In Retrospect

Alrighty... it's my birthday, and it's the first of the year, so it's time for that good ol' goal setting thing.  Normally my "resolution" is to make no resolutions, but for some reason last year and this year I feel the need to do something more substantial.  


2014

The past year had a bunch of extreme successes, and a bunch of failures, but it was also one of the happiest years I can remember.


Basically, the three most important goals of the year were accomplished: 

• Leave my job (the end of a 3-year attempt to leave)
• Work every day on stress reduction and relaxation
• Get/stay pregnant after 3 years of fertility issues and pregnancy losses. We finally have that healthy baby we've been wishing for!

In the face of that, who cares about the rest?


So, what now?

Here are the goals from last year... very detailed, and apparently very optimistic.  See below* for details on what was accomplished!

It has become obvious that I need to make goals that are either few and important, or many and easy.  Do I gather all the mini-goals from last year that were abandoned?  Or just the most important ones?  Do I make super easy short goals like "perfect my thai soup recipe" or longer easy goals such as "do 10 minutes of Pilates per day"?  Do I reach for the stars, or reach for the nearest cup of tea?

Either way, I need to head in the direction of improvement.  My fitness is rather sub-par after a difficult pregnancy, the blog is lagging, my Etsy store seems to be just a far-off fantasy compared with how much free time I have, and the garden is a huge waste if I can't get it to produce anything again this year.

I need to ponder these things more deeply, so it'll have to be another post on a later day.  In the meantime...

Do you have any goals for the year?  Do you have any inspiring tales of goals accomplished in 2014? 



*
Here's what did get accomplished:

• "Retire" from my job.  Heck yes I did!
• Cook purely from scratch... well, I mostly did this.
• Meditate daily and keep stressors down.  HUGE success here.
• Doubled the garden space.  Weigh all produce for accuracy.
• Deep-clean and declutter house.  Technically I did this, but then it re-cluttered halfway.  It's an ongoing battle with my hoardy instincts.
• Paint and furnish the extra bedrooms... did 2 out of 3, not bad.  Put in new carpet and beds!
• Minimized the overall budget.  Not as much as I could have, and still plan to do more next year, but it was enough.  Kinda shocked that we didn't really feel the loss of my income.
• Making friends... the neighbors' kids come to play with Stormy on occasion now, and I have 1 dog park friend.
• Increased disaster preparedness to cover 3 months of bugging-in survival.
• Slowly train Stormy to carry water on hikes.
• Get pregnant, stay pregnant.  Damn right, I had that baby!
• Keep blogging.  Technically I did not give up, despite very few posts.
• Host a party... there were 2.

Major 2014 goals not accomplished:

• Double the garden produce.  Didn't even make a 10th of last year's.  Horrible weather patterns, horrible luck with seedlings, mysterious tomato failures, lots of mammal and codling moth pests.
• Become a badass hiker.  A high-risk pregnancy meant an end to my hiking... doctor's orders.
• Build enough stock for the Etsy store to actually start the store.  But I did learn to crochet!
• 2014 food storage plan... only did about a 4th of it or less.  Pregnancy food aversions, ugh.
• Hand-make gifts for the holidays... well, I did a few of them.