With Christmas almost here it means the new year and the traditional time for making resolutions is not far away. I’m not a fan of new year resolutions because I believe it adds too much pressure and you are more likely to achieve the outcome if you set well developed goals at a time appropriate to you and not necessarily defined by a calendar.
However, having said that, this year I have a desire to set some resolutions. As I’ve been doing my Christmas shopping I’ve been reminded of things I’d like to do and have developed a list of things I’d like to achieve by the end of 2012.
Complete weekend novelist – I was progressing well through this book until I wrote a post about it and I haven’t used it since! Therefore I would like to complete the remaining chapters.
Write journal at least once a week – although I have written a journal for many years I tend to go through phases of not writing, sometimes it is days, but sometimes it can be months. I would like to have some continuity in my records and think once a week will provide this without being too difficult to keep.
Write things I’m grateful for every day – I think it is good to finish the day thinking about the good things that have happened or things I’m grateful for, and I sometimes list them in my journal. However this is fairly erratic and I would like to do it more regularly. I’ve dropped some hints and hope I will be given a five year journal for Christmas and this will provide a small space to write each day, but will also enable me to review them easily each year.
Review at least one journal – I have previously questioned why I keep a journal when I don’t do anything with them. I have recently read Harvesting your journals and would like to review at least one journal and decide if it something that I find valuable.
Publish one blog post a month – blogging is a hobby and unfortunately when things get busy my writing is often the first thing I stop. However, I enjoy writing and think writing for a public audience is a good opportunity for me to practice a different style of writing, so would like to ensure I spend more time on writing posts.
Read Assassin’s cloak – Assassin’s cloak is an anthology of diarists with the diary extracts organised by day, so you can read extracts from several different diaries covering over 100 years written on the same date. I’ve had the book for about ten years with the intention of reading it each day in turn but never made it beyond February. I hope by reading other people’s journals it will inspire my journal writing.
Complete 31 days to a better blog – I started working on these tasks when they were first published at problogger.net and tried again when I bought the ebook, but didn’t finish all 31 days either time. I would like to work through all 31 days for both my blogs during 2012.
Are you setting writing resolutions for 2012? Have you found them beneficial in the past?