Goals 'n Stuff

It's kind of late to start making New Year's resolutions, but today at church I started thinking about goals. I think someone was speaking about it in their sacrament meeting talk, and I began to reflect on how I need to write down my goals and be more active in working to accomplish them, instead of just drifting along. So I'm going to share a few here, and consider them my resolutions for the new year.

1. Become more spiritual. Yes, I go to church and all that stuff, but there is definitely room for improvement here. For example, I want to go to the temple this year. The other thing I can do is read my scriptures more often. Also, I want to prepare my Relief Society lessons more than a day or two in advance!

2. Date. It just might be good for me.

3. Finish projects. I'm going to start a quilt this month and finish it by December. And if possible, I'm going to finish a quilt I started about 3 years ago and set aside.

4. Be a real aunt. I feel like I hardly know my neices and nephew, and I want to change that.

5. Spend less money on myself and waste less. I've already started carrying a backpack to the grocery store, but I have to practically force the store employees not to give me plastic bags. I'm not going to buy bottles of water, or throw away things that can be recycled (anyway, recycling is a law in NYC) or made into something new, like cloth, string, paper (I can use the other side of printer paper for notes and stuff), etc.

6. Make art. I had to leave my printing press in North Carolina, and I know that school is my prime concern at this point in my life, but I don't want to totally abandon the act of creating art. I want to find time to draw and paint, so that my skills don't atrophy.

So... I think that's enough for now. Of course I could also add stuff like "try out a new recipe each week" and "write in my journal every day" but I make those goals every year, and never stick to them. The trick with my goal-setting and goal-keeping is to keep the goals general enough that they are possible, yet specific enough that I have some sense of accomplishment. So within each of the above goals, I'm going to try and set smaller goals. For example, with goal #2, I'm going to try to talk to at least three guys each Sunday at church, so that they know I exist and am a nice person. With goal #3, I will give myself deadlines for sections of the quilt, and I will set aside time to work on it instead of watching TV or surfing the Internet.

I'm really excited about these goals, and feel like they will really be good for me. At the end of the year, I'll blog about how well I did!