Happy New Year!

I am so pleased that you survived 2020 along with me. And let me add an additional note of thanks that both my husband and my mother survived this plague year. I wasn’t sure that would be the case in much of this year. Thanks to both of you for being careful.

My compassion to my friends who have lost family this year. It’s been a heart-breaking year.

Thanks to those of you who have brought some joy into this year through your writing or your art or the compassion of your heart. I’ve tethered myself to your joy to get myself through the rough times. For all those of you who asked, “Should I even be telling people my happy news in this period?” The answer was yes. We need some joy to help us cross the tough times. Thank you for sharing yours.

About a decade ago I came across a post by Chris Guillebeau about doing an annual review and adopted it as our own. The main advantage of it is that it helps remind us of our accomplishments over the year. Otherwise I might think to myself, “I didn’t lose the weight I intended to. I am a failure,” ignoring my successes. Even in a bad year there are successes.

Steve and I made this method our own by using our own categories. This year our categories are Professional, Art, Learning, Health and Fitness, Friends, Family, Financial, Home, Fun, and Intimacy. A few categories just have one item. The largest has nine.

The value to us of the categories is that we can not only see our successes, we can see where we are putting our emphasis. For example, this year there are nine items each in Professional and Learning, but only one in Fun. So we are a bit overweighted there. We recognize that and we are choosing to leave it that way. Another year we might adjust that to emphasize a bit more fun or a bit more time with friends.

At the end of the year we’ll do our review and see how we did. Last year, for all that it was a difficult year, we did ok. We accomplished about 70 percent of what we set out to do. Given the plague, that was excellent. Last year we had a very large category for Travel. This year we removed that category for obvious reasons.

That’s how this is working for us. I recommend it as a method. We check our goals quarterly (or sometimes monthly if we are energetic). Our accomplishments give us joy.

You might want to consider the same for New Years resolutions this year. Or, just let 2021 go to give yourself a break. Or create a set of resolutions designed to promote happiness. “Play more games. Show more love. Eat chocolate once per week.”

Whatever you do, I wish you success this upcoming year. Thanks for being part of my life!

Be well, friends!