2009 in Review, 2010 Goals
Dec. 29th, 2009 05:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
unforthI know it's a couple days early for this post, but it looks like I won't be home much on the 31st, and I'm trying to gear myself up for getting work done, which has purposefully been involving a combination of doing work things and doing personal things on my list of things to do - on the assumption that EVERY accomplishment that involves anything I can even vaguely call "work" helps me to gear up and get moving.
I wanted to start by stating an unequivocal list of things I feel I've accomplished this year, without reference to the goals I set last January, and without bashing myself.
1. Work. In 2009 I wrote 6 grants, primarily in February and March. These grants scored the highest peer review scores I've ever gotten on grants I wrote myself. Despite a lot of reverses, I still managed to work an average just under 19 hours per week for the entire year (and that includes averaging in all the weeks I didn't work. The busiest months were January, February and March, when I worked...about as much as a regular person, just under 40 hours per week. Right. No bashing self. I also moved steadily towards being the main person in the company doing the bulk of the work. I was lead evaluator for 9 grants, and support for 3 others. I completed 8 annual reports, including one final evaluation report. Taking into account the time I spent traveling this year (granted I worked during some of this), I worked an average of 27 hours per week during the weeks when I wasn't traveling.
2. Travel. This was the year of crazy amounts of travel. Locations and approximate dates:
Washington DC for Inauguration, 1/17 - 1/21: Stood at the foot of the Washington Monument and cheered along with 2 million other people for our new president, with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sapphohestia
Puerto Rico, 2/2 - 2/12: The most relaxing trip I've ever taken.
Walkabout, 4/1 - 4/21: My forced departure from home due to the fricken bed bugs. Visited lots of Civil War sites, and got to see the first regular season game at Citifield.
Chicago and Bloomington, 5/23 - 5/31: Formoonartemis76's wedding.
Origins, 6/24 - 6/28: Gaming convention in Columbus
Gencon, 8/12 - 8/16: Gaming convention in Indianapolis
Europe, 9/1 - 9/21: Paris, Amsterdam and London.
Bloomington, 10/16 - 10/26: With stops in Columbus and Chicago.
Washington DC, 12/8 - 12/11: TAH Project director's conference
Bloomington, Chicago and Texas for the holidays, 12/12 - 12/27: Holiday type travel
All in all, I spent a ludicrous 109 days of my year traveling - 30%. During much of this travel, I worked very little or not at all. Most of it was pretty good, though I learned a valuable lesson about traveling too much and that it actually kinda sucks. Still, I got to go back to the Louvre, see Inauguration, visit Shiloh battlefield, and generally do a lot of awesome things.
3. Writing. I finished my third novel-length manuscript. I then edited about a third of it.
4. Crafts. I came within a sight of finishing a full-size cross stitch, made an awesome uniform for Halloween, spent some time on other cross stitch, made a hat and scarf, and started drafting a cosplay pattern. I continued to pursue my interest in photography, taking 10s of thousands of pictures, and had an idea of how I could make some money from doing this. I started drawing again in the spring, though I didn't sustain it for as long as I'd like.
5. Friends. I did a decent job of keeping in touch with friends. I've gotten to see friends from across the country at various social events, and nominally stay in touch with them in the intervening time, with mixed success. I started datingozziel, and don't think I've catastrophically screwed up the long-distance relationship thing. I also did a considerably better job of keeping in touch with family, except my dad, with whom I rather dropped the ball.
6. Exercise and diet. Though I haven't lost any weight, I did launch into exercise routines which I sustained periodically, including two months+ in the winter, a month in the spring, and close to two months in late fall and winter. In between, I walked a whole ton (though perhaps not as much as in 2008). I've maintained right around the same weight all year, with some ups as high as 163 and downs as low as 155; I'm on the low end of that just now (or I was before holiday travel... ;) ) I've maintained a pretty healthy diet and spent increasing amounts of time cooking. I've stopped looking at how I eat as a diet in the "lose weight" sense, and instead have just changed the way I eat (except when I'm traveling, when all bets are off...)...but I always go back to eating well as soon as I get home.
