I am a bit of an obsessive compulsive about making progress. If I’m not making progress, learning lessons, checking things off my to do list, and somehow moving forward, I feel stuck. This attitude is basically the opposite of being present and having gratitude in each moment, which is why I am only a half-assed Buddhist at best, and it is also why I am a Recovering Yogi.
Every year around this time I get in compulsive goal-setting check-in mode and look back at what I wrote down a year ago in terms of goals and stuff. So I clicked back to my Non-New-Years-Resolutions for 2012, and I was pretty pleased to see that I more or less stuck to them. I did not consult with any healers this year, nor did I make any effort to get up earlier (quite the opposite, actually). I did not get better about talking on the phone. Bonus: I actually think I got a lot worse! Yay! I stopped trying to wear heels. I stopped having conversations about yoga on more than the very occasional basis. I did not prepare for a zombie invasion. All of the above means that my year was pretty successful, since not doing all of these things was my goal for 2012. Which is pretty interesting, because before this check-in, if you had asked me what I spent 2012 doing, I probably would have said “whining.”
Here are some things I did end up doing in 2012:
- Took a grammar class, to brush up on my skills, and got an A-minus. (The minus makes me twitchy, but you can’t have everything.) I learned a lot. It was humbling.
- Got published on the New York Times web site, because of my association with Recovering Yogi, in a piece called “Be Wary of the Master.”
- Learned how to make bitters.
- Measured the soil quality of my pit of despair (thanks, Judith) and affirmed once and for all that only cactuses and despondency will grow there.
- Took myself on a creative hooky date almost every month this year.
- Read a ton of really great books.
- Launched Creative Truth or Dare.
- Launched Elderchic with Leslie Munday.
- Rediscovered my love of photography (which I half-majored in in college) via Instagram.
10. Teamed up with Caitlin at Wordisseur as a Content Consultant.
11. Made cold cream, soap and all sorts of other groovy homesteading things from scratch.
12. Saw some really great movies, including, just off the top of my head and recently: Silver Linings Playbook, The Life of Pi (twice), Argo, Anna Karenina, The Sessions and Les Miserables.
13. Edited a few books, including The Lagunitas Story by Tony Magee and Extra Love: The Art of Hands-on Assists by Jill Abelson, and a really great book that I can’t tell you about just yet but am really excited to announce soon.
14. Wrote an e-Cookbook. (Coming in the next week or so.) Sneak peak at cover:
15. Finally got adult stereo speakers for the first time in my life, thanks to one of my best friends in the whole entire world. (Love you.)
Not a bad year! (Well, except for all the parts where I was depressed out of my mind about being old and alone. Let’s not talk about that right now.) What about you guys?
