A New Year Has Begun

...And here we go again.  Another year.  Sigh.  Yawn.  Today my middle son turns fifteen, the kids went back to school (Winter Break, what?), Larry went back to work, and I struggled to get my ass out of bed at 6am (hence the yawn).

I haven't sat in my office since the weekend of December 15th.  My mom arrived on the 17th and is still here (currently reading in bed across the hall so I thought I would jump in and write a post).  I will say that I miss sitting in here, writing and creating and looking out my window which is currently grey and flurries are fluttering or falling or whatever flurries do.

My fingers feel slow and my brain a bit sluggish.  Perhaps too many cookies and fried foods.

This time of year always seems to be focused on what the new year will bring and how much better it will be than last year and how this is now the time for weight loss, new workout routines, better eating, better parenting, better keeping in touch, blah blah blah...all of which will be a distant memory before we even get out of winter and not thought of again until this time next year as we reflect on the horrors of 2013 and hope and pray that 2014 will be the best year yet.

Maybe people are just more optimistic than I am.

Which brings me to Resolutions.  Do you make new years resolutions?

I like to take the beginning of the year as a time to re-focus and re-group but I seldom make resolutions anymore kinda like how I don't write in a diary anymore complaining about parents and dreaming of boys.

What I do make are goals.  But, more importantly I break the goals down and create steps and deadlines in which to actually meet the goal.  I make goals, however, all year long, and they change and adapt as I do.  I make goals for summer, goals when the kids go back to school in the fall, goals for year-end, and back again to the beginning.

This year is no different.  I opened my calendar for the first time in almost a month and realized I had planned a whole lot of stuff that has not been done.  In fact, I barely thought about my many ongoing projects during the holidays.  So, the eraser will come out and I will fix and move things around.

I made a list of about six things that I will call goals for at least the first half of the year...some fun things, some personal things, some things that I have been actually thinking about for a long time so now seems as good a time as ever, and the rest are writing related goals.

So, what about you?  Do you make resolutions? Do you keep them?