twenty ten. A resolution free year

resolutions

I don’t do resolutions. Well that’s a sort of lie, what I actually do is make resolutions every month. And always the same ones. And I almost, but not quite manage to keep them.

Although mostly it’s closer to not.

So I don’t intend to make any new year’s resolutions for 2010. If I can’t live up to them on a monthly basis, then a whole year’s worth would be far too demoralising.

And by the way, how are you pronouncing that? Twenty ten, or two thousand and ten? For me the former sounds weird, but when you compare how we’ve vernaculised the years prior to this, it’s more fitting. Who ever said one thousand nine hundred and ninety nine? Only that lonely guy in the comic shop who’l’l never get a date, right?

I do like the concept of resolutions though. I don’t think that they should be repetative – simply regurgitating the previous year’s failures. So what I have decided to do is set myself some challenges for the year.

These challenges can’t involve anything that I could sensibly consider an everyday sort of thing that I am supposed to be doing in the first place. (So being a more patient and loving mother is certainly out. Which is good, since there is NO WAY I could live up to that one!!)

So here, without further ado (or verbose digression – both of which I am prone to) are my new year’s challenges.

  1. Go somewhere to take photos – somewhere I didn’t already happen to be. Go without children. Plan where to go in advance. In other words – make taking the photos the priority, rather than something that just happens while we’re out.
  2. Create a painting/sketching area that I can devote to my children’s book. Take one day a fortnight or month to sketch up the illustrations. Make it live.
  3. Blog less. I don’t want to fill my blog with a post per day – I want less posts, but posts of higher quality. I want to make myself wait 24 hours before releasing a post, having re-read and substantially edited it first. I want better quality writing, rather than more writing.
  4. Grow more. It’s hard to make any challenges regarding the allotment, because that starts to encroach on what would be a normal thing I was planning to do anyway. But I do want to challenge myself to really creatively plant the allotment this year, so that means more companion planting and more doubling up on bed area. Last year I was self sufficient, so this year I need to be that again, and more.
  5. Draw for the hell of it. Paint for the hell of it. Just scribble stuff and get messy. Do art for no reason – like a creative journal that just makes me feel good.
  6. Re-master every scale I ever knew. Remember what the difference between a natural and a melodic minor is. Get my technical ability back up to scratch, and in fact better than scratch. Be horrifically smug at how fucking brilliant I am at playing the flute and piccolo.
  7. Cook things I’ve never cooked before. Make the house smell amazing. Try something new every month at least, and actually use some of those cookbooks I’ve had forever. Use the celariac that arrives in the vegie box instead of letting it go off in the chiller drawer.
  8. Look into the mirror each day and think that I look gorgeous.

Ok, so these challenges are not all likely to happen. Most particularly number 8. That’s not the point – that’s why I’ve set the bar so high. So that I can pick something amazing to achieve, rather than just living up to the mundane set of rules I pretend that I am living my life to.

And if I don’t succeed, at least I might have blown something up in the kitchen, other than the coffee pot. That will be fun!

Categories: manging life

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