7. Education. I applied to go back to college to study Geology. Still haven't heard back...
8. Soul searching. I spent a whole shit ton of time trying to figure out who I am and what I want out of life. Made some progress. Not as much as I'd like, but I do think I made some. In general, I've tackled being less hard on myself, and setting goals that I can reach. For example, "always improve on trips to the gym" is just unreasonable. "Do the best I can" is reasonable. I've worked on making this kind of adjustment in many aspects of my life.
9. Reading. I did a lot of personal reading this year. I completed 6 books that were 900 pages or more (at least two of which were over 1100 pages), and did a lot towards pursuing my interests in science and history. I read primarily non-fiction for the first time in my life, and have found I have decreasing interest in reading fiction.
10. Illness. I've managed to get sick five times this year (March, 2x in May including one that was probably swine flu, September, and December, just getting over that now) and still push forward.
11. Bedbugs. I overcame having bed bugs in my apartment twice. This gave me a new attitude towards my belongings, and I managed to chuck a lot of the stuff that I owned, greatly reducing the amount of random fricken stuff in my life.
12. House. I bought a co-op, which took from July until the end of October to complete, for $125,000. I provided about 2/3rds of the down payment of $25k myself, and I then payed out of pocket for new furnishings, too. I moved into said apartment (with some help fromozziel, and a little from ultimabaka, in November. I've made two official mortgage payments. Yay, Bronx!
13. Museum going in NYC. I managed, for the most part, to maintain going to the museums that I love. I went to the Met around once a month, and had numerous visits to the Botanical Gardens and the American Museum of Natural History. I also went to the Frick, the Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum, the National Museum of the American Indian NYC Annex, the Museum of Art and Design, MoMA, the New York Historical Society, the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, the Aquarium, the Queens Museum of Art, and I was sad to only make it to the Zoo once. I also went to a whole mess of museums in other countries.
14. Sports. I amply demonstrated to myself that even in a terrible season, I love my Metsies. I went to 4 Mets games, plus a minor league game in Ohio. I've also nominally gotten interested in Football, mostly cause of friends and boyfriend interest, rooting for the Colts and the Giants.
15. Art collecting. I crossed some mystical threshold such that I truly think of myself as an art collector. I framed a lot of what I owned and hung it all over my new apartment, and realized just how much I've gotten that I love. I bought "Man with Gold Earring," and have paid off just under a quarter of it's price.
16. Japanese. I didn't get back to Japan, which was very sad but ended up unavoidable, but I did periodically mess around and translate things, and I recently bought a textbook and started studying seriously again.
17. Food. Though in 2008, I called this a battle won, I thought I'd toss in that I once more have surmounted some food-related issues. I've started eating soup. I didn't gag on tomato skin. I eat a salad every year. ...it's good. That's all.
18. Communication. I think I've made a lot of strides in improving my communication skills, especially in learning to express things that bother, worry or upset me in a constructive way. It's an ongoing process, but I think I'm way better than I was last year, when I was already better than I'd been the year before.
19. Turned 27. Still not dead.
Those are the things that spring to mind.
I was going to write a bit about my failures of 2009, but ya know what? Screw it. I don't want to think about the stuff that was frustrating and upsetting. The more I wrote the successes, the more I realized that...I've done a LOT this year, and shouldn't be so hard on myself. And hey, isn't that the point of writing up something like this?
At the beginning of the year, I set myself a list of 12 goals. I thought I'd review them, and see how I did.
1. More Work. I have a personal goal of 25 hours/week this year, and some plans on how to meet it. I have a bunch of stuff that's optional that I really, really want to manage to do, and some stuff that's required that I don't want to allow to fall through the cracks.
I didn't hit this goal, though I tend to think it's through no fault of my own. If I hadn't been traveling so damn much (some of which was unavoidable) I think I'd have been closer. As it is, I did finish everything I had to, which has to count for something. Some stuff still falls through the cracks, though.
2. More Different Culture. I want to go to the movies more, I want to go to live music more, I want to go to all the museums I haven't been to in the city, all that kind of thing.
I didn't manage to get to the movies hardly at all, and only a little live music, but I did work on collecting more museums. I have plans to do all three of these things in the next week, so I think I'm feeling pretty good about this part of life.
