Goals for the New Year: at InkSlingers!

It's goals/confession week at the InkSlinger's blog. Go here to check out everyone's responses or read on to check out mine :)

I must preface this with the statement that I am noctoriously BAD at keeping New Year's Resolutions. However, I think this is partially because I made a goal of what I knew I should want, rather than what actually meant something to me. This time last year I made a commitment to read the entire Narnia series by C.S. Lewis under my firm belief that you can't criticize until you've read the ENTIRE thing. Not that I was citicizing it, but everyone talks about Narnia, except for me and I felt out of the loop. So, I bought myself the HUGE master collection this summer and got to work. I finished just a few days before Christmas. My thoughts on it later. Why am I telling you this? Because it was the changing moment in what I thought a resolution should be. It's about what I've wanted to do with my life and haven't yet, not about what other people would do with my life if I was an automatronic (is that a real word?) robot that could be programed to do their will. After all this is my life and I choose how I want to live it.

Now, without further adou and blubbering, my goals for the new year:
Writing/Reading Goals:
1. Finish and begin submitting my WIP that was supposed to be finished by Jan. 1....whoops.
2. Create a list of agents (numbering at least 20) that I would like to represent my book and add to that list as each reection comes my way.
3. Begin and finish writing another book, but not in the same series as the WIP.
4. Begin book 2 of the WIP and begin making a more detailed plan of book 3. (I'm thinking of you whiteboards....you should be afraid, very afraid.)
5. Read. I'm not putting a number to this because I don't have an idea of how I can do. I know I can read at least fifty. I've read 8 in the past week and a half and read 0 the week and a half before that. My schedule's too nutsy to figure out how many I can read that would actually be a challenge. Commiting to read is more of a think about it more than I am now kinda thing.
6. Make more of a commitment to my blog. I've fallen WAY off the wagon, so far that the wagon train left me ten miles west of St. Louis and are already near Oregan. This is partially because of laptop issues, but also due to bad time management.
7. Read a book that I am not interested in. i.e. like Narnia. I didn't have much use for reading it and didn't care that much, but I gained way, WAY more than I thought was possible. So, I'm doing it again.

Family/Friends/Life Goals:
1. Call my family more often. I've seriously lagged in this dept. and there aren't really any excuses other than my life isn't that interesting. The thing is....while my life isn't, that doesn't mean that someone else's life hasn't changed for some reason and I should, as a person with feelings, care when my family members of friends have something new even though the phone works both ways.
2. Keep my desk clean so that I can actually use it. I think that says it all.
3. Get a chair cushion for my terrible desk chair in the hope that I will use it more often.
4. Do at least two things that I've wanted to do in my college town or near abouts.
5. Work really hard in my classes. I'm a good student by habit, but I can be a great student by trying. (<-- made that up by myself, aren't you proud?)

Well, that's my list. I challenge you to read, write, and make your own goals for the new year. Happy New Year!