2016 Already?

The Earth has gone around the sun one more time and it is now 2016 by the calendar my part of the world follows.

Last year went really fast.  REALLY fast.  I accomplished some things, failed at some things, and have some things still ongoing.  In other words it was pretty much a typical year.  Now it is time to look back one more time, assess where I stand, and decide where I want to chart my path for the coming year.  All of this is done, of course, with the knowledge that no plan survives contact with the enemy...or with reality...or with whatever it is that The Fates have planned for the oncoming year.  Still, it is always comforting to have some goals in mind to help find an initial direction.  So...my thoughts on where I want my 2016 to lead:

• I am going to turn 50 years old this year.  That kind of blows my mind.  When I was young, 50 seemed so OLD, and now I feel like (physical issues aside) I'm hardly any different than I was when I was 15.  But when I stop and think about it, I realize just how different I am.  I've learned a lot about patience, empathy, and love in my years.  At one point I believed I would never be a good parent, so I didn't want children.  I was always afraid that I would be the overly demanding, perfectionist who was never satisfied with how well my kids did things.  I didn't want to put any children through that.  But as time went on and I grew, I realized that there was a part of myself that really did want to have children, and that I had matured into someone who could BE a good parent, loving yet firm without being a perfectionist.  To our dismay, we discovered that I was unable to have children at that point.  Ironic, don't you think?  So we started talking adoption.  Since then we have talked about it, even started the process, but never followed through.  There are always reasons, of course, money...time...are we really ready?...that sort of thing, but the end result has been that we remain where we started several years ago.  This year is the year of do or die.  Either we do it, or the idea dies.  I am getting to the age where I think it will be difficult to get approved to adopt.  Thus the goal of getting the paperwork and required training done, or just letting go of the idea and knowing that our legacy will have to carry forward in other ways.
• Fat Lady Foods is at the tipping point, and this year's goal is to push it into the next stage.  I want to be able to pay myself by the end of the year.  I don't expect to be able to pay myself a high enough salary that I can stop working at the bank all together, but I want to make progress in that direction.  Thus there will be less time spent playing games or reading Facebook, and more time spent searching out new shows to do, exploring new product lines, making sure that paperwork is current so there's no end of the year rush to get it all together, and exploring new marketing opportunities.  The business won't build itself, and I refuse to let this follow the pattern of other ideas I've had in the past.  I refuse to let it die from some strange need I seem to have to create my own downfall, self-sabotage at its finest.  I love working my business, and I will move forward and let it grow the way that it should rather than holding it and myself back because I'm too scared to succeed.
• I adore our house, but you couldn't tell that by looking at it.  There are so many aspects of it that need care and we have been bad about treating it the way that we should.  My home will never be a showplace.  We actually live in it, and there's no denying it.  I am very realistic about the chances of getting The Husbeast to remember to always close cupboard doors when he's done in them, or to put things back when he's finished using them.  His mind just doesn't work that way.  Not to say that the chaos in our house is all his fault.  I have my own bad habits about letting things pile up instead of putting them where they should go as they come into the house.  But this will be a year where one of my foci is to get the house and yard in better shape.  Money will have to be spent, but if it means we eat out / order in less and actually spend money on things like new gutters, getting the garage fixed up, getting a new living room ceiling, and having the landscaping done, then that is what happens.  I want to be proud of my home.  I am tired of being ashamed of how it looks, or describing it as "The house with the scraggly yard and weeds." when people are looking for it.
• Not all of my goals for the year are huge ones.  I have smaller ones as well.  I want to read 104 books this year.  That was my goal for 2015 and I only managed to read 67 of them.  I will try again to have a good mix of fluff, philosophy, history, science, biography, and classic literature.  I think that my spread of subjects has always been good, so that doesn't need improving.  I do, however, have to work on the huge list of reading subjects that I've written down as I've run across things I want to learn more about.  I would like to strike some of them through to make room for more.
• I have declared this to be The Year of Pinterest!  I have over 2,000 pins on my Pinterest boards between recipes, cross stitch patterns, and coloring pages, among other things.  I am going to work to clear some of those and determine whether they are keepers or not.  The recipes I decide to keep will go into my recipe software for future use.  The craft projects and cross-stitch patterns will get printed out and put into a binder.  I will begin another binder for prepper information.  I know, I know, the image of preppers is  that of crazy people sure that the gubmint is gonna come after us all.  My concern is for natural disaster preparation AND for possible civil issue preparation, but the main concern for me is to know we can survive at a basic comfort level if a hurricane strikes or a major ice storm leaves us iced in for a long time, or an earthquake hits.  None of these are beyond the realm of possibility, and I don't think that it is foolish to be ready just in case.  So, there will be a binder prepared with important information should the vast resources of the internet suddenly become unavailable.
• Finally, I want to write more.  I want to write more blog posts, I want to get more stories out there in submission, and I want to do serious work on the novel series I have in mind.  I'm sure I'll have plenty of free time to do this *snerk* but seriously, if it is important, then we find the time, right?  So my goal is to find the time and make it work.

These are most of my major goals for the year.  I'm sure that they will morph and change as the days and weeks go by, but this is where I am starting 2016 in my mind.  I can't wait to see where the year ends up and the changes that happen between now and then.

Have a wonderful new year, everyone.  I hope that your year contains everything that you hope it will, and little to none of the things we all fear it will hold.  Let's make this a good one, shall we?