Strung Out Fiber Arts: New Year's Resolutions

Do you make New Year's resolutions? Have you ever made a yarn-related one? For many years I either didn't make them at all, or made half-hearted ones. I made resolutions I hoped would help me get into a particular habit or get closer to a particular goal, but they never worked all that well. And they didn't work for the most classic reason: I couldn't stick with them. They ended up feeling like too much, I'd miss a day or blow a self-imposed deadline and feel I hadn't kept the resolution already so missing more days was no longer meaningful.

The 3 Steps to Completing your 2016 New Year's Resolution

http://theodysseyonline.com/baldwin-wallace/steps-completing-2016-years-resolution/261136

For 2015, I changed the pattern. I made a single, very specific resolution, and I kept it! I resolved to publish 12 crochet patterns before the end of the year. That's one a month, of course, and my plan was to complete one every month. It didn't quite work out that way, but even though some months I published nothing and some months I published two patterns or more, the work got done. I reached my goal. There are two specific reasons I think my resolution worked for me this year in a way resolutions haven't worked for me in the past.

1. It's quantifiable. I didn't resolve to write "more" patterns; I resolved to write 12. Having a real count made the goal concrete and achievable in a way that "more" could never be. Once I'd gotten a couple done, there were only 10 left. A couple more, and it was only 8. There's an inherent reward in working toward a concrete goal like this one—it gets closer with every step.

2. It's personally achievable. What I mean by that is the resolution was attainable through my own actions only. Your goal might be to get published in a national magazine, but that isn't a very good resolution because ultimately it's not up to you. It's up to the magazine editors. Instead, you might resolve to submit something to a magazine twice a month. That way the resolution is something you can achieve all by yourself. I used the word "publish" in my resolution because I planned to be mainly self-publishing here on the blog and selling patterns myself on Ravelry and Etsy. I did have a few patterns come out in magazines, and of course I counted those, but I made sure not to rely on others to achieve my goal.

With this in mind, I think I'm going to repeat my resolution. I know I can do 12 more patterns this year. And I'd like to add to it by making a resolution about this oft-neglected blog I've started. I think I can do 50 blog posts in 2016. I'm not positive I'll make one a week, though I think that's a good goal and will help keep me on track, and I've got a couple "vacation" weeks planned into the number for when it just isn't going to happen. I know I can do it! (And hey, I'm already down to 49.)

To wrap up my year, here they are in order of appearance, the patterns I published in 2015!

1. The Mod Bob