The New Year is moving along quickly and I’m slogging along behind, trying to catch up.

Everyone is busy doing new year resolutions. Do you make resolutions? Do you keep them? And if you do, for how long?

I gave up making resolution years ago because they never worked and then I felt guilty when I broke them, so I switched to making goals. It’s kind of nice when you start a new year to think about where you’ve been in 2018 and evaluate those goals and then focus on things that you’d like to accomplish in 2019. I try to make them realistic and measurable.   For example, last year I said I wanted to start sending out newsletters a few times a year. I managed to send one out before the end o the year – so I accomplished that goal.

I usually divide my goals up into at least two different categories – my personal goals and my writing goals, which is what I did this year.   For my personal goals – do I want to lose weight? Of course I do, but will I?   Who knows?  Instead my goal is to eat healthy. I’m going to follow the Mediterranean Diet which is the top diet for healthy eating.   My main goal is to be healthier, reduce and keep my blood pressure low and feel better. I also want to increase my exercise and aim for 7,000 -10,000 steps daily. And I’d like to work on time management. This also works with my writing goals.

My writing goals start with time management. I want to be more organized, so I write every day, even a few minutes and find some time to keep up with marketing and promotion.   I want to sed out 4 newsletters this year, do one or two guest blogs a month. I want to spend more time on the business of writing and learning about it, do more promos and gift books, do a few more ads.

We’ll see how I do. I’d love to hear some of your goals for 2019.