As the year wends its tired, bloated way to a close, it’s time to think about the dreaded ‘New Year’s Resolutions’. Of course, sometimes we need to have goals and aims rather than just ‘I resolve never to…’. For many years, I had only three: read more, write more and be less of a loser. All three probably still apply for 2016.
Last year I set some more specific aims in response to a post on one of my favourite blogs, Fluent in 3 Months. Benny had some good advice, which was to make sure your goals are concrete (a bit like the SMART targets we’re always setting with the kids at school).
As you can see in his comments, I set out the following aims for myself (with a languages slant, as per the blog):
Learn enough Japanese to get by in Japan: Achieved! I learned how to read hiragana and katakana plus a few basic kanji, which meant I was able to locate a Monjayaki restaurant in Tokyo with no romaji sign. It was really delicious so the pain of doing my Memrise/WaniKani reps was worth it! I was also able to ask a few basic questions of tour guides and bus drivers. Okay, I wasn’t conversing freely, but I learned enough to make the trip fun. I should probably revise this at some point because I haven’t done any Japanese since August.
Speak some Greek every week: Big fat fail.I have the opportunity most weeks at dancing and I do try sometimes…but not hard enough.
Finish reading ‘O Xari Poter kai o aixmalotos tou Azkampan’ (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban) by September: Didn’t even crack the spine. Oimoi.
Run 10k by October: Lol. No.
Get my driving licence by April: Took me until August but I did finally manage it!
Write a new book by November: Ahahahahaha…no. I did 5k or so on my fantasy project, realised it was all wrong, started over a few times, gave up, did 10k on my Greek island WIP, lost steam, then got wrapped up in editing/rewriting The Hunt is On. It hasn’t been a total washout on the writing front (more on that later), but it has felt bitty.
Oh, but I did manage to read a lot more books than last year!
With my list of failures to haunt me, I’m just not sure what goals to set for 2016. I’ll be working on that in coming days and will try to update you when I’ve decided.
On a less concrete level, though, I definitely want to enjoy myself more. Some of the best times I had this year were those where I took a bit of a leap and said yes to things I wouldn’t have done ordinarily. Case in point: a completely random but hilarious day I spent singing sea-shanties with my lovely friend Hannah whom I hadn’t seen for absolutely ages. Having not sung a note for six years, I was initially quite scared about it, but ended up having a great day and came home totally refreshed by the experience of doing something fun with new people. Similarly, pushing myself to go to SRFC more often was a good thing to do, even though it can be intimidating to go into a space full of people I’ve never spoken to before. Or how about when I rocked up to a Cretan music gig on my own (on a schoolnight!) and danced till I couldn’t? The last few months of 2015 were a bit hard (okay, a lot hard), but at the same time I come away from them with a greater awareness that life is for living and I need to spend a lot more time out there doing that than wallowing at home.
So maybe: do one thing that scares me every month?
Feel free to share your goals – writing, languages, books or otherwise – below, or cry with me about how much we failed in 2015.
Catherine Queen 
Reblogged this on Lynette Davis.