Where Does the Time Go?

I dunno, but I'm reviewing where I started the year and what I had planned to accomplish.  It isn't a pretty sight. Plans are made to be broken -- or so some people say, and my plans were successful in that respect.

Looking over my Createslate goals posted late last year for this year:

Relationship: Seems like we're in a mostly good place right now, and we'd like to keep it that way.

This seemed to deteriorate a little through the year.  There's always an ebb and a flow to long-term relationships. I'm not sure exactly where we're at right now.  We're not in a bad place, but it could be better (I could almost always say that, though).

Pets:
Continue care, feeding, and attention for inside (big) cats. 

This is ongoing. Never a problem.

Decide what will be best for the feral kittens. 

As you know, the four feral kittens stayed. Sneaky is the only remaining outside "feral," and she's become remarkably domesticated and has been spayed.  The vet helped save costs for regular medications by suggesting using the big dog Revolution treatment and dividing it among eight cats. I still have to buy for two more cats, but it's much, much cheaper this way.  And, of course, another kitten adopted us a month ago.


Properties:
San Antonio: This year I want to work on interior cleanliness, yard, help hubby with renovations in preparation for putting it on the market (not this year).

Utter failure, but this goal remains valid

Central TX House: Declutter, yard, exterior paint

Other than keeping up with the yard, another utter failure.  We blame it on too much travel.

Shop: help hubby with projects (maybe bathroom repair and cleaning behind the building)

Hubby got the sink drain repaired, but nothing else.  Clean up behind the building has not progressed, but it has not regressed either. A neutral.  I need to give up guessing what may be a priority I can help Mr. L with. Even if he tells me, it shifts.  I should probably learn to ignore the many items I'm not welcome to do and just check the list periodically to see if I can check anything off.

Store: Move bikes to shop, inventory glass, keep it mowed

Kept it mowed.  Nothing else.  The water pipe broke off at the meter resulting in a nice $300 bill, but we've turned it off at the meter and not dealt with it yet.  Moving the bikes involves Mr. L, but inventorying my glass is on me.

Ranch: Trim road edge back

Our new neighbor did this for us by installing a new fence and clearing back from the fence the whole way.  Yay!

Health and Fitness:
Rededicate to WW and Fitness.  No, this is not a broken record.  I began the year at 263 and currently have a net gain of six pounds.  My next goal of 261 has been waiting impatiently for me to meet it.  A reasonable goal would be to be at or below 245 at year's end.

Utter failure.  Ending the year at 280. Dropped WW.  I tried Lose It! but have failed at all aspects of this.

Riding the bike helps keep my knees mobile and helps cardiac fitness (but I'll need to add more resistance to achieve better heart benefits)

Once again, utter failure.

Resume my exercises for my knees.  My right hip is bothering me, and that's directly attributable to not doing my stretching exercises

Utter failure.  I've started a couple of plans in Lift.  One is 90 Days to a New You.  It involves drinking water -- something I do very well, squats, pushups, and jumping jacks.  We haven't started the jumping jacks yet (I peeked-- that's this week), and I'm having to do wall pushups (my upper body strength has deteriorated terribly over the last few years), but squats are not as bad on my knees as I feared, and they are helping in important areas I'd been troubled about.

My blood pressure is giving me problems.  If I can't get it lowered with diet and exercise, the doc is going to have to put me on another medication.  I don't want that.

I tracked this for six months, and doc was satisfied that it's not a problem.  Yay.  On my visit this week, he was pleased with my readings.  He was not, however, happy with my weight.  He told me it's time to get back at it.  Sigh.

Family:
This is always troublesome for me.  I care for my family -- even love them, of course, but I've been away from them so long, I don't really know them.  Mom and I play Lexulous, so we chat back and forth in the course of the game.  My younger brother and his family are on Facebook, so we have some communication that way. My sister has a Facebook account, but she hasn't been on for several months.  My older brother will communicate via text, so maybe I better text him more than an annual Christmas and birthday text.

No real progress in this area.  My older brother did text me a photo of a "new" motorcycle a few months ago.

My folks are coming to OK for my nephew's high school graduation in May, and we plan to attend as well.  So I suggested they might want to ride down on the train, and we'd pick them up in Dallas.  Then I suggested they come spend a couple of days with us in Central TX (Dad hasn't seen the house yet), and they accepted.

Due to health issues, Mom and Dad weren't able to make the trip in May.  They were able to make the trip for my brother's retirement the week before Thanksgiving, but we weren't able to make the trip up to visit them.  So, it's a wash.  We didn't plan to stop to see them as we usually do on the train trip, because we'd anticipated seeing them in May.  Bummer.

Writing: PBOTL revision and completion of How To Revise Your Novel are my top writing priority.  I also plan to participate in NaNoWriMo again this year.

I participated in and won NaNo this year.  I did well with PBOTL until around May, then it got pushed aside for travel and other things, and I never got back to it.

Reading: I always have a goal of reading 50 books a year.  2012 has probably been my worst year for reading, and I doubt 2013 will be much better, but the goal remains 50 books.
I think I've achieved half my goal for reading, and I'm pleasantly surprised by that.

FM: I'm more active behind the scenes than I was at the beginning of the year.  I'm not much more active on the front end than I was before. With the transition to Joomla!, I've become the primary back end person.  I've created the test site but still haven't found the best way to get it configured to match the live site.  I plan to redo the FAQ. We need to figure out how to get chat logins integrated with the site login.  There are a few other problems people are complaining about that I have no idea how to resolve.

I've taken care of back end site problems and maintenance at Forward Motion.  Minimal participation up front. I converted the Vision site to the newer version of Joomla! for Zette, and it went live in, I think, late August.

Blogging and Internet Presence:  I'm mostly comfortable with my current blog schedule.  I skip a few days now and then.  I see few new readers and nearly no commenters.  I understand what they meant when they said blogging was dead, but I have no interest in making Facebook a blogging platform.  In fact, I refuse to do so.  I still value what we have here at Createslate as we begin our third year.

I participated in April A-Z this year on two sites and had little time to run around and check other sites.  I decided I wasn't going to participate next year, but I'm re-evaluating that idea.  Signing up for PLF and learning about marketing my writing -- as mediocre as I've been at applying my lessons -- has reminded me I must do better in getting quality words representative of my writing out there.  With time to prepare, I should be able to achieve that goal.


So.  A mixed bag for achieving this year's goals.  Time to begin considering what's realistic for next year.