So...second post regarding Resolutions and a new Five-Year Plan:

New Year Resolutions, 2018

(1) continue to rediscover self – a permanent goal. Lifelong!
(2) continue to tick the bucket list – another lifelong goal. Who could tick them all?

(3) maintain family, friends, and professional contacts – The extended family database was passed to a nephew and a cousin. Maintain my copy and contacts for our immediate family. Organize and make better use of professional contacts.

(4) continue to travel together, alone, and in groups to new places, for interests, for fun – as we have. No plans made; exploring options. Eventually to the UK, Europe, and parts of Canada we have yet to visit; more trips to BC; and back to Australia at some point. Over several years. Possibly Nashville in the future.

(5) dance and play - ukulele, classes and practice, and BalletFit - plus French – try Rosetta Stone again! Call Boleo (6 tango classes still to do.) Major goal: play ukulele well enough to play my own songs. Perform as often as possible. Accept all opportunities.

(6) repair body as well as possible through healthy diet, exercise, and with medical help – Continue GF, eat more vegetable-based diet, exercise more often (walk 30 minutes daily plus BalletFit weekly.) Continue monthly massage, pedicure, and physio exercises. Look after teeth and eyes. Follow up skin treatments.

(7) write one hour daily minimum: blog, tweets, fb, mail, email, stories, & songs – nope! See short term goals for social media first. Be more organized in terms of what I write and when. Submit more often to songwriting competitions and literary publications. 
(8) sort one hour daily minimum - be flexible! Office bins, photos, cupboards, clothes, etc.

(9) continue weight loss with healthy diet, less booze, more exercise. Do not stress about it!
10) budget and plan for me, us, family, and future – continue to transfer surplus funds to family expenses monthly. Continue to put $ aside monthly for projects (Wild Cat 2018). Keep books up to date, prep taxes a la Gold accountants for registered business and joint tax returns. Increase revenue from cds, royalties, music, writing, performances. 

This will be a series of posts as I develop New Year Resolutions and Five Year Plan

First an evaluation of the resolutions I made in 2012, 6 months after I retired. I will jump off of a progress report in 2014. I definitely feel a new 5-year plan coming on. Let’s see how I'm doing now. 
(1) continue to rediscover self – yes! I created and met new challenges. Some I simply abandoned.
(2) continue to tick the bucket list – yes! I recorded some songs (Celtic Cat 2015, Cool Cat 2017) and travelled to the red centre of Australia. Other items remain or are vague, stalled, or replaced.
(3) maintain family, friends, and professional contacts for us and Mom – ah! Mom passed away in 2015 at the amazing age of 101, 4 months, and 9 days. Last year, I sent the extended family database to a nephew and a cousin for use in hosting family gatherings. However, I will maintain my copy.

(4) travel together, alone, and in groups to new places, for interests, for fun – yes, to St. Lucia, Dominican Republic, Portugal, Florida, and Australia. In June 2012, I went to France with the Jacksonville Women. I attended ASN conferences in the USA each fall. We visited BC, Ottawa and various Ontario spots.  The big trips were to Australia - 1 month in 2012, 2 ½ months in 2016.
(5) dance and play - tango and ukulele, classes and practice - plus French - get Rosetta Stone, join a bilingual MeetUp – oh, boy! Dropped tango, pilates, and dancefit due to my knees. BalletFit works! Also physiotherapy. In general, I abandon exercise unless called for. I took ukulele from Judy and loved it. Now I take a weekly class with Mark and slowly improve. But it seems I cannot practice! Just as I cannot go beyond the first Rosetta Stone disk, Started 3 times. Not bilingual, me!
(6) repair body as well as possible through healthy diet, exercise, and with medical help – yes! Replaced the knees in 2014! Learned that I am intolerant or sensitive to either wheat or gluten according to my GE, which helped explain why I lost so many symptoms and so much weight when I started eating GF in 2014. I have retained the weight loss ever since and swear by GF for my gut. 

 (7) write one hour daily minimum: blog, tweets, fb, mail, email, stories, & songs – nope! Still sporadic. But productive at times.
(8) sort house one hour daily minimum: Sun Playroom, Mon Office, Tues Gable Room, Wed Bedrooms, Thurs Bathrooms, Fri Kitchen, Sat Basement – did this for awhile during my first year of retirement. Good to reapply, but not so much room by room. I will think about this point.
(9) resume tracking WW Points Plus and weekly meetings – ack! Forget WW or other weight loss plans. Better eating, new knees, and more activity does it. 
10) budget and plan for me, us, family, and future – yes! We developed a good system for tracking family spending. I may never catch up but do contribute each month. But I also put $ aside for my music and writing projects. In 2017, I registered with an artists' accountant for my registered business (another tick!) which makes tax season tolerable and I do not miss anything.

