2010 Goals Report

Read/Write/Blog

1. Read 100 books this year. Fiction, nonfiction, historical fiction, books on CD, I did it. My favorite book of the year was definitely Emma Donoghue's Room. The runners up were The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie and Moloka'i by Alan Brennert

2. My goal was to meet with my awesome writing group four times this year. We met at least that many times for workshops, coffees, dinner, and attending author readings. I'm really glad that we met more regularly.

3. Submit, submit, submit. That's right — to do three submissions mailings. I managed to do two submissions and complain a lot. I did the essay submission to Real Simple and also submitted poems to some literary journals.

4. Blog regularly. I aimed for 200 blog posts this year. I tried, but I ended up with 166 posts, which was close, but a lot more posts than 2009 (112).

 

Healthy  

5. Participate in two races. For one of them, raise money for a worthy cause.  For the other one, go outside my comfort zone. Participate in two races? In 2010, I participated in five 5Ks: Earth Day, Eating Disorder Awareness, Girls on the Run, Race for the Cure, and a Turkey Trot. I raised $615 for the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure.  And I went way outside my comfort zone and trained all summer for the Philadelphia Half Marathon! I never would have even considered it but a healthy friend pushed me to sign up for the challenge.

 

6. Eat vegetarian food 90% of the time. I have not been keeping track of how often I eat meat, but I do eat a lot of vegetarian meals. Also, joining the CSA put a lot of fresh, local produce on the table for 24 weeks, and I felt good about that. Two other farmer's market near me sell eggs, chicken, and meat that are from humane family farms.

Fun & Friends

 7. Try 10 new things. Some of the new things I tried included:

•  Visiting the "What Makes Us Laugh?" exhibit at the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore
• Going canoeing with My Heart's Desire at a local lake
• Attending a conference for fun
• New foods, including barbequed shrimp and beignets (in New Orleans), honey crisp apples and spaghetti squash (from the CSA), new recipes (including Pasta Yum, Hurry Up Alfredo with less mustard over pasta, the sauce is also great on steamed spinach), and several new restaurants
• Taking a 2.5 hour walk/jogging tour of NYC
• Giving out free hugs in Times Square
• Visiting a charming town on the seashore for my cousin's wedding with my mom and My Heart's Desire 
• Cruising around Maui in a Jeep Wrangler (so fun!), where we hiked around different parks, took lots of photos, and admired the views from the volcano

 8. Show that friendship is important. My goal was to make plans to see friends at least once a week. I almost always exceeded this goal, and found that making it a priority meant I was more likely to do it.

 9. Have fun with My Heart’s Desire at least once a month. We enjoyed cooking, going out for live comedy, our 4th annual Independence Day barbeque, visiting museums, going on walks, trying new restaurants, traveling (Maui was just amazing), watching movies, and lounging by the fire.

10. Get a decent photo taken with My Heart’s Desire. It's true that we haven’t had a good one taken since our wedding. And I pretty much gave up on this idea for 2010.

While I did not meet all of my goals perfectly, I do feel great about the goals I did achieve. Having concrete goals was really helpful and gave me specific things to focus on (run two races, train for ambitious race) rather than vague generalities like be healthy or exercise more. And almost every month I posted a report about how it was going with the goals. I'm still mulling over my goals for 2011.