2006 promises to be another big year. [1] Mark will defend his doctoral thesis no later than July 14. [2] He'll start his career, hopefully in a position that let's me stay at home and write. [3] By the end of this year, Mark will have a couple more letters to add to his name, and he'll have finished a very long, amazing journey. [4] By the end of the year, we could be living in our first home in Arizona. [5] By the end of the year, I could have a revised novel completed and making the rounds to agents and editors. [6] By the end of the year, Drew will be talking, walking, eating solid food, and who knows what else, knowing the way the little guy operates. [7] By the end of the year, I may be thinking about getting pregnant again--afterall, I'd rather have Baby the Second before I'm 30, and I'll be turning 28 in June.
1. Mission accomplished. Score 1 for my future as a psychic.
2. I didn't mention it at the time, but in the days leading up to Mark officially accepting his new job, we were doing a lot of heavy thinking. The salary was significantly lower than we had anticipated, thus making it impossible for me to stop working. But, thanks to some hand-waving verbiage, I'll call this one a wash and still keep my psychic score of +1.
3. See #1 above and also this. But since this is really the same thing as #1, I haven't improved my psychic rating.
4. Only a few days off the mark on this one, seeing as how we close on our house on Jan 11th. And, really, this was out of our hands as the builder gave us a move-in date in either December or January when we did the first glut of paperwork. But I also used that word "could" again. Psychic score improves to +1.5.
5. *falls over laughing* Considering this, I'm going to have to subtract half a point from my rating, even given the use of "could."
6. Got everything right but the talking part. He's still doing his standard gibberish of oohs and aahs, not even really saying "momma" with any discernable intent. I'll give myself a half a point. Back to +1.5.
7. This will wipe the slate clean for my psychic rating. After the hospital fun in August, and the realization that I will have to work at least part-time until Mark starts earning 30% more than he is at the moment, I've made it a requirement for Baby the Second's arrival that I don't have to work after birth.
Looking at my actual goals for 2006:
1) Lose at least 15 pounds by exercising at least twice a week and limiting impulse snacking with scheduled treats; 2) Maintain good mental health by journaling at least twice a week and finding a half hour of "me" time every weekend; 3) Finish a draft of SoD; 4) Do writing exercises regularly to allow for writing play and learning and in order to develop a "backlist" of short stories and narrative nonfiction for routine submission.
1. At one point, I did manage to lose those 15lbs and then some, but that was due to a rather intense bacterial infection, and I put some of that weight back on when I got healthy, and put a bit more back on due to moving stress and the holidays. Plus, I completely abandoned the exercise routine by March. In conclusion: I still have 5 pounds of those 15 to lose.
2. I kept the journaling and "me" time going fairly regularly until August when I got sick and, by the time I was healthy again, was in full-gear for DDJ insanity and moving us to AZ. I started trying to get more me time and journalling going in the past month here to varying degrees of success.
3. See #5 from previous listing. Though, to be fair, at the time I wrote that goal, I thought SoZ was going to be a lot closer to 100K, and I did get up to 82K before I had to go back to word 1. That's pretty damn close to achieving my goal, particularly since I made the goal anticipating that I would be able to stop working in the fall.
4. I achieved this partially. I did manage to complete two novelettes and two short stories in 2006 and submitted one novelette to an anthology and one short story to two mags. Of all that I had hoped to achieve this year, I am most pleased with this result.
I didn't do too bad with my goals this year, despite the health and moving insanity. At the very least, I've earned a cookie.
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