Resolved!
Sharon January 1st, 2009
One of the best things about the blog is that if I write something down here, there’s a good chance someone will remember and bring it up again, and thus, my forgettery, which works extremely well, especially for things I’m not that enthused about, cannot take over. So I thought it would be worth posting my goals for the coming year - and perhaps you’d like to share yours. If I’m really organized (resolution #1 should probably be “be really organized” but I’m trying to keep this out of the realm of fantasy ), I’ll do a couple of updates on them as we go.
1. Slow down and spend less time in front of the computer. Three books in two years was a fascinating learning experience, and, frankly, I don’t ever want to do it again. I’m going to recommit to my three-day a week online policy, at which I was doing reasonably well until I hit the wall of completion. If my next book proposal is accepted (more about that when/if it is), I’m going to take a full year to write it.
2. Redo the front garden. When we laid out the front garden, we were anxious not to waste space on paths, and we built raised beds with no retention features, and spaced them as tightly as we could. This was, ummmm…dumb. While we can walk comfortably down the paths, they are not especially comfortable to sit or kneel in - which is how I do a lot of my gardening. And we simply have too much rain to have raised beds without formal sides. So the garden needs to be redug and redesigned, with irrigation and drainage redone, and the whole thing laid out again. Besides resolving to actually do it, I’m resolving to treat this as an opportunity to improve, rather than a giant hassle. Or at least I’m going to try.
3. Get a housemate or housemates, or rethink our plans. As some of you know, we’ve been on again/off again looking for someone to share our over-large home for nearly a year now. We’ve talked to various people, but we’ve never found the right match or the right set up or the right timing. But I’m starting to get annoyed with myself. It is time to either fish or cut bait - so my goal for this winter is to think hard about whether I want this, and to organize and redesign things in the house so that we’d have the space to share, and make a serious attempt at finding a family that might be interested in living together and working the land together (we have a separate apartment available and ideally are looking for a family with kids, if you are interested). If not, I need to figure out how we might better use what space we have and what our long term plans are.
4. Fence. We need a lot more fences if we’re going to really do serious rotational grazing and livestock farming.
5. Clean and organize the house as much as humanly possible in ways that will reduce the amount of time we spend hunting for fairly obvious things. Keep guest rooms ready for occupancy at all times. Stop treating our bedroom/my office as a dumping ground for things we don’t have time to deal with. Keep up with the laundry.
6. Make an attempt at more consistent sabbath observance - that is, no cheating - since it always ends up cheating me. Help bug Eric to practice reading Torah (this is the kind of pestering that is wanted by him, not the other sort ), work on my Haftorah. Read Haftorah publically before January 2010.
7. Get over the “oh, it is just one more thing, I’m sure I have time” thing. I tend to think that I can always take on one more little thing. Sometimes, that’s not quite true. Say “no” a little more often to grownups. Say “yes” a little more often to my kids.
8. Be the one to get up with the boys more often, and let Eric sleep in more. Pay Eric back for the last two years.
9. Keep up the Independence Days project, and take up the competence project. Keep working on the Riot goals, on using less and needing less. Remind myself that small gains add up quickly in the long term. Make myself look at what I did accomplish, not what I didn’t.
10. Balance “Farmer” and “Writer” more carefully. Now that I’ve gotten through the first wild thrust of becoming a writer, I need to figure out what I actually want to do with that - and where I want the farm to go and grow to. It took this long to achieve the identity - now it is time to figure out what I want out of them.
What are your resolutions?
Sharon