Checklist of Good Ideas

Well here I am, in the final days of 2006. The blank slate of an entire year is beckoning. What do I want to do this year? To see? To accomplish?

I find New Year’s Resolutions a little daunting… they are usually about diet and exercise and they are usually trashed long before Valentine’s Day. I think last year they met their untimely demise a few days shy of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, in a afternoon-long frenzy that included Toll House chocolate chip cookies, Strawberry Glazed Dunkin Donuts and a McDonald’s Number 9.

I have a slight aversion to ultimatums.

Perhaps I shouldn’t use the word “Resolutions.” It sounds so final, and so highly unachievable. Like I’m suddenly supposed to be some unholy combination of Martha Stewart and Carol Brady.

Maybe I’ll just refer to it as my Checklist of Good Ideas. And I will post it in blogland and refer back to it when I need to be reminded.

Here’s what I’ve come up with:

Spend more time with family and friends
- invite someone over for dinner once a month
- make plans to go out with friends on the weekends instead of just going out the two of us
- go see Dennis’ band

Keep in touch better via email or phone calls
- on the first of the month (or soon thereafter) go through the address book and send a real email (not a “forward”)
- call a relative every Saturday morning

Exercise regularly
- walk during lunch hour
- walk around the lake
- exercise that butt and those abs
- maybe buy a fun exercise video for the weekends, one where they’re dancing (something not so boring)

Keep the brain sharp
- Learn something new - maybe a “how to” video? Play guitar? Or piano? Bellydancing? Hee hee... yeah, maybe bellydancing
- Brush up on Spanish
- Crossword puzzles
- Read more books (when I can’t sleep, lunchtime, etc)

Put all my photos into albums (this will take all year)

Cook more real dinners
- family dinner night once a week
- cook something big on Sunday night to be leftovers for the rest of the week
- try some new recipes, and try out the crock pot and the quesadilla maker

Be creative every week (creating something… anything!)
- Drawing
- Collage
- Painting
- Scrapbooking
- Altered books

Get those war letters into the computer (four years of correspondence between my grandparents circa WWII)

Take photos every day!

Aggressively pursue photography until it becomes a full-time gig and I can quit the 9 to 5...

Well that looks like enough to keep me busy. Wish me luck!