Success And Failure

First the successes-

I easily finished my readings for the year. I found reading the Bible "from cover to cover" made more sense than having readings from the Old Testament and New Testament each day.

I also found I liked the KJV, although at first I had a little trouble. Once I got used to the sentence structure and what the unfamiliar words meant, it was like reading anything else.

Regarding getting exercise, yesterday I was glad to finally reach my goal of 25,000 squats and push-ups. I have to admit I coasted just slightly the past few weeks, which isn't right because I probably could have gotten 26,000 if I'd kept up my pace earlier in the year. Oh well, I set a goal, and I reached it in spite of myself.

I feel rather blessed that I was allowed to achieve these goals.

Now the failures-

For whatever reasons, I failed in my final two goals for 2009.

My posting was never on pace to reach 450. If this is my final post of the year, it looks like I'll end up with only 353. I started out too slow. I needed to average 37 posts a month.

I think my goal was set too high, but I also think I didn't try hard enough on this one. There are a lot of posts I've started drafts on and never finished. There are a lot of pictures I wanted to post but never did.

I have to admit it, I've had good ideas, funny ideas and a good portion of stinky ideas for posts that I could have briefly let fly with, but something held me back. I think that something is that blogging isn't as exciting as it once was. I still like doing it, but like most things, it isn't the shiny new toy I used to play with for hours anymore.

I've also been far busier as this year has went on, and my blogging priorities weren't set high enough to reach 450 posts.

The other reason I failed is a lack of planning. The two goals I was successful with required me to set a small goal each day in order to not feel overwhelmed. If I just met that daily goal, I was going to make it by the end of the year.

I didn't do that with the blogging. I posted most days, and felt satisfied just getting the one post a day out. I needed to put out around 9 posts a week and ended up around 7. I think next year I'll be happy with 7 posts a week.

Finally, what can I say about the landscaping except it was utter failure. I not only didn't complete one major landscaping project this year, I never even got one started. I was wanting to build a new waterfall and fountain. I told myself as the year went on that keeping up with maintaining what was there was about all I could do, but I know I could have done better had I just planned better.

I think the bigger problem was I never decided what I wanted. I still don't know. It is impossible to complete something if one cannot even decide how it's supposed to look like in the end. All my other goals had specific endpoints I could see. I still can't "see" what it is I want here.

The other problem is as the year went on, I decided I wanted to finish off my beds at the same time as tackling the big undertaking of a waterfall. I still have beds I want to dig out and beds I want to finish.

But it'll happen next year, I'm telling ya...look out.

Or maybe not.

Happy New Year.