New Goals for 2012

After the very emotional 2 weeks I’ve had, I’m sitting down now to re-assess my situation. It’s been very hard adjusting to my “new normal”. So much of my day is just empty now. That means I’ve got to find other ways to fill it. So here’s some additional goals for myself in addition to my 2012 Genealogy Goals.

1. Blog Re-Design. Boy did I drop the ball on this one so far. It’s such a cop out to say, “I’ve been busy.” It’s what I have though. Now that Grandpa isn’t here for me to care for, I have to dedicate myself back to my website. It’s part of my genealogy passion and now I need to re-discover it. There are a couple of questions I’ve gotten in the last few weeks about this, so I’ll try and address those as soon as I can formulate educated, accurate responses. Remember I’m not a coder by trade, just by self learning! So I don’t want to lead you wrong. Part of my re-design is also to overhaul my tags and categories on the blog. I’ve racked up quite a bit of content here, so I just want to be able to access it better. Hopefully a new organization method and the new design can work together to do this.
2. Quilting is something I discovered the year before Grandpa moved here and just like my website, I found it hard to find time to do it. So while I still have a lot of household responsibilities that take up my time, I’m hoping to work out a way to make some quilts for sale (a new venture for me!) and get my website time in. Grandpa had even given me a tremendous idea the day before he passed away and I really want to make that happen.
3. Exercising. This one is the toughest. I’ve been averaging about 3 days a week since the end of January on the treadmill. I want to get it to 5 days a week until my weight comes down. I gained a little bit back the last two weeks, so I have to make up for that by being extra diligent. I’m hoping to get this done first thing in the morning before everything else steamrolls on me, so that I won’t have any excuses to back out!
4. Organizing. I’m actually planning a re-organization of my whole life if you get down to it. Everything from how I spend my time and money to my work area. I’ve planned a renovation for my work space to hopefully make it more efficient. I even have my Dad custom building the desk/bookcases. So plenty of room for my genealogy and coding books! Finally!
5. COMMUNICATION. This is the biggest improvement I hope to make. To be quite honest, I had been pulling away from the computer the last few months. I don’t know if I subconsciously had a feeling that I didn’t have much time left with Grandpa, or I didn’t notice how his condition was getting worse because I was so close to it. Whatever the reason or purpose, it happened. I got behind on e-mails and commenting back. I sincerely apologize for that. Part of my new methods will be to keep a calendar (in my Genealogy Binder maybe), of my month so that I have days set aside just for taking care of correspondence. It’s such a huge part of genealogy and I miss it! There are tons of family connections I want to make in the coming months! So expect me to try and be on the website more and on Twitter. I’m still not sure about maintaining a FaceBook. I cut a lot of drama out of my life when I de-activated that, so I’m still trying to decide what’s best there.

I know these are not all related to genealogy but since I plan to spend so much time on here in the future, I want to get my goals down where they’ll be easy for me to find and re-visit. Not to mention the sign I plan to make myself and hang above my new desk (when it’s made that is).

Now I’m going to share some Instagram pictures I post to my Twitter this week when I was feeling pretty emotional about Grandpa. These picture were taken with my phone, so that is why they look a bit tilted.