If ever I am at a loss for something to do with my time, or I've forgotten what my goals are supposed to be, I refer to The Master List.
"What is 'The Master List?'" you ask, and I'm so glad you did. The Master List is not a list at all, but is in fact, a whiteboard. This whiteboard lives behind my office door and is a dry-erase paradise filled with my random thoughts, books I intend to read, places I want to go, my goals; and most importantly, who owes me money.
If you've ever felt bad because I appear to be more organized than you, take heart, I'm also INSANE.
Around this time last year, I wrote a blog post about my goals for 2011 and added a bunch of unintelligible scribble to The Master List (my handwriting is what happens when you put a pointy stick in your mouth and try to write on an uneven surface using sumi ink from a bottle...while riding a roller coaster).
12 short months ago, I scrawled out the following goals:- Run another half marathon
- Take a cross country road trip
- Complete an Olympic distance triathlon
- Pay off my car
- Run the Spokane Marathon in October
- Get published
- Read at least 10 books from the banned books list
- Dine out once a week or less
- Make a will
Did I do all these things? In a word: no.
But I did do some of these things. And I also did other things throughout the year that I felt fairly good about. See how vague I'm being? Pretty soon you'll have forgotten all about that list of failure up there.
I did run another half marathon (#1), and the full Spokane Marathon (#5). Making a will (#9) went by like a breeze once I actually sat down and did it. I forgot all about reading banned books (#7) until the end of November, but I finished that one this afternoon with only days remaining in the year.
I fully flunked numbers 2, 3, and 4. I did not get published (unless you count this blog, which I do not), and try as I might, I could not stay away from all the fine dining establishments Spokane has to offer.
4 out of 9 is a 44%. That is clearly failing. But what about extra credit? Can I get points for all the things I did end up doing in 2011?
- Went to Emerald City Comicon
- Learned to wakeboard
- Learned to shoot
- Went ziplining
- Ran a full marathon
- Threw some awesome parties
- Ran the Warrior Dash and the Dirty Dash
- Went to Silverwood for the first time
- Almost got washed out to sea in a kayak
- Spent a week in Myrtle Beach with my family
If you crunch the numbers on this, you'll note that there are 10 things on this list of accomplishment, and only 9 things on my previous goals list (aka 'failure list'). Also, subtracting the things I actually completed on my previous goals list takes that list down to 6...and 10 is more than 6. In fact, it's 4 more...so let's say it's 40% more...if you take that 40% from the new list and add it to the 44% achievement rate on the old list, you get 84%, which is a solid "B" grade.
See what I did there? That's called math.
That's not bad at all. 'B' isn't just okay, it's slightly above average. Good job 2011.
David Bowie New Year, January 2011
Liz learns to snowboard, January 2011
Emerald City Comicon, March 2011
St. Patrick's Day, March 17th
Selina's Birthday, June 2011
Myrtle Beach, June 2011
Super Mario Halloween, October 2011
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