so, 2015. yea. it has so sucked. really. menopause was still in full force, things started to look better financially then didn't, we lost logan, and so much more, most of which never made it to whysper because i've been pretty bad at updating anything. i've struggled with weight, writing, time, pretty much anything that i thought i had a handle on, i didn't. so it's no surprise the goals i made for the year have overwhelmingly not been reached.

lose 15-20 :: the final numbers aren't in yet, but at this point, i'll be lucky to have lost 2-3 pounds. most of the year was spent struggling with menopause. by the time it looked like things had settled, i ended up struggling with my food intake and the holidays hit. there has been some forward progress even if the weight or inches haven't gone down. i was lifting at most 5 or 6 pounds at the beginning of the year, and i'm now working on 10; my steps most days went from about 10k/day to 15k/day for awhile and i've found my sweet spot for the moment at 12k/day; and my diet in general has gotten better with less meat but more protein and lower fat. these will help me as i tackle next year. :)

read 45 books :: well, i thought i would do better on this. lol i attempted 54. 4 are still being read, and i ended up not finishing 11 for various reasons. so that means i made it to 39. not bad, and better than 2014, but not the goal.

writing :: to be honest, i didn't reach any of my writing goals. the attempt at drakkina was aborted (though i may attempt it again at some point), time made the project list i made at the beginning of the year pretty much impossible from the get-go. two books, quest and assassin's, have been set aside to look at again when i'm prepared to self-publish them. since that will take money to do right, it's going to be awhile, so there's no pressure to work on them. of my remaining projects: tirs had to be revamped and i'm nearing the end of replotting it, and chosen is in its first round of revisions (which means i completed the 0 draft, but not much else). shades and demons were also set aside mid-plotting because it was way too many dang books to be working on at one time. really, the most i can work on at one time is 3, and that's only if 2 of the 3 aren't being problematic. both tirs and shades need to be reworked, so putting them in a single year? a bad idea. the one major plus is that i managed 250 words or more a day most days, especially towards the end of the year. considering that i'd pretty much gone backwards on my writing discipline, this is a good step back in the right direction.

web updates :: well, i think it's obvious that fell apart very quickly.

i spent most of yesterday figuring out what failed and why (and a few of these are more from me just not doing them more than anything, but others, i needed to look at and figure out) so i could asses what will be reasonable for next year. then i spent last night and some of today developing goals for next year, trying to be thoughtful about them. in fact, being more thoughtful about everything—goals, activities, food, and so on—is going to be a major theme for next year. it's often hard for me to be thoughtful and to pay attention to what i'm doing/saying/eating/whatever. i'm very much a multitasker because of the adhd. honestly, i often can't focus on just one thing. so my challenge is to find a way to be thoughtful in all these things within the "constraints" of my particular brand of adhd.

while writing this and considering, i removed one of the goals on next year's list because i realized through what i wrote about last year's goals that it just doesn't fit. this is the kind of awareness i need to more fully develop through next year.

with that in mind, here are next year's goals....

lose 20 pounds :: mid-fall or so, i tried the food budget that didn't work at the beginning of the year but was recommended for my weight and activity level, and i lost weight. as i noted above, i've been struggling with my intake, so it's been up and down, and my weight has equally been up and down, but this tells me the menopausal crazy is evening out. with the holidays over and done, i can focus on making my intake more consistently what it should be and my weight should finally start dropping again. one of the things i'll be working on to make my intake closer to where it should be is dropping my last snack of the day. the challenge is to make sure the meal before this snack has enough protein and fiber so the snack becomes unnecessary, especially during the adjustment period when i'm trying to break the habit. if i'm not REALLY hungry, i can tell myself i'm not hungry and to move on. i'm also upping my 12k/day to 12.5k. not a huge increase in steps, but still an increase in my comfort zone.

reading :: i'm going to aim for 45 again. hopefully i'll have fewer that i don't finish this year. lol

writing :: upping my words per day goal to 350. i want to finish tirs, get chosen to v3, and replot shades. now these assume that charms and tirs don't find a home. if charms gets accepted somewhere, i'll have to reassess these goals in light of required edits and so on, and more than likely shades will have to give way to a new book with randi, charms and tirs main character.

other :: keeping the same web goals: 2 whyspers/month, 2 journeys/month, and 1-2 other alden.nu updates/month. i'm also going to work on a new layout for alden, which really kind of needs a redesign after years of the green. plus i have a personal goal for my relationship with hubs that is going to stay between me and him. lol

i'm really ready for next year. i'm looking forward to a year that will (hopefully) be more successful than this past one. the biggest challenge (and monkey wrench in the gears)? youngest will be giving birth to our grandson in february. she's not ready to care for him, middle girl isn't in a place to help as she hoped, so hubs and i will be parenting our grandchild. as i recall, babies REALLY eat up time, and i'm way out of practice of working around an infant. youngest will be around for awhile to help out, but she plans to move as soon as it becomes affordable for her. she's already looking into apartments to figure out what she needs to save for the move and what her income needs to be to make it. i suspect it'll be quite a few months before this happens, maybe even not until towards the end of the year (unless she gets a roommate who can help escalate the process), but she is working now, so baby will still be left pretty much to me.

being a mom again, raising a baby again, boggles my mind, but i think i'm in a better place to do so than i was when i raised my own kids. it will be interesting, and not just raising baby. i've got those goals to challenge me as well.

2016 should be interesting. 2015? don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out. ;)