I no longer make resolutions for a new year. After many years I’ve realized they never go anywhere and are generally forgotten with a few weeks. Instead I set goals for myself, and I try to make them goals I can work with and have a decent chance of achieving. Plus I post them publicly for both accountability and motivation.

Most of my goals involve what is now my primary career: writing.

I have two novels currently in progress, a mystery, Playing at Murder, and a romance, No Time for Mistakes.(Both titles are tentative.) My goal is to finish both by the end of the year. I’m also setting a goal to write five new short stories and submit each somewhere.

On a personal level, I’ve begun a project to scan all the photos in my large stack of photo albums that are aging and falling apart. It’s a big project and I expect it to take up most of the year, but I hope to finish it by next Christmas. It’s part of an ongoing attempt to clean out and get rid of as much as possible of the ‘stuff’ I’ve accumulated over the years.

And this one is neither exactly a goal nor a resolution. It’s more like a promise to myself. I plan to find a way to do something that will help others, especially those who have been less blessed in life than I’ve been. I don’t know what that means right now. Certainly the pandemic is a complicating factor. But I’m feeling a strong need to do more and give back. Stay tuned.