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This is the year of accountability for me. I haven’t always set goals for myself at the beginning of the year; sometimes, it’s more of a wishlist/prayer (Lord, please let this be the year that I meet my future husband.), while other times, it’s a longer-term goal (in 2000, I set a goal of being finished with school, in a career-path editorial job, and making strides in my writing career by the time I was 35. All of those things happened when I was 35).

This year, as I’ve already posted, I’m making my goals for the year public, because I want accountability. When I make goals but don’t tell anyone else about them, it’s easy to give up on them because no one else will be disappointed or think less of me because I’ve quit. So, in addition to my reading goals and writing/writing-career goals for 2008, here are goals for what I’d like to achieve in my personal life this year:

1. Become active in church again. Surprisingly, this is a difficult area of my life. I attend a relatively large church that doesn’t have a singles ministry. Even though I’ve enjoyed singing in the choir and the intellectual and spiritual stimulation I’ve gotten from the Sunday school class I’ve attended there (couples ages 50+), ever since my back went out this past fall, I’ve attended church only sporadically (though the weeks I don’t go, I do at least watch the worship service on TV). I know that my spiritual health is flagging because of this, but I also struggle with loneliness more when I’m at church than when I’m not. I know that God called me to this church, and I love the people there. But there’s definitely some spiritual warfare going on in my heart that I’m allowing to keep me away from the one place where I can overcome it.

2. Become a better housekeeper. “Clean up this pig sty!” was something I heard at least once a week growing up. I haven’t gotten much better since I’ve been an adult. Why? Pretty much because I’m lazy and a procrastinator. But I’ve recently volunteered my house for a monthly creative/brainstorming meeting for my local writing group, and I don’t want to have to spend all of the weekend prior to the meeting cleaning the house. So my goal is to spend at least thirty minutes a day cleaning/organizing, so that I’m not killing myself (nor putting my back out again) to make the house presentable when someone comes over. Which leads to . . .

3. Become more hospitable with inviting people over. Hospitality is always one of my lowest scores whenever I take a spiritual-gifts survey (along with giving and mercy—all three of which in my mind are tied together). I have already taken one step in offering my house as the place for this new monthly meeting. But I need to be better about inviting friends over for lunch/dinner before or after we go see a movie at the theater near my house, or having friends over to watch movies more often. Again, this is tied very closely to #2.

4. Lose weight. I know, it’s the oldest January cliche that exists. But I had set this goal before Christmas—and then had even more motivation thrown in my face nearly every day over the holiday as I was surrounded by aunts and cousins who’ve all lost weight (between 30–60 pounds!) and look fabulous. It made me very self-conscious . . . I meant to lose weight in 2007. I even tried to start low carb back last May. But I gave up really easily. (Again, lazy and procrastinator.) So Tuesday, I cut out the carbs—as well as caffeine to see if that will help bring my blood pressure down—and today I start back to the gym. My ideal goal is to lose between 80–90 pounds by the ACFW conference in September—but only if I can do it healthily. Aside from the motivation of wanting to lose the low self-esteem that comes from being morbidly obese—knowing I have no stamina to go out and do things, knowing that I’m the person everyone dreads having to sit next to on an airplane (and being uncomfortable on an airplane myself), wondering if a chair that has arms is going to be wide enough for me—my two main motivations for losing weight are to get my blood pressure down (it’s still around 140/80 even on two medications) and alleviate my back pain. Aside from the low-carb lifestyle, the most tangible part of this goal is that I commit to going to the YMCA down the street from the office to walk the treadmill/elliptical and do strength training twice a week (Tuesdays and Thursdays), and to the downtown location to swim for an hour at least twice a week (most likely Saturday and Sunday afternoons, though I might try the water aerobics class on Monday evenings).

5. Buy no new clothing this year. I’m talking about tops, jeans, skirts, slacks, etc. I am so bad about spending money on clothing, mainly because I’m not happy with the way the clothes I currently have fit me (or because they don’t fit me)—unless I lose enough weight that no clothes I currently own still fit me. I have a closet full of clothes that I haven’t been able to wear for several years because I’ve slowly been putting on pounds until I am now barely fitting into size 28W jeans and have been buying size 30/32W tops because they’re looser and more comfortable. At this size, it will take losing about 30 pounds to go down one size—but when I do, I’ll be able to “go shopping” in my own closet and get back into some items that were my favorites when I could wear them, as well as stuff that’s practically brand-new, because I bought it thinking, I’m going to lose weight and be able to wear this. This one is a precursor, and part of . . .

6. Set a budget and live by it. I’m an impulse buyer and not someone who has ever been able to effectively save money. Now that I have one book under contract and (prayerfully) more to come, it would be so easy for me to take that advance and just blow it on things I want (like a TV with a remote that actually works, every DVD I feel like is missing from my collection, a new bed, etc.). But there are things I need to do with some of it (get new shocks/struts and a tune-up for the car, put some extra money toward paying off my student loans, pay off a few smaller bills, set some aside for taxes) and then the rest needs to go toward promoting the release of the book. I took a financial planning class several years ago at church. I need to pull the books out and go through it again, because that was what helped me pay off all of my debts before I graduated . . . and then I got lazy and procrastinated and allowed myself to fall into old habit of allowing myself to ignore my bank balance and just purchase whatever I want whenever I want, which is a very destructive and stressful pattern and I’m tired of it. So that ends this year!

7. Spend my time wisely. I’ve set this goal over and over (and mentioned it several times on this blog before), but I’m a much happier, productive person when I live by a schedule. Since I’ve made the commitment to going to the gym (directly after work, which means I’ll still be home around six o’clock), I need to build the rest of my schedule, weighting it heavily toward writing time and limiting the amount of time I spend watching TV (which should be really easy to do with the writers’ strike now).

Update on other goals:
From my Reading Goals:
#2 under ABA Fiction: I started reading The Darkest Evening of the Year a couple of days ago. Should have it finished in about a week.

From my Writing Goals:
1. Send in four applications to teach at the ACFW conference: Showing vs. Telling, Critical Reading, Critiquing, and either POV or Setting. I completed this goal yesterday, submitting applications for Showing vs. Telling, Critical Reading, Critiquing, and Setting.