3. More Travel. There are already trips being planned for this year - mom and I hope to get to Puerto Rico for a week or two in early February, and the family is going with my grandfather to London and Paris next summer. I'd also like to get back to Japan - desperately, frantically would like to, I miss it so much - and I have some domestic travel I'm hoping to accomplish as well. It's a lot - more than I'll be able to actually do, I expect - but it'll be fun either way.
Hahahaha. This year, I learned that there's such a thing as too much travel. I didn't get to any new countries this year, and I didn't get to Japan, but I did do a bunch of domestic travel, and to PR and Europe.
4. More Reading. I'm already succeeding at this, I just have to keep it up.
Hey, here's one I solidly accomplished! Though I wish I'd read even more, and watched less TV, still I managed to read a lot this year.
5. More Writing. Or at least an equal amount of it!
I didn't write as much in 2009 as I did in 2010, but I finished the Golden Age novel, and edited, and wrote a ton for work, so I don't feel too bad about this.
6. More Crafts.
This was a very frustrating goal for this year. I put a ton of work into finishing a cross stitch, only to find that it had bed bugs literally on it. Needless to say, that piece is still unfinished and in storage. Then I got bed bugs again and had to store the replacement project. This was really fricken annoying, and so I stopped doing crafts rather than risk them getting continually infested. Once I moved, I started again - in the last two months I made my complex Halloween costume, a hat and scarf, bought materials to make dolls, and started a quilt...so I'm back on track on this one. And it wasn't because I didn't WANT to craft!
7. Volunteer. I really want to volunteer. I just haven't been able to figure out where! This year, I will figure it out, and I will get off my ass and help someone just because I can. :)
Epic fail. With all the travel, I just didn't have the down time necessary to meet this goal. I do have some plans for volunteering places in 2010, though...so we'll see how it goes.
8. More Exercise. Wii Fit, how I want thee!
Despite some off periods, I feel like I strongly succeeded in this. I'm leaving 2009 with a good, solid routine, which only gotten broken this last week because I've been sick. Assuming I wake up feeling well, I'm starting again tomorrow - if I succeed at this, I'll declare this goal a win.
9. Learn to cook! Seriously!
Made more progress on this, and now feel like I can cook if I want to, or not.
10. Continue trying to figure out what I want to do with myself.
This I definitely did, and I think I found the answer: geology or paleontology. It's for this year to see if that's right.
11. Study More Japanese.
Not much success on this, but I'm still working at it, and I guess that's what counts. I haven't just stopped...
12. And the big one...MAKE FRIENDS. I can do it! Dammit!
Epic fucking fail. Again. But someone...it's not bothering me as much as last year. I think I've gotten more comfortable being on my own, though there are moments when I realize just how much I miss that feeling of belonging in a tightly knit group of people, and it brings tears to my eyes. Sigh.
So...what next? I met with mixed success in meeting last years goals, but in generally I feel pretty positive about many of them - some I deprioritized, some I failed, some I met...but what about this year?
1. Be Easier On Myself. This is an unending struggle. I've tried to synthesize something thatswan_tower does, and have a list of aspects of my life that I simply won't apologize for, but I haven't managed this so far.
2. Work. I'd like to be clocking more hours. Lets try for 20 per week this year...
3. Relationships and communications. Just keep on improving here.
4. Money management. There's no excuse for always feeling like I'm broke with the amount that I make. I started a fiscal spreadsheet today, and I'm going to try to first find out just where the hell all my money is going, and then how to fix it.
5. Stay home. It's not that I don't want to travel - I definitely do - but enough already! I want at least a few two - three month periods where I don't travel anywhere except to B-ton to seeozziel. And I can work from there. I just want some time to establish some normal fricken routines.
6. Writing and editing. I'd love to look back at this list at the end of 2011 and know that I finished the first edit run on the Golden Age novel. That seems to me to be a modest, achievable goal.
7. Next career. Even if I don't end up back in school, I'd like to make progress on pursuing my interests towards whatever comes next.
8. Drum lessons. I've picked out the place. I've looked up the price. They get back from break on Monday, and I'm gonna call then and see if I can do this!
