Small Accomplishments

Instead of making New Year’s resolutions, I like to look back on the year past and make a list of things I accomplished. “Resolving the Middle East situation” and “curing cancer” have never made my lists and never will, but it’s nice to know that I can achieve goals, even without a set of formal resolutions.

So here is the 2011 list:

• I donated about 4 boxes and 4 bags of things I no longer need to  the Boys and Girls club and about half as much again to Goodwill. I took care not to give them anything dirty, stained, missing parts, or dangerous, but I can’t guarantee that nothing was useless or outdated.
• I bought clothes that I actually like and I make myself wear them. I say “make myself” because even when I have nice things in my closet, I tend to wear beat up T-shirts. The beat up T-shirts are gone, except for two or three I keep for painting and other dirty jobs.
• I also make a point of wearing my jewelry instead of letting it sit in my jewelry box unseen.
• I started an exercise program. Unfortunately, my efforts at exercise class resulted in the infamous broken foot, but I can now both ride a bike and walk fast enough for thirty minutes to raise my heart rate and break a sweat.
• I restructured my daily eating habits to include more fruit, nuts, and yogurt and several days a week, to eat my main meal in the middle of the day and a lighter one in the evening. I also lost 17 pounds. 
• I started baking yeast breads again.
• I got the photographs I took in Africa digitized and on a disk. We won’t say how much that cost.
• I wrote 120 blog posts, compared to 18 in 2011 and 26 in 2009.
• My good friend D and I meet several times a month for walking, lunch or day trips.
• I kept in touch with friends from work and met them for lunch several times.

Feel free to add small accomplishments (or big accomplishments) of your own.