Finally Some R&R

It has been crazy around here the last little while. Ever since I finished SongStudio, the Songwriters intensive on July 27, there has been one thing after another consuming my days, energy, attention, whatever. You get my drift. Today, finally, with my 8 year-old granddaughter off to Art Camp and a bit of alone time (other than our carpenter friend and his work mate sawing and banging away on the porch reno), I feel as if I might have a calm, relaxed day of self-direction and grace. After I shower and dress (yes, it has been a slow lazy morning thus far) I have given myself a bit of a to do list of odds and sods to get done around the house. Then I will pick up the young artist at 3:30 and have a bit of fun with her on into a quiet evening. The to do list includes washing and drying the vegetables I harvested from the garden yesterday (green and yellow beans, cucumbers, green peppers, eggplant, and tomatoes) as they keep better and longer once that is done. I am also going back to my weekly sort schedule. Today it is the gable room's turn. It's full of a lot of stuff from parent households, old photos, stored clothes. I have made a dent but would like to get it cleared to make room for a single bed for grandson visits. I may get there in the hour devoted to it today. Otherwise, I have a lot of correspondence to catch up on, reflections and photos from this year's trips to deal with, and all at a lovely leisurely pace. It is cool and rainy today. Great for working inside.

Self-direction and grace

I would be enjoying retirement far more if I could stop inflicting so much damage. I tore the cartilage in my right knee in November doing a Pilates class when the trainer insisted on adding a yoga cat stretch. I told her that I did not do anything on my knees anymore. But then I was foolish enough to allow her to talk me into it. That knee injury led to a wrecked shoulder in December as I required assistance in disembarking from a boat in St. Lucia in order to participate in a delicous local luncheon awaiting us on a beach. The crew members' enthusiasm in lifting me down did not allow me time to let go my left hand hold, thus tearing the shoulder. That injury shouldn't count as the trip was worth the subsequent agony but it definitely interfered with writing and other work on the computer for some time. I spent much of the first quarter of 2012 in physiotherapy, in addition to getting cortisone shots in my knees and huge new patella stabelizer braces. Things have improved immensely both for getting around and for writing again.

Otherwise, I am slowly moving toward a life of self-direction and grace through a process of re-discovering myself. I spend much of my time alone puttering about, following a leisurely sorting schedule that I have set for myself. This generates piles of paper for recycling and shredding and the occasional exciting bit of archival material. More about this process to come. I did go to the Arts Schools Network conference in Orlando at the end of January just to keep in touch and for the fun of it. However, almost every time I plan a visit to either of my old schools, CALC or Wexford Collegiate School for the Arts, something intervenes. I have seen very little of those I used to work with and time is rapidly running out for this school year.

I am editing the long neglected draft of this post as a start back to blogging from our brother and sister-in-law's home in Canberra, Australia. This three-week vacation is our third in this beautiful country and my reason for returning to my blog. I will be going overseas again late in June for a trip to France with a bunch of women out of Jacksonville, Florida. Another friend my age is currently, and successfully, undergoing treatment for non-Hodgkins lymphoma. That has reminded me that there is no time to waste. If I want to do something, it is better that I do it now while I am still able. Remaining happy, well, and active is what I wish for everyone.

2012 New Year Resolutions

Sunday, January 1, 2012
New Year Resolutions

(1) continue to rediscover self
(2) continue to tick the bucket list
(3) maintain family, friends, and professional contacts for us and Mom
(4) travel together, alone, and in groups to new places, for interests, for fun
(5) dance and play - tango and ukulele, classes and practice - plus French - get Rosetta Stone, join a bilingual MeetUp
(6) repair body as well as possible through healthy diet, exercise, and with medical help
(7) write one hour daily minimum: blog, tweets, fb, mail, email, stories, & songs
(8) sort house one hour daily minimum: Sun Playroom, Mon Office, Tues Gable Room, Wed Bedrooms, Thurs Bathrooms, Fri Kitchen, Sat Basement
(9) resume tracking WW Points Plus and weekly meetings
10) budget and plan for me, us, family, and future