2012…what a year it has been! I kept myself pretty busy. I had some grand designs (my husband would say illusions!) of things I wanted to do, and what I wanted to participate in. While life and the day job grew bigger than expected, all in all, I would say I ended up doing about 75% of what I hoped to accomplish this year. Not so bad if I do say so myself. Let’s take a recap of what I had hoped to do:
1. Queen of Your Own Life: While I had great aspirations of sharing things from these great ladies, I didn’t quite get there. I had hoped to share some daily inspirational thoughts, etc. both here and on my other sites, to be honest, I just could not squeeze it in with everything else that I was doing. A great idea, but the follow through was not there. I read a lot of really wonderful things on their website and through Facebook, and tried to use it for my own daily inspiration. I highly recommend that you do as well.
2. New Year, New You: To be honest, this was a dismal failure. I spent most of the year in physical rehab because my back went completely south and did some other issues. I have been slowly on the mend and have now, finally, been cleared to start working out again. Yoga here I come.
3. 52 Weeks, 52 Books: Lucky for me, I was able to sit down over the weekend, and in two days finished all of my reviews for the year. While I was not able to post them individually, they are all listed on the 2012 Book Club Page. They will be there thru the end of January, 2013 and then archived onto the Book Club – Archived Page, where all my book reviews are located. Go checked them out! 🙂
4. Reading Romances Challenge: Sadly, I just could not finish the challenge. While I kept up for most of the year, the 4th quarter really kicked my “you know what” and I finally just had to give up.
5. Photos, photos and more photos: Well I did manage to post some additional photos this year, but not as much as I wanted to. I took a lot of photos, but reviewing and editing takes time and that is just a work in progress.
6. Writing for Examiner.com and Yahoo! Voices: Yes, this is one area I really excelled in. Actually, I really excelled in adding 3 additional columns at Examiner.com and only wrote one column at Yahoo! Voices. So I would say that this is the area that I really worked on the most this year. I need to work on the page links here so that you all can see what I have been working on for the past year!
7. Miscellaneous craft projects on Etsy.com: I didn’t do anything for this. A grand dream…just no time to execute it.
8. My novel: I didn’t do diddly squat on it this year. A great disappointment, but life is life and I ran out of time.
9. How did I live up to this item that I posted earlier this year: “My husband has a great philosophy about work…”You need to work to earn
enough money in order to take the next vacation.” I’ll take that one
step further…”I need to work to pay off my debts, put money away for
retirement and to take that next great vacation.” ” Well let’s just say that I am a little closer. I worked a lot, paid some toward the debt, put money away for retirement and took a kick-a$$ vacation!
10. Podcast: That is still in the plans…just need to figure it all out.
The biggest thing I am doing right now as I end this year is to figure out how I am going to manage all of my writing for the coming year. I actually made a bit of money this year. Go figure! Not a lot, but more than previous years. I need to re-organize how everything is laid out and how it is promoted. I have a lot of maintenance to perform on my various websites and my Facebook Fan Page, but I know that I cannot get it done overnight. I will work on it slowly throughout the year and see where it lands at the end of 2013.
Upon reflection, I would say that I did what I wanted, thought a lot about what I could change, and put aside the items that I could not execute to the best of my abilities until such a time I am able to do so.
I had a great year overall. I am more happy than I have been in years. I don’t want my writing to become a competition with the other writers that I work with, I just want to get better at my craft and share my thoughts with the world. While ultimately, I want to make some money at it, I don’t want to make so much that it consumes me.
I have much to look forward to in 2013. I am going to keep these items on my list for the coming year. I might add a few as I go along…then again, I might not, or decide to remove a few things! Whatever the case may be, come this time next year…we’ll see how I did with all of the above again and evaluate how it all went down for the year.
Wishing you moments of great reflection.
This post is written for The Writer’s Post Blog Hop# 61: Looking Forward, Thinking Back. My friend Darlene is the host today. Check out her blog here. Interested in learning more, please check out the link below!
Liked anything you see here? Then contact me, Susan Dusterhoft at [email protected]. I am always looking for more books/products to review. I can also provide assistance with blog writing!
I'm sorry to see you writing about how you failed at things, Susan. After all, we're only human. We should celebrate our successes which bolsters us to have more of them! I hope at this time next year to read a post all about success and full of self love (http://howdoiloveme.com/the-pledge/). Thanks for participating in my hosted hop. (BTW, I don't think think your spell-check feature likes my name. It changed it from Daphne to Darlene! LOL!)