New Year's Good Stuff Jar

Last year I came across an idea to put scraps in a jar. On those scraps you write about stuff you're happy about, accomplishments, etc. I made a Good Stuff Jar but mostly used it to put tickets and such in it. Also part of this jar was a list of goals. Here were the ones I added to my list and the answers. I made no effort really to accomplish the goals specifically as I am emphatically anti-resolution (oh great! Something else to fail at! Wonderful!)

Challenges from my Good Stuff jar list

Break a Bad Habit

What bad habit? ; )

Do a Good Deed

I helped a mama out

Visit a New Place

Quebec City! Technically this isn't true since I went on a school trip in eighth grade but since I have zero memory of it, I'm counting it as a "new place"

Read a Difficult Book

I didn't read it but did listen to Tiny Beautiful Things which was emotionally tough. I'm not going to bother with a "difficult book" of the Vanity Fair Variety. 

Write Something Important

I don't know about this one. Perhaps the opening two paragraphs to the BU field hockey project. I'm proud of it because without it, the written part would be the boring, impersonal segment it started out as. Not at all what I envisioned for the project. 

Try a New Food

Maple Bacon cookie

Do Something for Someone Who Cannot Thank You

If I think of some way in which I saved the world I'll come back to this one. 

Take an Important Risk

I wouldn't say that 2015 was bad at all, but after taking a risk and paying the price (with with unwanted news in 2014), I felt a weight off my shoulders in only one regard - I had time now. I had nothing to rush for anymore. After decades of hearing a clock ticking, I learned the battery fell out and it wasn't in fact ticking at all. So, what's the rush? Feeling somehow less, I stopped dating for a while. I decided to take time to wrap my head around the fact that a dream I'd expected to happen no longer would. I do not like being told that I can't do something. This does not sit well with me. And this was the ultimate "can't". Who would want me now? What do I want for my future now that my reality has shifted? I don't know what prompted me to start dating again, what made me go back to the stinky smelly haystack and look for the needle, but I'm glad I did. That was my important risk.