It’s the beginning of 2010, and I’ve gotta set my goals! Last year I gave up buying plastic water bottles, and it worked! I recommend it to everyone. We saved lots of money, and got attached to our water bottles and filtering system. It works just fine, and now we’ve got more room in the refrigerator for BEER! ☺

So here are the resolutions:

• More writing: journal every day, on paper. Some stuff didn’t get recorded last year because I didn’t want to share it with the world. So I need to organize my thoughts on paper first.
• More exercise: get in that gym, at least twice a week.
• More travel: including within DC. There are some great exhibits and museums that I need to see. Concerts and shows, too!
• Home improvement: continue to green my lifestyle, purge the junk and organize the good stuff.
• Taco night on Mondays: to simplify menu planning and because we like tacos. ☺

Wish me luck, and I wish you luck with your resolutions… if you’ve made them? If you haven’t yet, I hereby give you til the end of January to come up with some. We’ve got 11 months to go, folks. That’s a lot of time to pick something to improve on or have fun with.

Most importantly,

★  ♪ ♫   Happy New Year! ♪ ♫ ♪ ★

Do they count if they aren’t public? I guess so, but it seems that they will have more meaning if I proclaim them out loud, so here goes:

1. I resolve to be a kinder, gentler person. I hope to stop my habit of correcting errors unnecessarily.
2. I resolve to ban the bottle. The water bottle, that is. I’ll drink from reusable bottles, glasses and cups in an effort to reduce waste. This goes along with my public transport and reusable bag plans, already in motion.
3. I resolve to clear clutter from my personal space. I hope to share my extra belongings with those who can make better use of them, and save myself some money.
4. I resolve to live within my budget.
5. I resolve to eat more healthfully and exercise more.
6. I resolve to blog & tweet with my readers in mind.

Yup, one for you in there, too! So, to keep you in mind even here, I’ve already started doing some research and these are some helpful sites to keep us all on task with our resolutions this year:

www.livestrong.com/

www.realsimple.com/

www.mint.com/

www.operationnice.com/

So what did you get for Christmas? Hope it was everything you asked for and more!

I got most everything on my list, according to all the branding I have been subject to, and I’ll be taking the appropriate gift cards and gift receipts to my favorite retailers over the next week or two to enjoy my X-mas loot. Cheers!

Now for the hard part — RESOLUTIONS.
Made any?

Here’s mine, to make them public is supposed to help:

1. Quit smoking. again.
2. Kick up the freelance biz. Hear that out there?
3. Lose 25 pounds.
4. Get to the left coast.
5. Get another cat. or two.

That’s enough.

On the small business front, I was sent the following article in Slate by my very wise boyfriend who thought I might understand.
Bitter Brew
He’s right — this is very much the way I felt about the record store my partner and I are planning to shut down this spring. Of course we have kept it going for a few years, not a few months. Well —  SHE has kept it going with her parents, but it is just not easy, no matter how much you love something, to run a business. Keep that in mind when you are thinking about opening your own business.