I told myself that this year I wouldn’t bother with resolutions, mostly due to the fact that I fail at keeping them. I made a HUGE list of resolutions last year and out of the 18, I think I was able to accomplish about 7 of them. In other words I failed miserably, lol. This year I think I’m going to shorten my list and create both an online and offline resolutions list. I don’t want to overwhelm myself so I think this time around I’ll be a bit more realistic and hopefully because of that I’ll be able to complete all my resolutions or at least 90% of them by the new year.

We’ll start with the online resolutions:
Blog more often. I’ve successfully blogged every day for a full month so I know I am more than capable of blogging more often then I do. I realize that there are a lot of factors that contribute to my lack of blogging, most often it’s not wanting to blog when I feel as if it’s forced and second often it’s just plain laziness. So this year I resolve to blog as often as possible with the exception of a forced blog entry.

Focus more on paid blogging and don’t do it half assedly. I know it’s a strange resolution to have, but this ties into one of my offline resolutions and thus if I take the time to try and create pieces I can be proud of, this will mean that I can start to branch out more and start working for companies that pay a bit higher for articles. I hope that I can eventually start making $50 per article like Jenn of Jenn.nu.

Stop slacking off on projects. I have several projects under my belt. When I say several, I mean several. One of which is a review site that I wanted to open which ended up falling to the way side. No more. I’m going to be more organized, make lists, and tackle one project at a time.

Increase my viewership. I’d like to get more readers on my blog and realize that in order to do so I need to network a bit more and reach out to others. Sites such as the former Despair.nu were great if you liked superficial comments, but I want readers who actively enjoy visiting my blog and vice versa.

Okay now on to the offline resolutions:

Pay off the credit cards. Now don’t think Robby and I have a shit ton of credit cards and are in debt to our eyeballs because that’s certainly not the case; however we both agreed that before we wanted to even think about trying for children we wanted to ensure that our credit cards are paid off. Obviously no one is every truly ready for children, but I certainly want to make sure that we are as prepared as we can possibly be which means ensuring that credit card bills are not a part of our lives when we introduce kids into them. (By the way, this is the offline resolution tied directly to the paid blogging.)

How about we make our home our home. We’ve been in the house for nearly a year now and it’s still so plain and dreary. I mean sure we painted the family room and living room, but I also want to work on getting pieces up on the walls and just making it feel more homey. Right now the bareness of the walls depresses me so I want to spice the place up by adding my own touches.

Become a Stove Top Diva. Only a few people understand what that means, but essentially I want to really focus on expanding my cooking repertoire because as of right now it’s lacking. Robby and I sat down and realized that we spend waaayyy too much on take out and have made a pack to avoid it as much as possible. Sure we have our moments of weakness, but I think we’re both doing a whole lot better. I also believe that doing this will help prevent us from falling off the wagon and as a result Caity, Jennifer, Rochelle, and I are going to start up a cooking blog in which each day one of us will share a “new” recipe/piece which will hopefully help all of us. By the way, we’re still looking for more people who might be interested in joining us on this escapade, so if you’re interested please shoot me an e-mail.

Focus on building up our savings. Because honestly right now? It’s crap. It’s not a decent size at all which bothers me. We had a sizeable amount, however we seem to have this problem of wanting to buy things that we normally would not if we didn’t have the money for it. I know it’s stupid and it bugs me when Robby decides to buy big ticket items, for instance the ATV he wants to spend our tax return on, but at the same time I can’t tell him no, when I’m guilty of doing the same– albeit the things I want don’t usually cost an arm and a leg. Even still, it’s something we need to work on.

I’m pretty happy with the resolutions I’ve set forth for myself. I’m determined to stick it out and hopefully next year, I will be writing a New Year’s entry of how I accomplished all of my resolutions instead of how I failed miserably at them. Hopefully this year will be full of changes that while difficult will be some of the best things we’ve ever done.

Current Mood:  determined