my strong responses, of my inconsistencies, of my emotions and my reactions and all manner of things. I think that moving into my thirties will help me with this, but as always, I’d like to get a jump on that.

Happy 2010. I hope that, whoever you are, this is your year.