Continuing with the dork, embarrassed because it’s taken me so long to get my books out, I could not make this new year’s post. “People who make new year’s resolutions are lame. You’re lame for doing it. They don’t work.” These thoughts go through my head as I type this. “I’d be in the same place whether I did this yearly exercise and its accompanying monthly, weekly and daily accounting or not.” Would I? The record keeping gives shape to my time but do I learn from it? Does it support me in my goals?

I’m not sure but I will continue to do it because people smarter and more successful than me say it does. I remember when I first started putting $20/month away in a separate bank account. It seemed useless. “Why not just leave it in my main account? It’s still there and still mine?” But the separate account worked. I forgot about the savings and they grew until, hey, I had $4000! And I understood how small increments worked.

For now, I’ll continue with these new year reflections and projections.

Reflecting on 2024

1. Biggest triumph: spending money *Note that this is difficult for me. Aside from being raised, thankfully, by people who knew how to save, when I started writing, I went into deep saving mode so I wouldn’t have to go back to work. It’s a little hard to come out of that mode when I don’t have to be in it anymore. 
2. Smartest decision: going to Africa
3. One word that best sums up and describes my (last year’s) experience: success
4. Greatest lesson learned: invest in self they way you previously invested in your work
5. Most loving service I performed: gifting yourself Africa
6. Biggest piece of unfinished business: books are still not out.
7. Most happy about completing: <private>
8. 3 people who had greatest impact on my life: <private> Karen
9. Biggest risk I took: going to Africa 
10. Biggest surprise: <private>
11. Important relationship that improved the most: relationship with self
12. Compliment I would have liked to receive: Trouble Girl is amazing. *Ironically, this was the “compliment I would have liked to receive in 2020, 2021 and 2023 (with 2022s’ being “can I sign you and publish your book?”) AND I did receive this compliment several times in 2024 but in my funk about not getting the book out yet, forgot that people who had read it, gave me this compliment. 
13. Compliment I would have liked to have given: <private>
14. What else do I need to do or say to be complete with (last year): Keep investing in your self and your own happiness.

Creating 2025

1. One outcome I would like to have in (next year): <private>
2. That is important to me because: community, friendship and support are necessary for confidence, self-assurance and a feeling of groundedness and ability.
3. Ask yourself at least 3 more times why it is important to you. It is important to me because:
   1. I need help with <private>.
   2. Everyone needs friends. 
   3. <private>
4. Speculation: take the last answer you arrived at and look from there. If it were fulfilled, what would your work and/or life look like at the end of the year? If you got what you wrote, and got it fully, what would be there at the end of the year that is not there now?
   • My work would explode. I’d have more of a “group” with the Van Writers. I’d guess there would be squabbling but goodnatured, and understanding that we all have different goals and desires to achieve, that the ground we cover would have to be wider. Unusual surprises and opportunities would appear; things I’d never have expected; good surprises and opportunities. Because my energy would be freed up. I’d be doing more events and readings, going places with my peeps. I’d be busier, though, <private>. I’d have constant housecleaners; wouldn’t do it myself at all. I’d keep my face serious and not celebrate success about anything until it was assured. Mike will have quit his job and be working on some of his crazy, brilliant ideas. What will be there that is not here now is joy, love, warmth, understanding, faith, self-love, good pride, self-confidence, solidity. I mean, these things are here but there will be much, much more of them. <private> would feel so much more confidence and <private> future <private>and happiness prospects would blossom. <private>
5. Allow yourself to speculate and make note of several outcomes (try to list at least 10). The more specific they are, the better. And, don’t try to settle on one at this point.
   1. less work for me because <private>
   2. I’d have emotional space to put towards my own projects.
   3. Pretty solid confidence and belief in my abilities to change people, including myself
   4. more faith in the arts as a career choice
   5. <private>
   6. which would make me feel rich
   7. because they’d be interesting, talented, free-thinking and intelligent
   8. they’d talk me up as an author to <private>
   9. I’d get more reading and marketing opportunities
   10. Ava, the video game?
6. One, two or three outcomes from the above list that most represent the fulfillment of what is important to me:
   1. Pretty solid confidence and belief in my abilities to change people, including myself
   2. more faith in the arts as a career choice
   3. <private>
   4. which would make me feel rich
   5. because they’d be interesting, talented, free-thinking and intelligent
7. This step adds the greatest amount of empowerment to this process. Get out your calendar and schedule times to do those things that will result in your achieving the outcome you selected. At this time you may not know all that needs to be done. However, if you have time scheduled, you can reflect and determine what actions are appropriate at that time.
   1. keep working 20 hrs/week on writing
   2. do more writing retreats
   3. keep hiring cleaners because it gives incredible freedom. This is work I really dislike. It encapsulates everything I dislike about being female. It’s unappreciated; underpaid, if paid at all; it’s maintenance work and doesn’t ever lead to building anything, unless, I suppose, you have children that you’re growing but even then, it’s minor. Housecleaning would have to be something you taught them to do and help with if it was to help them grow more, I think. It is manual, intellectually unchallenging and isn’t a skill you can build upon in any meaningful way, unless as I said, you are raising children and want a clean, organized and healthy environment for them. Secondly, my mom, a highly intelligent person who should have been working in a field where she could use that intelligence, worked as a housecleaner from her teens into her marriage in her twenties. Actually, she started as a kid in her parents’ home and of course, continued to this day, in her own homes. She intensely dislikes it though prides herself on doing it well. I have inherited these traits. In the past, I’ve paid to have it done for me while I worked as a web developer and designer but since moving a decade ago, I haven’t. It’s time to start again.