Looking back on my 2008 resolutions, I’m reminded of Mick Jagger singing, “You can’t always get what you want. But sometimes you get what you need.”
Well, sometimes you can’t do exactly what you’ve resolved, but end up getting different and more important things accomplished.
2008 felt like a transition year. Slowly, things are changing, mending. There’s been stress and frustrations and less money; but also more possibilities now than at the end of last year.
Although no one ended up offering me money for my property so that I could move, my other wishes for 2008 have come true.
Obama became president. And thankfully, as it turned out, John Edwards was not part of the ticket. The Democratic Primaries and the Election took over a lot of my thoughts at times.
It seems grassroots support for green, sustainable living is growing too. Although, still at a slower pace than I’d like. Still, it’s amazing how a kick in the coin purse will motivate people.
As for my 2008 resolutions…
I didn’t get around to painting the porch or any other major home improvement project. Most of the summer I had to work evenings as well as attend classes in the morning. What time I did spend on the house was to make unexpected repairs to the roof and plumbing.
I didn’t really delve into Photoshop as much as I wanted and explore all the fancy bells and whistles that would help me restore old family photos. I did, however, spend bells-and-whistles-ish time learning Microsoft Word, Excel, Access and PowerPoint. I’ve also begun to learn more about operating systems and get my feet wet with web design code. In fact, it seems I have a knack for computers. In class, others have regularly turned to me for troubleshooting document or spreadsheet problems during labs. Sometimes even the instructor.
Aside from a Berger/Mitry mystery and “Cradle to Cradle”, I didn’t come close to reading twenty books. However, I’ve been reading textbooks regularly; and perhaps the amount of material I’ve read (and reread) for assignments and research papers comes close to twenty novels.
And maybe textbooks are what I needed to read because it wasn’t until school that I learned how lax my thinking process had become. One of the greatest things about last year was that I was able to engage in discussions and share ideas about the enviornment and politics.
I didn’t pay off the car. If I hadn’t spent $700 getting my trees pruned I could’ve paid it off in December. On the other hand, if I hadn’t then the windstorm that barrelled through Dayton in September would’ve removed those limbs for me. And the damage to the back fence and my neighbor’s van would’ve cost more than $700 to repair. Anyway, I’ll still manage to get the car paid off seven months ahead of schedule.
My credit card debt is only slightly below what it was at this time last year, but considering I used it to charge for things such as car and home insurance, getting it below the original balance is a good thing.
I didn’t consolodate all my VCR tapes and handwritten journals to hard drive storage. To be fair, the video capture device got fried during a thunderstorm this summer and couldn’t be replaced until November. I did manage to get rid of stacks of typewritten journal entries from nearly twenty years ago, although that ended up stirring up some unresolved issues that manifested themselves in some troubling dreams.
My Resolutions for 2009
Learn Photoshop
Learn CSS and Java Script
Blog more
Consolodate the rest of the VCR tapes.
Reduce my credit card debt down to three-fifths of what it is today.
Knock down some walls in this house
Learn to cook a new dish from scratch
Wish List
Learn how to install glass block.
Someone offers me money for my property, so I could relocate to a better location.
