Happy New Years everyone! This time of year always comes with mixed emotions for me. Seeing the old year end can make me feel a little sad. But, I in turn, greet the new year full of hope. I've had some success this year as a writer. I actually garnered some paid work which was very exciting. I went to my first writer's conference. I completed a second rewrite on one novel and only lack three final chapters of a rewrite of another. I participated in NaNoWriMo again this year and once again didn't make my 50,000 word goal. But it did force me to work on something new. Well, maybe newer would be a more honest answer. I also made my 100 book reading challenge I set for myself on Goodreads. Sadly, my book collecting habit hasn't abated any. My to-be-read pile grew by several more books over Christmas. My husband told me the other day that we might need to buy another book case, though neither of us could think of a place to put one.
As 2014 drew closer these last few days I've read a lot of the usual posts encouraging me to set goals for the new year. I've seen a few of the normal resolutions that people make each year on Facebook and Twitter. I still haven't set concrete goals for 2014 yet. But for the first time in a couple of years I did make a resolution.
As I was writing in all my upcoming events for the next few months in my 2014 calendar and recording down all the family birthdays I made a startling revelation. Me and my two kids will all be experiencing milestones this year. I'll be entering a new decade of life, my daughter will officially become a teenager, and my son will leave single digit ages behind forever and turn a double digit age for the first time. In another year and a half I will be the mother of a freshman in high school and a pre-adolescent son. YIKES! These thoughts made me feel like hyperventilating for a brief moment in time. Then I reminded myself that none of these things have happened yet. Right now they are both still my little kids, even the one who is almost as tall as me. So my resolution for 2014 is this. To live in the moment. Life passes by way too fast not to live in the present. This doesn't mean I won't set a few career goals for myself in the coming year or resolve to do some things I've not gotten around to doing before (like reading Persuasion and the Hobbit). It is good to give myself something to strive for. Not doing so would take some of the joy out of each day because I wouldn't have anything to look forward to. But I want to remember as much of 2014 as I can next December. So instead of making running lists of the 101 things I'd like to do this year and then stress out when I don't achieve them, I'm going to limit my list making to a few things each month and try to be more spontaneous.
What about you? Have you set any goals or resolutions for the coming year?
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