Year In Review: How Did I Stack Up?

Tomorrow is my birthday. Last year, I was feeling so depressed and miserable in my postpartum haze that I hated the thought of celebrating. So I did what I do when I'm depressed: I made a list. Of things that I should accomplish before my next birthday, so that I could wow myself with all my progress.

Sigh. I have been dreading looking at that list because I was/am certain that I didn't get everything. In no order of importance, my goals for last year were:

1. Finish 3 more essays to accompany Diets and Carolina Pottery. Well, I finished one more essay, but I did send the two existing ones out to everybody and their brother. I will call this one moderately successful.

2. Update resume on LinkedIn and send to recruiter contacts. Done. More than once.

3. Network More! Especially with people with interesting jobs. I went to a few networking events. I didn't die. I still suck at this.

4. Save Money For More Options. Um, yeah.

5. Go Back To Classes In The Winter. This didn't happen last year, but I am signed up for this semester's essay class. Not too late to call that a success. And I did register before my birthday so....

6. Take Zygote to swim classes. Done. I wish I could afford more. She loved it. I loved it.

7. Teach Zygote sign language. We tried?

8. Make a list of all the things that interest me and a list of skills I have. Working on it. I am almost too self-deprecating to do this with any real seriousness.

9. Take a vacation with just YG. We went to NYC in August, and then business brought us to San Francisco last weekend. In my opinion, that's way too long to go without having some adult time away. Will work harder this year.

10. Develop cover letter for jobs that aren't in my current field. Done, but half assedly. Needs work.

11. Apply for new job. Done. I have stopped applying for tech jobs because I don't see the point. So applications have been few and far between, but were for jobs that I actually *really* wanted.

12. Use Fridays for WRITING. Meh. Fridays are more for housewifing. It's been a good experiment, but I really would like to be much more rigorous about this.

13. Run/keep working out after I get back to work. Done. Half marathon, bitches!

14. Read the books on my bookshelves before buying more. EPIC FAIL.

15. As always, lose some weight. And as always, fail.

Not all bad. Progress was made. From my journal last year, "I am a successful failure. Successful because I can take care of myself, my kid, make money, appear normal. But a failure because I'm in my 30s and still uncomfortable in my own skin and have no discernible life path that I can figure out. And really, I like doing nothing. And then I like doing more nothing with YG and Zygote."

I know that I was depressed when I wrote that, but now I read it and I don't think that too much has changed. And I'm okay with that. I know that by most definitions of success, I am doing okay. And that by most definitions of obnoxious navel-gazing, I am a SUPERSTAR. I guess I'm just more comfortable with that now and am okay (this minute, under the influence of mixed drinks, just sayin') with this whole comfortable, super secure awesome badassness taking a little more time than I thought.