Well, that's everything I can think of for now. I'll probably come up with more - and just update this over the next few days when I do. It's always interesting to see what mattered to me a year ago, and what matters to me now...I think it's good that the list always changes, it feels right.
Happy New Year (a couple days early), Everyone!
I wanted to start by stating an unequivocal list of things I feel I've accomplished this year, without reference to the goals I set last January, and without bashing myself.
1. Work. In 2009 I wrote 6 grants, primarily in February and March. These grants scored the highest peer review scores I've ever gotten on grants I wrote myself. Despite a lot of reverses, I still managed to work an average just under 19 hours per week for the entire year (and that includes averaging in all the weeks I didn't work. The busiest months were January, February and March, when I worked...about as much as a regular person, just under 40 hours per week. Right. No bashing self. I also moved steadily towards being the main person in the company doing the bulk of the work. I was lead evaluator for 9 grants, and support for 3 others. I completed 8 annual reports, including one final evaluation report. Taking into account the time I spent traveling this year (granted I worked during some of this), I worked an average of 27 hours per week during the weeks when I wasn't traveling.
2. Travel. This was the year of crazy amounts of travel. Locations and approximate dates:
Washington DC for Inauguration, 1/17 - 1/21: Stood at the foot of the Washington Monument and cheered along with 2 million other people for our new president, with
sapphohestiaPuerto Rico, 2/2 - 2/12: The most relaxing trip I've ever taken.
Walkabout, 4/1 - 4/21: My forced departure from home due to the fricken bed bugs. Visited lots of Civil War sites, and got to see the first regular season game at Citifield.
Chicago and Bloomington, 5/23 - 5/31: For
moonartemis76's wedding. Origins, 6/24 - 6/28: Gaming convention in Columbus
Gencon, 8/12 - 8/16: Gaming convention in Indianapolis
Europe, 9/1 - 9/21: Paris, Amsterdam and London.
Bloomington, 10/16 - 10/26: With stops in Columbus and Chicago.
Washington DC, 12/8 - 12/11: TAH Project director's conference
Bloomington, Chicago and Texas for the holidays, 12/12 - 12/27: Holiday type travel
All in all, I spent a ludicrous 109 days of my year traveling - 30%. During much of this travel, I worked very little or not at all. Most of it was pretty good, though I learned a valuable lesson about traveling too much and that it actually kinda sucks. Still, I got to go back to the Louvre, see Inauguration, visit Shiloh battlefield, and generally do a lot of awesome things.
3. Writing. I finished my third novel-length manuscript. I then edited about a third of it.
4. Crafts. I came within a sight of finishing a full-size cross stitch, made an awesome uniform for Halloween, spent some time on other cross stitch, made a hat and scarf, and started drafting a cosplay pattern. I continued to pursue my interest in photography, taking 10s of thousands of pictures, and had an idea of how I could make some money from doing this. I started drawing again in the spring, though I didn't sustain it for as long as I'd like.
5. Friends. I did a decent job of keeping in touch with friends. I've gotten to see friends from across the country at various social events, and nominally stay in touch with them in the intervening time, with mixed success. I started dating
ozziel, and don't think I've catastrophically screwed up the long-distance relationship thing. I also did a considerably better job of keeping in touch with family, except my dad, with whom I rather dropped the ball.6. Exercise and diet. Though I haven't lost any weight, I did launch into exercise routines which I sustained periodically, including two months+ in the winter, a month in the spring, and close to two months in late fall and winter. In between, I walked a whole ton (though perhaps not as much as in 2008). I've maintained right around the same weight all year, with some ups as high as 163 and downs as low as 155; I'm on the low end of that just now (or I was before holiday travel... ;) ) I've maintained a pretty healthy diet and spent increasing amounts of time cooking. I've stopped looking at how I eat as a diet in the "lose weight" sense, and instead have just changed the way I eat (except when I'm traveling, when all bets are off...)...but I always go back to eating well as soon as I get home.
7. Education. I applied to go back to college to study Geology. Still haven't heard back...
8. Soul searching. I spent a whole shit ton of time trying to figure out who I am and what I want out of life. Made some progress. Not as much as I'd like, but I do think I made some. In general, I've tackled being less hard on myself, and setting goals that I can reach. For example, "always improve on trips to the gym" is just unreasonable. "Do the best I can" is reasonable. I've worked on making this kind of adjustment in many aspects of my life.
