2010 wrap-up

It seems like everybody is making their goals for 2011, but I need a few days — or months — to recover from the ones I made in 2010. I just finished number 4 on Dec. 31, after burning the midnight oil all week. Here's how I did:

2010 Goals (highest priorities in blue)
1. Finish novel. Not finished. I worked pretty consistently on this the first half of the year, thanks to some friends from NaNoWriMo who met for weekly write-ins all year long! But last summer I hit a mental wall with my story and hurt my shoulder so bad I couldn't type, so I had to take a break. I just started working on it again two weeks ago.

2. Declutter. Not finished. One step forward and two steps back. I made a little progress, then left my day job and moved all my newspaper files home. I've also been acquiring books, as if I'm going to open up a bookstore or something...

3. Get published in a magazine. Not accomplished. I sent one query and never followed up. But this was a lower priority item.

4. Make a Storybook for a relative who had a big birthday this fall. Done! This involved scanning Daddy's negatives from the 1950s and getting names and information. After my injury, a broken scanner, and then a new scanner that wouldn't work, most of this was done in the past few weeks.

5. Make a Storybook of my trip to Ireland. Done. I finished this last summer, thanks to the deadline of a prepaid coupon.

6. Index the 18th-century church records from the meeting in Ireland. Not finished. But I made good progress on this the first half of the year, with 321 pages of handwritten documents indexed so far.

7. Run in a 5K. Done. I was so busy I suddenly had two weeks to go with no training, so I had to walk quite a bit, but I finished! Hopefully this year I will walk less.

8. Go on a mission trip. Done. In March I went with the Friends Disaster Service to help build a house in Jean Lafitte, Louisiana. People there are still trying to recover from Hurricane Katrina.

9. Most of my minor goals fell by the wayside, partly because I focused on the major goals, which is good, and possibly because they weren't specific enough. I did blog and network more than last year and I'm starting to get a better handle on the time it takes to do that. I did not market my first book, work very well on my direct sales business or scrapbook the past few years. I did manage to visit some of my older relatives, something that's very important but often gets pushed to the back burner.

I was distracted by some new goals that popped up, such as traveling to New York and Florida and looking for a job. Thankfully, I'll be starting two part-time jobs this week, and I'm excited about both of them. I also wrote a draft memoir (56,000 words!) for NaNoWriMo in November.

I know I will want to focus on my novel, and there may be a major trip this spring... But I plan to see what the new work routine is like and "let the dust settle" before I plan out 2011.