Off to a Bad Start

Well the holidays are history! Although this is stated as an exclamation, it is one of sadness and relief. You see, the holidays, particularly Thanksgiving through Christmas, are my favorite time of the year. This year just happened to be an exceptionally challenging season for a number of reasons from family dysfunction to financial embarrassment, but I am happy to say I got through them and "this too shall pass".

The New Year - 2006

Over the last couple of weeks I have had the opportunity to read a few blogs with great interest, especially when it comes to New Year's Resolutions. I am not big on resolutions, or should I say on making a list of the things I am going to do. The approach I tend to take is to try and make some changes, but not to really broadcast them. After reading Tayari Jones's blog with her list of Resolutions I began to wonder, "If you put them in writing does that add a level of accountability to your resolutions?" If you are a task oriented person and you know that there are still things on your "To Do List", which is down on paper or screen I would suppose the answer would be yes. Also, if you are like me and just want to achieve some things, having them in writing would prompt you to at least attempt to get them done.

I'm not going to take this time to compose a long list of "to do's", but I will briefly state that the goals I set for this year included organizing my home and work offices, becoming more fiscally responsible and kicking the ultimate of bad habits - smoking.

The home office is coming along, you can now see the floor and many of the surfaces but I have found that I just have a ton of paper and books. There are some things that I just have a problem getting rid of - first and foremost books and secondly notes and files on articles I have written in the past. As I begin to seriously try and get back to writing I'm afraid that I might throw out some good research, but on the other hand I begin to think that I'll look at any old topics from a new vantage point sans previous notes.

Books on the other hand are everywhere. They are in my office, in my bedroom and in my craft room. For a number of years I have said that I needed to take an inventory of what I actually have, but I've never gotten around to it. Instead I just continue to add to the numbers. Today I decided to just take a quick count of the books I could see in my office and I counted 190 titles. That's a lot of books, and it does not include the four bookcases in my craft room.

I'm going to add to my list and make a concerted effort to purge some of the books in my collection, mainly the paperbacks that I know I will not read, or have read and will never reread.

Signing off to continue my task of decluttering my life!