My goals for 2015

I can't believe the year 2014 is coming to a close so soon...

This year has been such an incredible one for me for so many reasons, the least of which being that I finally went and got my first boyfriend! I'm the happiest I've ever been, and I eagerly await spending New Year's Eve with Jerome tomorrow night. Soon it will be an entire year since we first met...

But enough about that. The end of another year means that I should make a plan for the next one. 

RESOLUTION TIME!

WEBSITE RELATED

~ First of all, I really want to bring the site that my dad, sister and I have been working on for years, Fun4Baby, to the world.

Actually, it's already available on the internet right now at www.fun4baby.com, so you can check it out right now! We're still busily working on it though, because there are many kinks and bugs to fix, but really the coding can be considered done at this point. Now we need real people to test the site out and tell us if it's any good.

From this point on, I need to transition from working on new features to explaining the concept to friends and strangers, driving traffic to the website, and being confident in my selling abilities.

I used to have my doubts that we could really make this site a reality, but when I look at where we are now, I believe my family and I can truly make a difference in the world.

If whoever is reading this post now would like to help spread the word, just tell anyone you know who has a baby (or is expecting a baby) that they should try playing this fun, educational game with their baby and send them over to www.fun4baby.com. ^_~

~ I want to use the many awesome skills I have to better people's lives and make some money on the side. Now, Fun4Baby can potentially make me and my family a lot of cash if we market it right, but I don't want to ride everything on the website succeeding.

Perhaps I could offer my services as web-master to people, or tutor them on using technology like I have in the past. I have lots of other skills too, like writing and copy-editing, interacting with children and animals, cooking, video-editing, photography, and so many others I can't even name right now. I need to be proud about what I can do, and maybe get a part-time job in one of these areas. It would at the very least bring me one step closer towards independence...

~ No more wasting my precious time on YouTube and Facebook! >_< This has always been something of a challenge for me, but I am seriously addicted to a lot of my subscribed YouTube channels, and I need to wean myself off of them. Same with Facebook. I should only use it for genuinely connecting with friends, not mindlessly scrolling through my feed for interesting links. In fact, I've seriously considered getting rid of the Facebook app altogether!

I won't, however, get rid of my account entirely, because I still want to keep in touch with my friends. So maybe I'll just use the Messenger app more often.

~ In that vein, I would like to try and have a conversation with EVERY ONE of my Facebook friends (there are 123 of them as of this post). I'll send at least one text to every person, and hopefully they'll write back to me and I'll rekindle some old friendships. Haha, maybe I can start by writing "Happy New Year" to everyone and see who responds.

WRITING RELATED

~ Keep up writing on THIS blog. I want to have at least 50 posts published in 2015. That means I should post at least once a week. I'm pretty sure I can make that goal quite easily. I wonder if I should even try for 100 posts...

~ Do NaNoWriMo this year. I succeeded in writing 50,000 words back in 2013, when I posted all my short stories on my NaNoWriMo Story Wars Blog. I didn't do it this year, because I didn't have any really good ideas for a full novel (plus I was pretty preoccupied with hanging out with my boyfriend every weekend to write. Especially Thanksgiving Weekend). So this year I intend to get an idea for an actual novel and WRITE!

~ I think it would be fun to make character studies for every book I read from now on, just like I did with the Cuckoo's Calling. Well, maybe every other book at least. I'll have to make sure that the information gleamed out of these exercises becomes useful in my own writing later.

~ I would also like to get back to going to my old writing group meetings I used to go to at my library. I went to a holiday party with Annette's and my old writing friends, and I found that I missed them more than I'd realized. Like I said earlier, this year I made it my priority to be with Jerome every weekend that I could. Maybe this year I can go to every other meeting. Or I could go to another writing class entirely

~ I'd love to learn how to be a travel writer. I hear that pays really well, and I'd certainly LOVE to have the freedom to travel to new places and write about them. Maybe I'll take a workshop or class on it this year.

BOYFRIEND RELATED

~ Take a dance class with Jerome. (It could be fun) Also go to more painting classes with him, because the one we went to a couple months back was super fun.

~ Finish watching Death Note and playing Braid with Jerome. (I feel like we'll do both of those easily in January).

~ Have Jerome teach me how to properly drive in a manual transmission car, like the adorable Mazda convertible that he drives. He's given me one lesson so far, but I need a lot more practice. I want to be able to take a looong roadtrip somewhere someday with my boyfriend, and if we were to drive his car, I'd want to be able to help him out by splitting the driving between us.

~ Introduce Jerome to my best friend of 6 years and counting... Jacoby Nielsen. This will happen either in person (JN makes another visit to Florida or Jerome and I take a trip to Utah together) or virtually over webcam (probably the more likely and convenient option. I'd just have to do some expert coordinating). It would just make me so happy to have the 2 guys I love most in the world meet each other face-to-face... I think they'd like each other well enough, since I've told each one lots about the other.

(This is the best pic I could find that reminded me of both Jerome and Jacoby. Plus, come on. It's from Fruits Basket!)

MY OTHER GOALS

~ Visit a country I've never been to before. I wanted to say visit a US state I've never been to, but I want to branch out of America and go somewhere totally new! This can play into my travel-writing resolution, perhaps...

~ Wake up earlier in the morning. Right now it takes me four alarms to get properly awake, starting at 7:30 and going off again every half hour until 9:00. I'd like to get back to being an early bird again. Which means I should probably quit staying up past midnight so often... >_<

~ Earn enough money to afford my own car. Another step towards independence...

~ Annette mentioned something cool to try this year. Take a big empty jar and set it in a common place next to some paper and a pencil. Every time I learn something cool or something about myself or something I just want to remember in the future, I'll take a scrap of paper, write down what I learned, fold the paper up and put it in the jar. The whole family can do it. Then at the end of the year, we dump the whole jar and see all the wonderful things we've learned!

Sooooooooooooo... Yeah, those are my top 17 resolutions I'd like to tackle this year. Wish me luck in keeping as many of them as possible!