New Year's Resolutions

[stapsdoes101things]

(That's King Alfred there, on a very rainy Winchester New Year's Day. I almost always go to Winchester - my birthplace - on 1st January, not for any deep and meaningful communion with my own beginning, but because it is a likely place to meet my family, lifelong friends, and a whole lot of old buses.)

I have made one resolution that is specific to 2012: to have fun. Other than that, I'm going to keep plodding on with my 101 in 1001.

Here are the goals I completed in 2011:
81 - Buy a decent shredder
27 - Do a First Aid course
10 - Make wedding album/scrapbook
74 - Explore Bradford and associated family history
25 - Become a bone marrow donor
61 - Eat at a restaurant 6 times, 2 being new-to-me restaurants
99 - Make quilt for impending niecephew, and one to spare (it turned out to be a niece, and the spare one went to my friend's baby in October...)
87 - Have big 26th birthday gathering in Exeter


I also made significant progress on:
63 - Write 6 1000+ word fanfics. Technically I have written six such, but the sixth was a Yuletide treat and wasn't as extensive as I wanted it to be.
47 - Enter five competitions. I've entered four and won one, so far.
1 - Become a Mystery Worshipper and review three services. I've reviewed two so far.
49 - Hold a dinner party and a picnic. I had my dinner party; the picnic is still to come.
98 - Do 100 Snapshots project. I've taken about 65 out of the hundred so far.
6 - Sing four solos at church. Two down, two to go - and, most significantly, the director of music now knows I'm happy to take solos.
29 - Walk pilgrimage from home to Canterbury
100 - Buy a monocle. I've bought it, but I need to wear it somewhere in order to call this goal complete.
39 - Wild-release 101 books, including one that is of sentimental value to me - I've released 46 so far, including the one of sentimental value.
75 - Make a finger labyrinth - it just needs painting and varnishing.


and took smaller steps on various other ones, which I shan't itemise.


I've changed one goal. Here are all the others.


In 2012 I intend to:
- finish that sixth fanfic
- enter that fifth competition
- review that third service (are you noticing a pattern here?)
- take a picnic to an outdoor Shakespeare performance (I meant to do this in 2011, but never got my act together.)
- continue my pilgrimage walk as far as Canterbury.
- wear my monocle to my father's seventieth birthday party.
- run a BookCrossing challenge.
- go on a retreat
- read my heraldry book and learn how the Royal Arms works (and worked)
- watch more films
- see more things at the theatre
- make a scrapbook of friends' weddings (and decide what to do with the ones for those who have since split up, oh dear...)
- work out what to do with These Three Remain
- use NaNoWriMo as an excuse to write my Phyl book
- work out which motoring event I want to attend, and book it
- do the locavore tasks (not until summer, though)
- beg, borrow or steal a guitar, and begin to learn how to play it
- make washable sanitary pads
- get started on music theory
- have a big day in London riding on the Eye and visiting museums
- strip the paint off my chair


and, perhaps most importantly, take a hard look at all the goals that involve doing one thing over and over again, and see how invested in them I really am. I might need to rewrite a few.