2013, the year of ...

Remember the lovely Maxabella's One Word for the Year, way back at the beginning of 2012?

Mine was thrive.

I think there was a bit of thriving.  Certainly as far as my health goes, I am a lot healthier now than I was at the beginning of the year.  And my relationship with MR stayed nice and strong but I don't know if I could apply the word thrive to it...

As far as the other stuff goes though - the garden, the house, my life.  Well, the fruit trees thrived.  Until a storm came and broke two branches off my beloved apricot tree.  It still is growing so that's the main thing but now it is very much up and not very much out.  The lawn is thriving away happily after we got it verdimowed a few months ago and having it so beautiful and green and unblemished at this hot dry time of the year when it is usually looking a bit brown and a bit patchy here and there is very lovely.  I'd show you some photos of the before, during and after but I can't find where I put my camera (yes, yes I know...)  The rest of the garden, not so much.  Still very much a work in progress.  And the house?  Well, apart from the beginnings of a study area there hasn't been much progress happening in there either.  And as to my life?  Well, going back to work was good, but really - it took me a bit of time to get there, much longer than I thought it would. Having my own class again next year will be nice though.  Apart from that, just general recovery stuff but nothing particularly stands out in achievements and thriving-type-business. 

So rather than being disappointed about last year's effort, I'll instead give myself a new word for this year, one of more measurable conquest I think (although I suspect this may set me up for greater failure).

I have run through a few words... create  -  do  -  achieve

I sat for a while trying to think of one word to describe the act of following through before resorting to the thesaurus.  Oh right - finish, complete.  No wonder I couldn't think of the right word, those things are foreign to me.  

And then I sat back and thought about what I really want to achieve.  Yes, I want to create more stuff.  Yes, I want to do more stuff.  Yes, I want to achieve more stuff.  Yes, I really, really, really want to follow through and complete stuff.  But really, want I want (and need) to do, which will encompass all of those things is ORGANISE.

You see, I am terribly unorganised. And I am even worse at FINISHING stuff.  So there are things all over the house in various states of unfinishedness.  I get all excited about a project but the execution of said project becomes too hard basket or not quite how I pictured or else sheer laziness comes into play.

So this year I am going to work at being organised.  It will be hard.  As I mentioned above, there is lots of opportunity for great big whopping amounts of failure because I have yet to have an organised bone in my body in all of my 31 years.  To help me along, I need to outline some specific organisational goals to go alongside the general goal of becoming a more organised person.


- organise the craft room :: I'm seriously tempted to hire some decluttering organisation expert to come and make this beautiful for me.  Is that cheating?  Everytime I try to organise this room I never get beyond getting it a quarter organised (with the help of my very organised sister) before it all turns to shit again.  This is the bane of my household, and MR runs to close the door at the first sign of visitors. For that matter, so do I.

- organise my classroom :: I don't want to have the stress of an unorganised classroom this year.  I am really good at the whole organising lessons and keeping kids work organised but my own stuff?  This year I'd like to be all organised so that if I do fall sick and have to have some time off, the person coming in to replace me can find everything and know where all the kids are up to with ease.

- organise myself :: specifically, some form of regular exercise.  I was good for a few months at the beginning of 2012 but then I got slack.  No more excuses!

- organise my home office and filing system (which is currently non existant) :: no need to say more.

- organise the finances :: So we can go on a holiday over east as well as do a couple of (small or not so small) renovations we want to do to the house and garden.  We finally got a bit of a savings account going in the second half of 2012 so hopefully this will stay on track!

- organise all the unfinished projects into boxes and then work my way through them :: or get rid of them, pull them apart, whatever it takes!

Any other organisational type things will just be an added bonus.


I also aim to...

- submit my picture book manuscript 
- write more often
- do the 5km Run for a Reason (at a quicker speed that 50mins) and raise money for the Leukaemia Foundation
- completely pay off my credit card (at least once)
- go on a holiday on a plane (I don't care where to, just out of WA)


I got 4 out of 10 of my goals and resolutions for 2012, let's see if I can get get a better result for 2013.



Do you have some aims/goals/resolutions/a word for the year?  Big or small, I'd love to hear them!