9. Reading. I did a lot of personal reading this year. I completed 6 books that were 900 pages or more (at least two of which were over 1100 pages), and did a lot towards pursuing my interests in science and history. I read primarily non-fiction for the first time in my life, and have found I have decreasing interest in reading fiction.
10. Illness. I've managed to get sick five times this year (March, 2x in May including one that was probably swine flu, September, and December, just getting over that now) and still push forward.
11. Bedbugs. I overcame having bed bugs in my apartment twice. This gave me a new attitude towards my belongings, and I managed to chuck a lot of the stuff that I owned, greatly reducing the amount of random fricken stuff in my life.
12. House. I bought a co-op, which took from July until the end of October to complete, for $125,000. I provided about 2/3rds of the down payment of $25k myself, and I then payed out of pocket for new furnishings, too. I moved into said apartment (with some help from
ozziel, and a little from ultimabaka, in November. I've made two official mortgage payments. Yay, Bronx!13. Museum going in NYC. I managed, for the most part, to maintain going to the museums that I love. I went to the Met around once a month, and had numerous visits to the Botanical Gardens and the American Museum of Natural History. I also went to the Frick, the Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum, the National Museum of the American Indian NYC Annex, the Museum of Art and Design, MoMA, the New York Historical Society, the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, the Aquarium, the Queens Museum of Art, and I was sad to only make it to the Zoo once. I also went to a whole mess of museums in other countries.
14. Sports. I amply demonstrated to myself that even in a terrible season, I love my Metsies. I went to 4 Mets games, plus a minor league game in Ohio. I've also nominally gotten interested in Football, mostly cause of friends and boyfriend interest, rooting for the Colts and the Giants.
15. Art collecting. I crossed some mystical threshold such that I truly think of myself as an art collector. I framed a lot of what I owned and hung it all over my new apartment, and realized just how much I've gotten that I love. I bought "Man with Gold Earring," and have paid off just under a quarter of it's price.
16. Japanese. I didn't get back to Japan, which was very sad but ended up unavoidable, but I did periodically mess around and translate things, and I recently bought a textbook and started studying seriously again.
17. Food. Though in 2008, I called this a battle won, I thought I'd toss in that I once more have surmounted some food-related issues. I've started eating soup. I didn't gag on tomato skin. I eat a salad every year. ...it's good. That's all.
18. Communication. I think I've made a lot of strides in improving my communication skills, especially in learning to express things that bother, worry or upset me in a constructive way. It's an ongoing process, but I think I'm way better than I was last year, when I was already better than I'd been the year before.
19. Turned 27. Still not dead.
Those are the things that spring to mind.
I was going to write a bit about my failures of 2009, but ya know what? Screw it. I don't want to think about the stuff that was frustrating and upsetting. The more I wrote the successes, the more I realized that...I've done a LOT this year, and shouldn't be so hard on myself. And hey, isn't that the point of writing up something like this?
At the beginning of the year, I set myself a list of 12 goals. I thought I'd review them, and see how I did.
1. More Work. I have a personal goal of 25 hours/week this year, and some plans on how to meet it. I have a bunch of stuff that's optional that I really, really want to manage to do, and some stuff that's required that I don't want to allow to fall through the cracks.
I didn't hit this goal, though I tend to think it's through no fault of my own. If I hadn't been traveling so damn much (some of which was unavoidable) I think I'd have been closer. As it is, I did finish everything I had to, which has to count for something. Some stuff still falls through the cracks, though.
2. More Different Culture. I want to go to the movies more, I want to go to live music more, I want to go to all the museums I haven't been to in the city, all that kind of thing.
I didn't manage to get to the movies hardly at all, and only a little live music, but I did work on collecting more museums. I have plans to do all three of these things in the next week, so I think I'm feeling pretty good about this part of life.
3. More Travel. There are already trips being planned for this year - mom and I hope to get to Puerto Rico for a week or two in early February, and the family is going with my grandfather to London and Paris next summer. I'd also like to get back to Japan - desperately, frantically would like to, I miss it so much - and I have some domestic travel I'm hoping to accomplish as well. It's a lot - more than I'll be able to actually do, I expect - but it'll be fun either way.
