I know I'm late to this, but I think better late than never. I really like the tradition of looking forward to the year ahead and laying out my goals, even when they don't come to fruition. There's always hope!
Career
Get that chapter published. It needs fairly minor revisions. The bigger challenge right now is trying to get the data and scripts in a reproducible format. The journal doesn't require it, but I think it's the right thing to do.
Archive data from my dissertation. Not all of it, but two chapters worth. One chapter is the aforementioned manuscript in revision, and the other is data for its corresponding manuscript that realistically I will never publish. So, the least I can do is get the data out there. I admit that I'm intimidated by this task.
Define a 5-year career goal. I was so relieved and excited to get my current job that I stopped thinking about what's next. I would like to stay in this position for a while, but I know I should still be thinking about how to further my career in this new non-academic environment.
Family
Make a will. We don't have one, and we should, for the sake of our daughter.
Open a bank account for Adele. It's time she had her own!
Personal
Make a friend. We've been here for a year now and I still don't have any friends that I see regularly who are just my friends and not Jon's. I'd like to have at least one friend who fits that criterion by the end of the year!
Become a better conversationalist. I've noticed recently that I do better in social situations if I go in with a mental plan. I tend to do better if I'm alone, actually, than if I'm with Jon and/or Adele. I tend to let Jon carry the conversation too often, and with Adele I have a hard time turning down my parent-brain in order to carry on interesting conversation while trying to pay attention to her. What this means for me is that I need to take a few moments before arriving at an event to mentally prepare for being conversational and remind myself how to get conversations going.
Start a photo booking group. I want to get to know other parents with young kids in our neighborhood without the kids around, so I'd like to invite a handful of parents over after bedtime about once a month with the excuse of working on photo books. It would help me make progress on some books I want to make for Adele and would be way more fun than doing it alone. I think of this as a book club without the reading, or a scrapbooking group without the paper and scissors.
Metagoals
Make monthly and weekly goals. I stopped making weekly goals, but I think I need to pick that up again, for both work and home life.
I'm looking forward to gardening in our yard without biting off more than I can chew. I'm trying to take a long view of the yard and tackle it bit by bit. I also look forward to Adele becoming more and more communicative. She'll turn 2 in May. I'm sometimes sad that she's no longer a little baby, but toddlerhood has its delights, too (like for me, much more sleep!).
Overall, I hope that 2015 will be a year of stability and growth for us-- socially, financially, and botanically! Cheers to 2015!
