Make 2008 my best year yet

• call someone to do an exterior spring clean
• call someone to do mow and blow until we sell the housea kid across the street wants to do it; that’ll work!

• eat more asparagus
• eat more salads
• make chicken stock
• make chicken and dumplings
• buy a blender with birthday money
• buy an ice cream maker with birthday money

• everyday—log on 43T

• design top of driveway
• design kitchen garden
• plant mints, sage thyme
• vines class?down one vehicle, so missed this

• email BR
• Friday meeting
• Board reportnothing new to report
• don’t forget next Tuesday’s FRB meeting

• update Chautauqua website

• rethink and reorganize my daily tasks
• continue experimenting with no daily to do list
• bread for B
• P graduation on Friday (unless it’s raining)
• Ks on Sunday
• Possibilities for Saturday: Chinese Culture festival, Flowers and Food Festival, Farmers Markets
• celebrate birthday with brother
• watch Kansas vs Darwin

I decided that what I wanted for my birthday was a new set of Best Year Yet goals. Does one get better at setting ten good goals for the year if you do it year after year? I feel like I need practice. I think this list reflects more what I’m actually doing, what I’ll realistically get done, and a better balance of different parts of my life. There are 233 days left this year, counting today, so it’s time to get going.

Top Ten Goals
1. Empty the old house and sell it.
2. Devise a landscaping plan and begin to implement it.
3. Unpack.
4. Exercise 233 times.
5. Do yoga or stretch 233 times.
6. Eat natural foods, including lots grown locally.
7. Fulfill my duties as Chair of the Computer and Information Technology Special Interest Group and member of the Hospitality Committee for the Missouri Library Association.
8. Do NaNoWriMo.
9. Write a nonfiction book proposal.
10. Be involved in my community.

• vacuum the main house

• make chicken stock
• make chicken and noodle-style dumplings
• eat asparagus
• go to Farmers Markets on Saturday
• plan to eat my haul from the Farmers Markets
• do something that resembles exercise each day
• shop at Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, grocery

• plant mints
• plant thyme
• plant sage

• request an ILL book from KPL
• have R call K’s Mother’s Day?
• truck appointment
• call HVAC company for inspection
• bank
• bread for B
• cartooning class info to B
• clear Yahoo In Box, Gmail In Box, backpack
• Chautauqua meeting Monday

• clean the loft bath
• clean the half bath
• vacuum everywhere
• get rid of the trap
• get rid of the trike
• clean and move the rug
• get rid of the instruments

• eat lots of locally-grown asparagus, greens, strawberries, and rhubarb
• make several entirely local meals
• grow my own sprouts
• re-form my daily exercise habit

• plant everything (mostly herbs and veggies)
• keep it weeded and watered
• organize the materials from my landscaping class
• design the top of the driveway
• plant three trees

• clean
• bring home the keyboard to give away with other instruments

• 5-16 meeting
• write report for 5-30 meeting
• 5-30 meeting
• contact all of our speakers and let them know how things are going

• Mother’s Day at K’s?
• another day at K’s?
• celebrate my birthday with R
• celebrate my birthday with my brother
• start cartooning class

• Chautauqua
• Meacham Park Neighborhood parade
• CFUH book club

My other goals are on hold until the old house is emptied.

Assuming things get worked out with HR, I’ll be working 4 days a week for the next month or six weeks. So, I’m scaling back on everything else. Five of my 10 goals can just go on hold: the three decorating/remodeling ones, cabin visits, and writing. The other five require some effort.

G1. Emptying old house—the display case is getting in R’s way and it’s my job to box up the stuff in it.

G2. The budget’s fine, but I’ve got some other money issues that need to be dealt with: taxes, old corporate record filing, call a family business meeting, and some organizational tasks.

G5. Diet/Exercise. I don’t want to lose momentum here, but neither do I want to drive myself nuts. I’ve got daily/weekly repeating menus set up for the month with a plan for making some things ahead. For exercise, I’m going to keep it simple: 10,000 steps and at least 3 yoga poses daily.

G6. We signed up for a Landscaping class that starts on Tuesday, so I really want to put some energy into this. Before class, set up a notebook for ideas and records and gather material needed for the class. Attend classes and spend time outside of class twice a week working with the material. Work with R to make a functional diagram of our yard. Go through the three landscaping books I’ve decided that I like the best.

G8. Librarian professional activities. Missouri Library Association: get out a call for proposals for the conference programs and actively recruit technology programs, attend the meeting on the 29th, set up a wiki for the conference. Federal Depository Library meeting: submit a presentation proposal and, assuming it’s accepted, prepare it and prepare for the trip to KC.

That’s it. It still sounds like a lot, but I’ve cut as much as I’m comfortable right now.

I have been struggling to stay motivated, so I’ve decided to take a week off. When I finally allowed myself the question “do I have any low energy projects to do?”, I quickly came up with four of them. None are directly related to my BYY goals, but three, if completed, would solve daily annoyances and the fourth could uncover valuable material related to my BYY goals.

The only BYY goal that I can’t put on hold is healthy eating and exercising—that’s all part of a delicate structure of newly formed habits, a house of cards that could fall down if I allowed myself a week’s vacation. So, I’ll stick with that but let the rest go for a week.

• clear Yahoo email
• clear Gmail
• organize my recipes
• go through my stack of local magazines

I’ll be doing my “Gold Time Management” at the Sabbats (Equinoxes, Solstices, and the cross-quarter days halfway between) and the quarter phases of the moon. Today, just after the Winter Solstice, I set my goals for the next six weeks.

I made a Thing for each of my top ten goals, so I wrote my six week goals as entries under them, but I thought it might help for me to have a kind of index to those entries.

1) empty old house—two small projects and a new habit

2) budget—set it up

3) study—three small projects

4) bathroom—one baby step

5) healthy living—get back on track and move on to Phase 2 of the Best Life Diet

6) landscaping—set up a system for keeping track of things

7) cabin—January visit

8) librarian—one small project, one larger project, and a meeting (librarians love meetings)

9) writing—the tiniest baby step I could think of

10) bedroom—two small projects

• a simple structure
• a time frame
• focus

I’m so excited, I’m going to reorganize my 43Things list around my 10 goals for 2008.

Here is my one page summary.

• Do fewer things, more passionately.
• Do first things first.
• Work through the emotional, mental, and spiritual issues that keep me from getting things done in the physical world.

New Paradigm
I have all the time I need to do whatever I choose.

Major Focus
Homemaker

Top Ten Goals
1. Empty the old house and sell it.
2. Establish a budget for the house, the yard, and discretionary spending and follow it.
3. Make my study a sacred, creative space.
4. Remodel the master bathroom.
5. Lose 25 pounds by eating healthily and exercising, using yoga to keep my body strong and flexible throughout the year.
6. Devise a landscaping plan and begin to implement it.
7. Visit the cabin once a month in 2008, keeping it clean and maintained.
8. Speak at two library conferences and fulfill my duties as Chair of the Computer and Information Technology Special Interest Group and member of the Hospitality Committee for the Missouri Library Association.
9. Do NaNoWriMo.
10. Create a peaceful retreat in our bedroom.