Hahahaha. This year, I learned that there's such a thing as too much travel. I didn't get to any new countries this year, and I didn't get to Japan, but I did do a bunch of domestic travel, and to PR and Europe.
4. More Reading. I'm already succeeding at this, I just have to keep it up.
Hey, here's one I solidly accomplished! Though I wish I'd read even more, and watched less TV, still I managed to read a lot this year.
5. More Writing. Or at least an equal amount of it!
I didn't write as much in 2009 as I did in 2010, but I finished the Golden Age novel, and edited, and wrote a ton for work, so I don't feel too bad about this.
6. More Crafts.
This was a very frustrating goal for this year. I put a ton of work into finishing a cross stitch, only to find that it had bed bugs literally on it. Needless to say, that piece is still unfinished and in storage. Then I got bed bugs again and had to store the replacement project. This was really fricken annoying, and so I stopped doing crafts rather than risk them getting continually infested. Once I moved, I started again - in the last two months I made my complex Halloween costume, a hat and scarf, bought materials to make dolls, and started a quilt...so I'm back on track on this one. And it wasn't because I didn't WANT to craft!
7. Volunteer. I really want to volunteer. I just haven't been able to figure out where! This year, I will figure it out, and I will get off my ass and help someone just because I can. :)
Epic fail. With all the travel, I just didn't have the down time necessary to meet this goal. I do have some plans for volunteering places in 2010, though...so we'll see how it goes.
8. More Exercise. Wii Fit, how I want thee!
Despite some off periods, I feel like I strongly succeeded in this. I'm leaving 2009 with a good, solid routine, which only gotten broken this last week because I've been sick. Assuming I wake up feeling well, I'm starting again tomorrow - if I succeed at this, I'll declare this goal a win.
9. Learn to cook! Seriously!
Made more progress on this, and now feel like I can cook if I want to, or not.
10. Continue trying to figure out what I want to do with myself.
This I definitely did, and I think I found the answer: geology or paleontology. It's for this year to see if that's right.
11. Study More Japanese.
Not much success on this, but I'm still working at it, and I guess that's what counts. I haven't just stopped...
12. And the big one...MAKE FRIENDS. I can do it! Dammit!
Epic fucking fail. Again. But someone...it's not bothering me as much as last year. I think I've gotten more comfortable being on my own, though there are moments when I realize just how much I miss that feeling of belonging in a tightly knit group of people, and it brings tears to my eyes. Sigh.
So...what next? I met with mixed success in meeting last years goals, but in generally I feel pretty positive about many of them - some I deprioritized, some I failed, some I met...but what about this year?
1. Be Easier On Myself. This is an unending struggle. I've tried to synthesize something that
swan_tower does, and have a list of aspects of my life that I simply won't apologize for, but I haven't managed this so far.2. Work. I'd like to be clocking more hours. Lets try for 20 per week this year...
3. Relationships and communications. Just keep on improving here.
4. Money management. There's no excuse for always feeling like I'm broke with the amount that I make. I started a fiscal spreadsheet today, and I'm going to try to first find out just where the hell all my money is going, and then how to fix it.
5. Stay home. It's not that I don't want to travel - I definitely do - but enough already! I want at least a few two - three month periods where I don't travel anywhere except to B-ton to see
ozziel. And I can work from there. I just want some time to establish some normal fricken routines.6. Writing and editing. I'd love to look back at this list at the end of 2011 and know that I finished the first edit run on the Golden Age novel. That seems to me to be a modest, achievable goal.
7. Next career. Even if I don't end up back in school, I'd like to make progress on pursuing my interests towards whatever comes next.
8. Drum lessons. I've picked out the place. I've looked up the price. They get back from break on Monday, and I'm gonna call then and see if I can do this!
Well, that's everything I can think of for now. I'll probably come up with more - and just update this over the next few days when I do. It's always interesting to see what mattered to me a year ago, and what matters to me now...I think it's good that the list always changes, it feels right.
Happy New Year (a couple days early), Everyone!
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