New Year

I told myself that I would be more productive this year. It is half way through January and I feel like like I have put this off enough already -- so here I am! Writing this blog post.

Every year I come up with a set of resolutions that I can never stick with. They usually are things about myself that I want to change - eat better, lose weight, be a nicer person, etc. I generally give up on those the first week of January because of a number of reasons. This year I decided that instead of trying to change who I am as a person, I would focus more on accomplishing tasks with immediate gratification and results.

I've been in a creative slump recently, so a lot of the goals I want to achieve in 2012 are art/craft/writing related. I always have so many ideas for creative projects and then I never do them. I don't know why. It isn't like I haven't got the time to do these things and to do them well. I just lack motivation. I'm hoping this blog will be a sort of accountability method for me to stay on task.

I've got actually two lists. Things I am going to accomplish this year and things I would like to accomplish but may not so I won't be upset if those don't happen.

List number one is what I WILL accomplish this year.

• Read 75 books this year. I think this is very achievable because I read 53 last year and there were several months that I didn't read anything at all. I decided to be more organized about it this year and have made a reading list and divided books up into months so I can stay on track. The list is hovering just above 100, but I know that things will get busy at some point so I am going to cut myself some slack.
  
• The next one is to just make more art/crafts. I really love crafting and never make enough time for it. So starting a small side crafting business type thing and attending more craft fairs as a vendor. This is the one resolution that I am most unsure about. But we'll see. I also sort of lumped blogging/being more active online into this category for some reason.
  
• Experiment with book binding once a month. I love books. I love handmade books. I just want to learn all of the different ways to make books.
  
• This one goes with the one above, kind of. I would like to write more fiction. Hopefully writing little stories and then designing and binding the books will be done. I mean, I would be happy just writing more, in general, not necessarily making books for everything I write.
  
• Complete NaNoWriMo and ScriptFrenzy this year. I didn't attempt ScriptFrenzy last year and I managed to complete half of NaNoWriMo, which is the best I have ever done. I have ideas for both. I just need to be dedicated to finishing them. 

I think I will save my second list for another blog post. Or mention the things on the list if I ever end up doing them. I think I will make a post that will list all of the books I have read and will update it as I read new ones.