I’m terrible about sticking to resolutions, so usually I avoid making large scale ones that are supposed to encompass an entire 12 month span.
But this year, I’ve decided to make some….uhhh…. gentle suggestions for myself – less like real, hard and fast resolutions and more like broad-stroke guidelines to sort of point me in the right direction and help me focus on what I want to achieve.
So here they are – in totally random order that in no way reflects their relative importance – my personal New Year’s Suggestions for 2012:
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1- Make more time to focus on my husband. Take more quick getaways with Jon like the one we took to Chattanooga in September.
2 – Stop feeling terrible about having become more sedentary than at any other time in entire life and do something about it, dammit. Follow good friend Denise’s inspiring example.
3 – Continue good progress made recently with better time management strategies for job + freelance work. Remind self daily how much better I feel when I set priorities, stick to them, and avoid procrastination.
4 – Keep up with eyebrow maintenance more attentively than in 2011 (nothing makes me feel frumpier than unkempt eyebrows, and lately, mine have been frightfully unkempt)
5 – Get Leo bathed at dog groomer more often during months when too cold to bathe him in hose.
6 – Keep up recently instituted habit of fixing big Sunday afternoon family meal each week.
7 – Read to C more often (with Danger Baby clinging to me like baby monkey in evenings, Jon ends up doing the bedtime stories.)
8 – Finally gather emotional strength to deal with Henry’s ashes and make myself look at them for first time.
9 – Get to church more weeks than not.
10 – Complete book proposal about the experience of losing child to drugs and of fighting to have evil drug dealers arrested, and have proposal acquired by wonderful editor with publisher who really wants Henry’s story told in way that helps other parents.
11 – Spend as much time as possible with J in her last year at home before college. Savor every moment of it.
12 – Plant more flowers in yard.
13 – Work with state legislators to pass “Henry’s Law,” creating mandatory reporting protocols around all overdose injuries and deaths in Tennessee for paramedics, physicians, law enforcement and medical examiners.
14 – Work with state legislators to amend law so that no other parent ever endures the hell that I did of learning months after her child was laid to rest that the medical examiner retained major body parts or organs without so much as mentioning it to the family.
15 – String more twinkly lights on my porch and trees.
16 – Raise more money for Henry’s Fund
17 – Figure out way for my siblings and me and our families to be together on the beach in South Carolina for Thanksgiving Break 2012.
18 – Grow own tomatoes.
19 – Schedule regular time with friends even though we’re all too busy.
20 – Find ways to show my mother in law just how much I admire and appreciate her. Ditto my mom.
21 – Print, frame and hang more photos of the kids instead of letting all family photos live online.
22 – Get better at sitting still.
23 – See loose ends related to Henry’s case that I can’t yet discuss publicly finished up in way that holds specific individuals accountable for wrongdoing.
24 – See more live music.
25 – Make my kids proud of me.
26 – Get to know more of my immediate neighbors.
27 – Say no (thanks) more often when that’s what I actually feel like saying.
28 – Identify the right fiddle teacher for E and get him to lessons every single week.
29 – Avoid all possums.
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So these are my New Year’s Suggestions for myself in 2012. How about you? What do you want to focus on in the year ahead?
