New Year contemplating...

New Year is usually the time of year I go into list overdrive. See, I LOVE a list. I love to do the grocery list. I love to do the list of chores for the week. I love to make many to-do lists (baking, sewing, reading, downloading, anything can become a list). I even love to make lists of things I love. When it comes to New Year resolutions though I don't really enjoy it. Maybe it's the enormity of it — a list for a whole year, now that's going to require one very long piece of paper. Or if you choose just one resolution the pressure is on to make sure it's something huge and if you go with something really huge like "have a baby" or "find the love of your life" and it doesn't happen then you'll see that year as a failure. My main problem with resolutioning (a word, no?) though is that you mostly just put blanket statements out there. (Mine usually go something like "read more", "do more projects with my kids", "get fit", "spend more time alone with my husband".) And there they sit. All. Year. Long. In the back of your head, on a page in your diary, on a crumpled piece of paper in the back of a drawer. If you are going to do resolutions I think they need to be workshopped project-management style (there's a great resource for doing just that by the way that I'll be telling you about next week). Each resolution needs an action plan so that it can be achieved. And let's face it, that is waaay too much work at the stroke of midnight with a glass of bubbly in your hand (or asleep on the lounge as is my usual style). The way I'm planning to work it this coming year is to have a "This month's projects" page as a starter for each month in my diary. That way I can get down real actions to achieve for the month rather than just add to the guilt pile of "I shoulds". It also helps to slow down at the beginning of each month and think about what you really want to achieve and what's important to you. BUT, for now, it's New Year's Eve so the rest of this day should be spent rejoicing in all your achievements and fun times of 2008. Celebrate. Don't project yourself into the future just yet. That can wait until tomorrow. I think this print I saw on Etsy from Sarah Gardner says it all:
Happy New Year! May your every little now be just wonderful.