My Goals for 2012
As you can see, I’m still tinkering with the design of my site/blog. Most likely, I’ll be doing that occasionally, trying to get things working that I want to see work and adding things there, removing things here. I’ll make announcements as to any big changes.
So, I’ve been thinking about my goals for 2012 as lots of other people are. And I want to make these goals as public as possible. I want this statement to hold me accountable to what I’ve decided to do. Things always move, shift and change, but these goals are what I ultimately want to have accomplished by the end of this year.
Smaller/Daily Goals
1. Write fiction daily for, at least, 1 hour a day. Sure, may not sound like much to you, but when you’ve been sucked into the nether dimensions of the bowels of the Internet as many times as I have, you gotta start somewhere. And this is my commitment to WRITE fiction. Not blog posts, not social media, not emails, etc., but FICTION.
2. Exercise for an hour a day. Yup, again, I’m typically consumed by the Internet during the day and because of that, coupled with the fact that I tend to be a sedentary person, I’m completely out of shape. Sure, round is a shape, but it’s not a GOOD shape. I need to lose weight and the best way for me to look at doing that is to exercise on a daily basis.
3. Do everything I can do to learn about horses and take riding lessons. I’m a volunteer at the Pikes Peak Therapeutic Riding Center and I love it! I have never had the opportunity to work with horses and I’m extremely excited that I’m able to go out there and learn. I’ve had my first English style riding lesson and I’m looking forward to my second which I have to set up to do in the next week or so (if possible). A long time ago, when I first started taking Natasha to PPTRC, they mentioned that volunteers could receive discounted riding lessons. I’ve asked the volunteer coordinator if she could look into it and I’m hoping for a positive outcome. We’ll see — and if not, we’ll explore other possibilities.
Larger/Year-End Goals
1. Write 2 books this year. I already have a number of ideas that all I need to do is to start fleshing them out and work on structure and outlining them and all that planning “stuff” that I need to do before writing the story itself.
2. Walk the Manitou Incline this summer. The Incline is a mile-long trail of railroad ties that used to have a train taking people to the top of Mount Manitou overlooking Colorado Springs. In that mile, it almost rises straight up in places — the ultimate Stairmaster. My husband, daughter and I walked it halfway last year and have often mentioned that we need to do the full length. This year, I want to do it — regardless of what shape I am in when we decide to do it. Obviously, if I lose weight and exercise, I’ll have an easier time of it. This gives me a goal for my daily exercise.
3. By the end of the year, I want to be comfortable on horseback and around horses. I want being around horses to feel normal to me and I want to have, at least, learned riding basics. This also requires that I lose weight, because the more weight I lose, the better the horse will be able to hold me. This also gives me another goal for exercise: I need to strengthen my core and work on my posture, balance and coordination.
There are lots of other things I’d like to say I’m going to do. These are the 6 things that I absolutely WANT to accomplish this year, not necessarily the steps to completing them, which require smaller goals for me to determine later.
