Saturday, January 1, 2011

another new year!

The first of January is probably my favorite day out of the whole year. It's better than my birthday, better than Christmas, even better than Halloween! Waking up on January first feels like turning to a fresh page, and the air practically vibrates with all the possibilities contained in the year ahead. It's a new beginning, a chance to lay to rest all of the negative things of the previous year, and to select the positive things to carry forward with me. The last half of 2010 was very hard for me, and I feel relieved to be able to leave that behind.

Silly, I know, because logically today is just a day, like any other day. Yesterday, or tomorrow... they won't be any different. But today still feels special, almost magical, to me.

Anyhow, enough of my mawkish ramblings. Time for the fun stuff: end-of-year knitting numbers and resolutions!

So, this year saw a total of 34 finished projects for (an estimated) 7,880 yards of yarn. That puts me far ahead of both 2008 and 2009 in number of finished projects, and ahead of 2009 for yardage, but I still haven't beat my yearly best of 9,979 from 2008. I blame the afghans of that year, but have a couple in the works for this year so, who knows.

And jeez, another year or so of this and I may have to resort to making charts so it's not just a big jumbled block of text peppered with numbers. Bleh.

And the resolutions!

1. I need to be better about housekeeping. Now that I've got a job that doesn't leave me physically and emotionally drained in my downtime, there's really no excuse for letting clutter build up on the dining room table or for not managing to drag the vacuum around more than once a week. And laundry! I mean, the machine does the work for me, there's no reason to let it pile up at all.

(this is more or less the same as my resolution from last year. I did manage to get my crafting room very organized, so I'm leaving that bit out.)

2. Last year I'd also wanted to be more productive knitting-wise, and I'd say I accomplished that quite handily. This year, I'd like to at least maintain that same level of productivity. I'd also like to get more projects for Jason finished. He's so completely and totally supportive of my hobby, and for whatever reason his stuff always seems to drop down to the bottom of my priority list. There are several projects in the works for him that I'd like to get finished up in the first part of the year, and several more that I'd like to get done by the end of the year.

3. Last year I'd also wanted to work through half of my stash yarn. That resolution was naive and utterly unrealistic. I'd also resolved to only purchase one new skein of yarn for each two I knitted up from the stash. That also didn't happen. However, while my stash didn't exactly shrink by any noticeable amount, it also didn't grow noticeably either, so I'm chalking that up as a draw.

This year, I'm going to be a bit more realistic. I'm still going to try very had to use up more stash yarn, but I'm also not going to place any restrictions on my yarn purchasing that will probably just end up broken several months into the year. I only use birthday and Christmas money to buy it, and I've got it confined to a modest stack of plastic containers. As long as it doesn't get any bigger this year, I'll call that a win.

4. My eating habits are quite appalling. Genetics have blessed me with a metabolism that allows me to eat like total crap and still weigh in at well under 100 lbs. So while I am thin, I am probably also not as healthy as I could be. This year I figure it's high time to finally become an adult about it and start eating better. More veggies, cut way back on the soda, try to eat less pre-packaged stuff. I also want to make an effort to quit eating out quite so much by cooking more at home. This will have the added benefit of saving $$$ in the long run.

5. I would like to start exercising more. My last job had me very active, on my feet all day, hauling around large pots of soup, and putting large orders away. I used to enjoy looking at the order invoices for the net weights so I could say "Yeah, go me! I just shifted around a total of 1200 lbs!" Well, my new job has me sitting on my butt in front of a computer screen for most of the day. I've been learning to hoop dance, which is good cardio, but I need to do something to build up a little more muscle.

6. Last year I said I wanted to both read more and work on my writing more. Working at a library has kickstarted my appetite for new books, but I'm still not writing a lot. It's just hard to get motivated with Sarah not around anymore to read my work and keep me motivated or work as a sounding board for ideas and plotlines. But I really love writing and need to put more effort into it.

Overally, I think these are pretty realistic goals that I might actually stand a chance at achieving this year. So here's to hoping! I've got a good feeling about 2011.


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