New Year, God Help Us All

Source: Pinterest.

Yes, I willingly join in the general discontent with The Year That Must Not Be Named And Has Finally Gone Away, Praise Pope Gregory XIII. Not that I have much hope for 2017, because my high degree of cynicism/crankiness has only been enhanced by the personal and societal turmoils of the last few months.

However! I'm going to pretend that I'm the Cheery Su some of you once knew, if only for the sake of resetting, in a "fake it til I make it" kind of way. Since my 2016 kind of fell apart, I didn't do any regular checking in on my 2016 goals, so this is about to be as much of a surprise to me as it is to anyone:

1. Run the Indy Mini in May. Done. 
And scheduled to do again in 2017.

2. Eat the correct nutrients to fuel the running/riding/etc. Disaster.
I'll try a bit harder on this one in 2017.

3. Arrive everywhere early enough to get in at least five minutes of writing. Maybe half done?
I may arrive early, but that doesn't mean I automatically use that time to write. Sometimes I read, sometimes I talk, sometimes I stare into space. Also, if I continue this into 2017 (haven't decided on that yet), I'm going to have to exempt work from this. Being in the office=no writing is being done, no matter how much extra time I give myself.

4. Write every day. Nearly done.
To say I wrote every day is untrue, but I wrote most days. Probably 300 out of 366 days included some writing. Some days included a lot, some days a little. Continuing this into 2017.

5. Take on some writing I wouldn't normally do. Done, but not as much as I'd like.
I even tried writing some Little House on the Prairie fanfiction a few months back (I haven't posted it anywhere yet). So I'm continuing this one. And, since I start a new job next week, I'm sure more new writing will be coming my way.

6. Read 100+ books. Done.
More about this coming on Tuesday, with my final Reading Challenge update from 2016.

You can try and stop the hands of time
But ya know it just can't be.
Image source: André Montejorge on
freeimages.com.
(Words are from "You Can't Stop
the Beat," from Hairspray. Yes, I
can sometimes quote musicals that
aren't Les Misérables.)

New Goals for 2017:

1. Get my running in.
I have a few more weeks of a half marathon training plan in the lead-up to the El Paso Half Marathon, and then I'll take a week off before plunging back into training for the Indy Mini. After that... ?? I have no more races planned for 2017, but since I only had two planned for 2016 and ended up doing five, I'm sure something will come up. Regardless, running is too important for my physical and mental health for me to ignore it.

2. Go outside every day.
I know this sounds crazy, but I have a tendency to hide inside all day long on days off or cold days. And especially on cold days off. Having a new job should help, since my weekdays will be filled once again, but I hate to waste my weekends locked inside when there's a big world out there waiting for me to go look at it.

3. Remember that this is my life now.
After a couple years of upheaval, some of it my own doing and some of it inflicted upon me by outside forces, I have a hard time some days remembering that this is where I live and these people are the ones around me now (the temptation to live online and not make any in-person friends is way strong). Maybe I need to cross-stitch a sampler to hang by my bed that says something like "You live in Cincinnati. Try not to forget."

4. Learn how to write a real review of anything.
I review books. I review musicals. Most of my reviews are variations on a theme of "This is so fantastic!" which is not particularly helpful to others. I don't necessarily want to learn this to get paid, although that would be great. I just want to do it well enough to have a reason to continue doing it.


No super-ambitious goals for the year, but I'm good with small ones. What are your goals for 2017?