{"id":1369,"date":"2018-01-01T11:12:21","date_gmt":"2018-01-01T11:12:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cranswick.org.uk\/judith\/?p=1019"},"modified":"2018-04-04T13:41:10","modified_gmt":"2018-04-04T13:41:10","slug":"new-year-resolutions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.judithcranswick.co.uk\/?p=1369","title":{"rendered":"New Year Resolutions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-1020 alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/www.cranswick.org.uk\/judith\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/2017-300x225.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"278\" height=\"208\" \/>Has anyone learnt the skill of knitting time?<\/p>\n<p>2017 has rushed past at an alarming rate. I toyed with the idea of trying to take life at a slower pace in the year to come. Having retired more years ago than I like to remember, life should really be getting less hectic, but the chances of that are pretty slim. Fundamentally it means giving up at least one of my activities. My mornings are devoted to exercise \u2013 yoga, tai chi, Zumba, line dancing and pilates. Giving up any one of these, would be counter-productive &#8211; I need to keep healthy &#8211; and there is no way I want to write less \u2013 in fact, the opposite!<\/p>\n<p>Many of my writing goals for the coming year don\u2019t change much from the ones I always make:<strong>Update website<\/strong>. Priority has to be to sort out my new website. The template I bought in the summer \u2013 if not earlier is still sitting there and its technology continues to defeat me.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Write more.<\/strong>\u00a0I felt so proud of myself for achieving 50,000 words of the next Fiona Mason novel for NaNoWriMo, but I have not looked at it since. I MUST get down to some serious writing. I\u2019m not the world\u2019s fastest writer, but it would be good to get not only \u2018<em>Blood Flows South\u2019 <\/em>plus a second Aunt Jessica published this year.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Read more.<\/strong> There are shelves of reference books still sitting there in my study that I never make time to read and I dare not look at the number of books I\u2019ve downloaded onto my Kindle \u2013 it was something like 400 last time I looked!<\/li>\n<li><strong>Learn Twitter.<\/strong> That\u2019s been on the list for a good 5 years and I can\u2019t remember where I put the book I bought to learn up on it.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Plus \u2013 I<\/strong> also have two Ancient history lecture cruises to prepare for and I need to do a vast amount of research before I can begin to even sort those out. As I need to make trips to the British Museum and to Oxford\u2019s Ashmolean museum, I can\u2019t afford to leave the research until the last minute.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-407 alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/www.cranswick.org.uk\/judith\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/Smart.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"264\" height=\"191\" \/>Back in 2015, I created an elaborate spreadsheet detailing my goals for the year broken down into twelve month-long blocks using the smart. It was divided into two major sections &#8211; writing and marketing. Looking back on the year, the writing goals I fulfilled without too many problems, but I doubt I met even half of my marketing project goals. I seriously underestimated how long each of those marketing tasks would talk. I realised early on that one month was not enough for me to master Twitter (I\u2019m still so terrified of it, I still haven\u2019t opened the book I bought on the subject) or look at the book I have on getting the most out of Goodreads. I\u2019m not going to bother spending time creating another spread sheet, but I am determined to stop procrastinating and at least make a start on both books this coming year and at the very least, crack Twitter.<\/p>\n<p>I find mapping goals for the year ahead quite a depressing activity. I know it should enthuse and encourage, but even using the old SMART principal hasn\u2019t helped at all. I\u2019ve done very little the last few days \u2013 I have a cold \u2013 nothing disastrous, but I\u2019m feel very sorry for myself.<\/p>\n<p>On the plus side, I\u2019ve just been given another 5* review for Blood in the Wine and the nights are getting lighter so life is not that bad.<\/p>\n<p>What are your New Year resolutions? Do the excite or depress you?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Has anyone learnt the skill of knitting time? 2017 has rushed past at an alarming rate. I toyed with the idea of trying to take life at a slower pace in the year to come. Having retired more years ago than I like to remember, life should really be getting less hectic, but the chances [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,21,11],"tags":[20],"class_list":{"0":"post-1369","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-general-interest","7":"category-marketing-2","8":"category-writing","9":"tag-goals","10":"entry"},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.judithcranswick.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1369"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.judithcranswick.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.judithcranswick.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.judithcranswick.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.judithcranswick.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1369"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.judithcranswick.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1369\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1375,"href":"https:\/\/www.judithcranswick.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1369\/revisions\/1375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.judithcranswick.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.judithcranswick.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.judithcranswick.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}