Reflecting on 2018

Well, it was a year.

The year started out with Meniscus knee surgery for my daughter and a shoulder surgery for my grandma.  This was followed up by new floors (finally), which led to a leak in our furnace and valves needing to be replaced due to jack-hammering of tile above it.  That same week our dishwasher broke, and it took 3 tries for them to install it without water gushing all over the place. The next month saw water leakage from our sump line being frozen, which led to more new floors, and a kitty that was temporarily missing.  Summer was pretty low key.  Fall saw grandma having another fall with a broken hip and broken arm this time.  We also needed to fix an egress window that was falling in before it fell into the window.  My car also needed about $3K of expenses on it, and I didn’t even fix everything.  I am ending the year with my job of 18 years being outsourced.

This was not a cheap or super fun year, but at least it held less funerals than 2017.  Got that going for me.

On the creative, more FUN, part of my life, I feel like I made some headway.  I still haven’t figured out how to digitally draft patterns, but I made a lot of art this year.  I also think I have a list of patterns that would be popular once I do get around to drafting them.

I put up a lot of art on Society6 and Spoonflower.  I just need to figure that whole advertising myself piece out.  That is hard for me to do.

I took more pictures this year than last year, but that really isn’t saying much.  I still did tend to not take a whole lot, outside of sports that is.

Now I need to decide what my goal/word will be for next year.  I looked at ideas, and there were a few things that stood out to me.  I will need to get another job next year, but before doing that I want to do some things around the house and learn a few things on the creative front.

• Satisfied – This relates to my work life.  I want to have a new job that I will be satisfied with and won’t cause me to want to quit right away.
• Simplify – This relates to home life.  Once I get a new job, I won’t be around home as much.  I want to make sure there isn’t as much to do around the house and make sure everyone knows what their “job” is around the house.  I would like to get rid of the “excess stuff” in the house, and make sure I finish up projects before going back to work, so they won’t be hanging over my head and stressing me out.
• Self-discipline – This relates to my creative life.  If I want to create and make money from those creations I need to be disciplined.  Less time on Facebook and surfing the web, and more time learning what it takes to make a go at creating a real business from this side hustle.  I have really felt the lack of love in doing pattern testing and strike-off sewing in the last 6 months or so.  I really like the companies I have been involved in, but I just need to focus more on my own efforts in those areas.  I know I will try to stay involved with at least 2, but once my job situation changes I won’t have the time to do advertising for them.

I don’t know that I will do a weekly round up for 2019 like I tried to do for 2018.  Maybe monthly is better for me, as I seem to have a problem getting this done on a weekly basis.  Additionally, once I get a new job it will be a lot more difficult for me to do it.

I’m really hoping that 2019 will be a good year!  I know your attitude makes a huge difference in your happiness and acceptance of life’s challenges.  If you go into it with an attitude of say…a teenager, well, then the world is against you.  If you accept that these are just bumps in the road, and you have so many more blessings than burdens, then your contentment with your life is so much better.

Your attitude about who you are and what you have is a very little thing that makes a very big difference.

Theodore Roosevelt