It’s that time of year again…

It’s that time of year again…

I gave up doing New Year’s Resolutions many, many moons ago. I do like to take a moment and reflect upon my mistakes and successes of the past year and set goals.

Looking back on it, I failed most of my goals this year. Maybe that’s an ominous warning I should heed. Nonetheless, I will make new goals.

Mistakes:

The largest mistake I made this last year was losing a friendship. At one time, I had three friendships falter and I managed to mend two of them. One is gone and sadly, I think that one is gone forever. During my 31 years of life, I have lost one friend to argument/disagreement/misunderstanding. I think this one is the result of misunderstanding. I’m still not sure which one of us had the misunderstanding, if it was my fault, her fault or a general breakdown with equal blame on both sides. I’ve spent a great deal of time looking back on my behavior and the accusations thrown at me and, for the sake of my sanity, I still don’t see what I did to cause what happened. I do see where a few times, I may have been a bit self-centered and perhaps what I see as a little thing wasn’t so little on her end.

Either way, I’m done beating myself up for it, officially, come Jan. 1st. I will not let this baggage taint my new year.

The second largest mistake I made the last year is self-evident with my hospital visit. At times I pushed myself too hard, didn’t take care of myself properly, and didn’t get the medical attention I needed. I’m no longer a spring chicken and need to learn that medical problems won’t go away if ignored.

I also think I goofed off a bit too much during the year. There’s nothing wrong with taking breaks, but I think, at times, I slid a little too much into the Type B parts of my personality and squelched the Type A.

Goals:

I earned three writing contracts in 2006. In 2007, I’d like to see a minimum of six.

Do not lose another friendship.

Take better care of myself.

Work more diligently with a writing career. Now that I know that this is a real option for me, I need to make it work and work to make it.

Take more time for friends and family.

All in all, I think those are good goals. Sure, some of them are vague and perhaps, I should have specified something like “write a minimum of 3k words every day,” but I’m going to go with what I have.

I hope you all have a wonderful New Year and may 2007 be more productive and prosperous for all of us than 2006!