Vintage Nettles

I’m not normally a fan of New Year’s Resolutions, as more of than than not they’re completely disregarded and when you reach the end of the year you find you’ve over committed yourself and feel disappointed you didn’t reach your ‘in the heat of the moment’ made goals.

Last year? Totally abandoned Daring Baker’s Challenges as they just got TOO expensive, and I can challenge myself to bake whatever I like whenever I like (and whenever health, the budget & special occasions allow it). Also abandoned was the 2010 Movie List – albeit not abandoned in the dozen text files that litter my desktop where I still kept a record of all the films we watched that we’d not seen before and my star ratings… We got to 64 movies that we’d not seen before + the dozens we (or at least I) HAD already seen. Perhaps I’ll post them all in one hit, we’ll see… Also abandoned was posting 904832094 recipes (especially for dinner meals) because it meant cooking dinner in the morning to photograph them in the afternoon – not really conducive to doing OTHER things, nor being able to eat dinner at the right time.. xD AND the 10 Shawls in 2010 project, for which I managed one shawl. That’s it. Okay so it was a shawl that took over 2km of yarn, countless months, and a LOT of money, but still ONE.

If I was to make any goals this year, I think it would be to not over-commit myself:

• Don’t promise to do too many things – least of all promise MYSELF to do too many things.
• Don’t sign up for a lot of things, especially with unrealistic deadlines that conflict with my health and other real world commitments.
• And if I find myself not reaching a goal or something that ‘I said I would do,’ don’t burn myself into the ground attempting to do them anyway.

But who am I kidding? That doesn’t sound at ALL like me, and the list of things I have planned/’need’ to do for just January alone (hell, the next four days alone! xD) completely fly in the face of the don’t-over-commit mantra. So boo to you, sense! What’s a good year without challenge?* Especially challenges that result in making things?

So this year, instead of announcing that I’m going to do anything – because CLEARLY that’s the kiss of death for any and all resolutions – I’ll just say HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE! Hope you’re excited to out the old, and in the new, and that your year is blessed with MANY good things, rewarding challenges, and the satisfaction of accomplishing whatever challenges the year ahead will throw at you. **

* Yes I realize that accomplishing this goal would therefore be a challenge for me, but shh! ;)
** I really REALLY want to shout “Mazel Tov!” at the end of this post. There’s clearly not enough celebratory shouty things in the English language. No wonder The Doctor has to resort to such phrases as Allons-Y and Geronimo. Pick up the slack, ENGLISH!