Well the New Year has come and gone. I had a nice quiet night with my husband, our daughter, and my inlaws, sitting at home watching ridiculous shows and having a few drinks. My daughter ran around like a maniac until a few minutes before the ball dropped, at which point she cheered with the rest of us – despite having no idea what was happening – and then promptly conked out while snuggled up over my shoulder. It was a pretty good night.
But since then I’ve been think about resolutions. I’m not a big resolution person because I don’t see why January deserves to see us pronounce to change ourselves for the better any more than any other month does. It’s no easier to lose weight in January than in July, so what’s the big deal about “New Years” resolutions?
Then I stumbled across dianemackinnon‘s post, Wildly Improbable Goals 2013, in which Diane lists her goals for 2013, which are (did you guess?) wildly improbable. Not impossible, you’ll notice, but improbable. Wildly improbable.
Her vein of thinking, it seems, is, “How awesome would it feel to make a wildly improbable goal and actually achieve it?” And here I sit, finding myself nodding in agreement. It would feel awesome. What is there to lose? Failing at a wildly improbable goal would be no more frustrating than failing at an entirely probable goal, but succeeding…now that would really be something.
So here we go…Tracey’s wildly improbable goals for 2013:
1. Get into some kind of shape that makes me feel good about my body again…I’m not looking at a particular amount of weight-loss or anything specific, just a state of physical being that I feel good about. I slate this as a wildly improbable goal because, as I’ve mentioned before, my work schedule makes devoting time to such a thing particularly difficult.
2. Finish editing my zombie apocalypse novel, Nowhere to Hide. It’s time to get this f’er on the shelves, damn it!
3. Write 1,000,000 words in 2013. This is the big one. Where am I going to find the time? I have no idea. But between blog posts, drabbles, new stories, and new scenes added to NtH during editing, I want to accomplish a total word count of ONE MILLION words by the end of 2013. Wouldn’t that be something? I think it would.
So there you have it. I’m putting myself at the mercy of a trio of wildly improbable goals and I’m putting them right out here for everyone to see and hold me accountable. Hold me accountable, damn it!
When I get around to it (ie: when I get enough sleep at this godforsaken camp to be able to think about such things) I’ll make up a couple of progress bars for my goals so you can all watch me probably fail but maybe succeed.
Here’s to the wildly improbable hopes of 2013!
No Page Left Blank 
Having read Diane’s post and the comments, i then followed your link to read this post. I like your WIGs. Your number 1is my perpetual number 1 also. This year i actually have a plan to move on it. We will see. Good wishes on all three. I will watch with interest to see how it goes for you.
Number 1 is perpetual for a lot of people, I think, yes? 😦 But we have to push on! I absolutely hope that your plans turn into successes! Here’s to US! 😀
Hi Tracey,
Great post! Thanks for mentioning my post and congratulations on putting your WIGs out there! I especially love your goal of writing a million words! That is so great! I did NaNo this past year and I wrote 50,000 words in November–way more than I usually write. If I hadn’t had the goal of getting to 50,000 by November 30th, I’d never have done it.
One of the great things about goals is that it pushes us to pay attention to certain things. If we say out loud, after some thought, that we want to “get in some kind of shape that makes me feel good about my body again,” then we will start paying attention to ways to do that. We can’t pay attention to everything, but when we take the time to think about what’s most important to us, we start to pay attention to those things that are most important to us. And it gets better (or we achieve the goal!)
Best wishes to you as you create your 2013!
Warmly,
Diane
http://www.dianemackinnon.com
[…] so here is my last bout of accountability for the year, with comparisons to the “Wildly Improbable Goals” that spawned them in the first […]