Quarterly Resolutions

January 5th, 2010 · No Comments · Ongoing Projects, Quarterly Resolutions

It’s the beginning of January 2010, and that means Quarterly Resolutions! I am sucking at these right now, so either I need to step up or I need to back down on what I’m expecting out of myself. I gave myself this last weekend to finish up stuff for the quarter

Stuff I Got Done:

I saw three AFI movies! I’m proud of this because I thought I’d only seen one. But I watched On the Waterfront, Ben-Hur, and Mutiny on the Bounty (the 1935 version with Clark Gable, which is only available on VHS around these parts). This leaves 11 films on both AFI lists. This is beginning to feel like a goal that I might accomplish this year.
I read… one book. I read several books, but I only finished one: Freakonomics, by Steven Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. Books I haven’t finished don’t count. Short story and essay collections that I haven’t finished don’t count (I have to read all of the contents of the book). Argh. I need to go on more trips, because I read a lot more when confined to airports/airplanes. Also, I’m forced to finish books that way.
Open-ended goals: I was pretty stable with the gym-going, though I got fast and loose with the eating in the month of December, but we upped our gym-going to match it, for the most part. I would have gained a lot more if we hadn’t been going to the gym as often as we did. So that’s good. I met up with my International Center friend once for dinner, and went to see my grandparents a few times.
I participated in the CAL rotations for October and January, and the exhibit with the Jeff City Photo Club in December. I took photos for the October meeting of the Jeff City Photo Club (the theme was Waterways, and I got second place in the digital/projected division!). But I also started my 365 project, and that’s been quite an accomplishment for me, photo-wise. It meant that I did get out and do some autumn photos, and I was pretty happy with them.
I cleaned my closet and switched out to fall clothes.
I did take some trips to Goodwill. I put some stuff on Freecycle. I took some stuff that was intended for Freecycle to Goodwill. It’s out of my house, and that is nice.
I cleaned the garage, or, at least, it was clean at one point. (It’s not so clean again.) But I broke down an immense number of cardboard boxes and put them on Freecycle, and the rest went to cardboard recycling, and that part of the garage has stayed pretty clean.
Gardening! I did do some! I stripped out the front flowerbeds and put down mulch throughout the front. This was a big weekend with lots of weed-pulling. I also cut back an enormous amount of goldenrod, honeysuckle, and other huge weeds from the north side of the house. It was a very successful weekend, that weekend.
Christmas! I did cards and gifts, though not as many as usual. I tried very hard to scale back. I think I was successful.
Road trips- I went to Branson and Chicago. I thought about going to Des Moines, but it didn’t work out. And I’m planning to go to Yellowstone National Park in the late spring, though I haven’t worked out all the details yet.
I had a Halloween party.
House-wise, I have two kinds of rooms. One is clean, and the other is a godawful mess. Most of the house falls into the first category. These rooms are mostly finished, decoration-wise. I have hung up lots of pictures and put down rugs and arranged bookshelves, and things look good. After a weekend of not doing much, these rooms get a little untidy, but I generally don’t let them stay untidy for very long. I tend to pick up after myself. When visitors come by, I don’t usually stress out too much about cleaning for them because the rooms are usually pretty clean.

Stuff I Didn’t Get Done:

I didn’t see five AFI movies- I only saw three. I only read one book.
I didn’t participate in the Jeff City Photo Club monthly contest in November or December, even though I’ve been taking a picture every day since October 11.
Gardening. I did not do everything that I wanted to do, gardening-wise. I didn’t even touch that stupid round flowerbed in the back. I didn’t buy any shrubs and plant them, and I didn’t put down all the mulch that I bought (and the remaining pile of it is now a punchline for visitors to my house). That successful weekend was the only weekend that I worked on it. The rest of it is still mostly untouched.
House-wise, I have two kinds of rooms. One is clean, and the other is a god-awful mess. Most of the house falls into the first category, but I have two rooms that fall squarely in the second category. They are in terrible shape. I have not even touched them in months, except to sometimes ponder how exactly I plan to clean them up. My problem is that most of the stuff is just junk, and I have a hard time figuring out how to dispose of junk. (It can’t be recycled, and is too small/stupid for Freecycle, and I hate throwing it away, so it just sits there and makes me feel guilty.) So, though I am happy that I have a lot of tidy rooms in my house, it pains me that I have two rooms that are very untidy.
I did not work on the retro blog, or on the Etsy print sales thing, or on the photo blog.

And, now, Stuff I Want to Do! If you don’t remember or don’t know why I do this, here’s a link to the first time I set up these for myself, which was the last quarter of 2008. I started this because I was concerned with the fact that I only had three months left in 2008 and I still had a whole stack of things I wanted to do before the year ended, so I decided to give myself a short-term goal. I’ve done this every three months since then. Sometimes it’s been more successful than other times, but overall it’s been great.

Quarterly Resolutions for First Quarter of 2010:

These are my open-ended goals in life: see my grandparents often, see my International Center friend often, continue diet & exercise.
My photographic goals: participate in the Columbia Art League rotation, take new pictures for the photo club meetings every month, and
365 Project. This was a new project that I started in mid-October. The idea is to take a photo every day for a year, and so far I have been doing very well. I missed one day right after Christmas and it was very disappointing. So I want to continue doing this every day.
Read three books! I have a stack of them by my bed, and I don’t know why I can’t just finish some of them.
Watch five AFI movies. I’m coming down to the end of them now, and I would like to finish this goal this year. That should not be so hard to accomplish.
Since “finish the house” is an enormous goal that will never have a feeling of closure, I’m going to go with this one: “clean up the two really messy rooms in the house”. I can leave the garage alone, I can leave the attic alone, and I don’t have to fix the dining room chairs if I don’t want, but I need to get those two rooms clean so that I can use them without embarrassment. I will forgo the usual requirements about Freecycle and Goodwill if I can just clean up those rooms and take the unnecessary stuff to the garage, where it can sit for all eternity (or until next quarter).

Gardening! Gardening always makes it on this list. I always have gardening to do. I want to plant new shrubs in the flowerbeds by the house, and I want to do it before it’s too warm. I want to strip out that small round flowerbed in the backyard, and I want to do it before March so that I can put down grass seed. I want to make the flowerbeds on the north side of the house smaller, which essentially means removing the rock border and mowing closer to the house. Not too hard! But we’ll see where I am in April.
Road trips! I want to go somewhere! I am being vague here, so this could mean a trip out of state or just a trip to St. Louis. I am fine as long as there’s a car and I’m in it. I also have a trip that I want to schedule for June.
Taxes! I would like to return to the simpler time when I would do taxes around the time of the Super Bowl, rather than at the end of March or in early April.
Dinner. I used to have the resolution to go out to lunch at least once a week, and I dropped that as a resolution for last quarter because I wasn’t doing it, and now I am doing it! At least once a week I go to lunch with a friend. So now I have the resolution to cook myself dinner more often. I haven’t cooked for myself in weeks, but I have a freezer full of vegetables and no reason not to. So that’s a resolution.
Blog pictures. I post real photos at my photo blog, and I keep up with my 365 there. But I sometimes take terrible photos with my iPhone and I want to put them on this blog more often. Blogs with pictures are much more interesting than just reading my whinging. So I want to post more random iPhone pictures. Like the one here!