M. Suzanne Terry

I love making lists.  I also love goal-setting.  Making New Year’s resolutions is like a drug to me.  I do it every year.

My resolutions this year were designed to give myself a break from the “stress” (if absolute joy is stressful) of having lists and keeping tabs on my progress.  Whatever need I felt at the time to do that…yeah, I’m over it.

So here is my revamp – mid-year – of my resolutions.  Some of you who have been around for a while will notice similarities to my resolutions from a few years ago – the “100 things” year.  I was re-reading those posts and remembering how much fun I had that year.  So I’m going to do it a little differently, but still…list-y.

(I am also going to include some things I’ve already done for these lists, because I don’t have a year at this point, and I am loathe to shoot myself in the foot from the onset)

I picked five things that make me happy/make me feel grounded and centered/make me feel like I’m actually doing something with my life besides waking, working, drinking coffee, and sleeping (not that there’s anything wrong with those things).

1.  Reading – 100 books.  I’ve already started on this goal, and Goodreads informs me that, while I have read 31 books so far, I am 15 books behind schedule.  But I will not be daunted.  I haven’t decided if I’m going to update every book that I read here, or if I will just give you what I love the most (or when I hated it and need to vent about it).  But you can follow me on Goodreads if you wish to get book-by-book updates, because that’s where I really keep up with it.

2.  Cooking – 100 new recipes.  My favorite thing about the “100 things” year was all the new recipes I tried.  Trying new things keeps me out of Food Rut, and this is important, because Food Rut is what puts me in the drive-through of Taco Bell, and nobody wins there (well, maybe the CEO of Taco Bell, but I think he’ll be okay).  I will update these here, because I will be super excited about them.  Fair warning – I am taking a Sacramental Baking Course.  Look for a post on my first sourdough when I get around to writing it.

3.  Writing – 100 hours.  Whether I’m blogging or working on one of the multiple fiction projects I have going on, I have to write to be sane.  I will be starting from scratch here, because I haven’t been logging my writing hours so far, but even starting now, I have twenty-eight weeks left of the year.  And November is National Novel Writing Month.  Even if it wasn’t, that’s only a little over three and a half hours a week.  The writing of this post puts me at 0.4 hours.  99.6 to go!

4.  Thanking – 100 admissions of gratitude.  Gratitude keeps me from being so cynical that I get sleepless and achy.  I may reminisce about a few of these, but wouldn’t it be wonderful if I had 100 MORE stories this year about how beautiful life can be?  Here are my first two, just from today:

4a.  I just got to encourage someone who assumed that a college degree was too lofty a dream for them to achieve that they could do it. That’s my favorite thing that’s happened this week.

4b.  This – oh, my soul – THIS.  Thank you, Jesus.  And more, please.

5.  Watching – 100 pictures.  Sometimes, I just go through my photos, and my day is better.  There will probably be way more than 100 pictures, and all of them might not make it to the blog.  But all of them will make it to the Facebook (here’s Spring and here’s Summer), where I basically live, so peruse and enjoy!