Resolutions. Sort of. Maybe.

City Hall - 2 weeks before Christmas.
Philly rarely looks this good.

I'm not big on making resolutions, mostly because it seems that the biggest challenge is getting them to last until my birthday at the end of the month.  If there's something I want to change, I start in when it occurs to me.

But here are a few general directions I want to go this year.  They aren't resolutions as such.  As follows, and in no particular order:

Be kind, but take no shit.  My biggest flaw is impatience, so I'm going to try to cut the world (and therefore myself) a break and not expect them to do my bidding -- or read my mind -- straight off the bat.  On the other hand, I have never suffered fools gladly and I'm going to call people on their crap a lot sooner, for all our sakes.

Be more of a pain in the ass.  This follows close on Be kind, but take no shit.  Because of temping and being busy with my business for the holidays, I haven't been able to be as involved as I'd like.  As of this week, I'll be joining in "Tuesdays with Toomey", which is a group of community members who visits our senator's office each week, attempting (in vain, thus far) to actually get the senator to meet with us, or even listen.  This is a man who has asked that federal funds be withheld from Philadelphia -- from his own constituents! -- because he doesn't like our status as a sanctuary city.  I may not have voted for you, dude, but you're still my senator, and you have to at least listen to me.

Keep focused on my business.  Things went well this year.  I'm doing end of year numbers and while my income didn't really increase much from 2015, I feel like I've gotten things more streamlined and under control, and now that I have a better idea of what works and what doesn't, it will be easier for me in the future to improve that.  The blog coverage this year that got me a lot of custom sales was a fluke, a lucky one, but it's taught me that pushing custom items in the shop is really the way to go.  I'll need a lot of ready-made inventory for shows, but custom work is also something that gets a lot of discussion in person, so I need to be ready.

Tech less, smile more.  I never wanted a smartphone, but I had to get one for craft shows so I could take credit cards.  It's also useful for monitoring Etsy when I'm not near my computer, answering questions from potential customers, and posting to Facebook and Instagram.  But enough already.  I make fun of the zombie apocalypse type all the time, and I don't want to become one of them.  Phone time will be of necessity and not for recreation.  If I have people around me, I'll talk to them.  If I don't, I'll do what my mom used to tell me to do when I was bored, "Shut up and make something."  She wasn't always right, but that's always been good advice.

Move.  The exercise resolution.  It doesn't have to be any one thing, and it probably shouldn't be, because if I get bored, I won't do it.  I'm not looking to suddenly have the body I never had as a 20 year old, but sitting at either a desk or a sewing machine is wreaking havoc on my ass (and also my back).  Since I run to the post office 2-3 times per week, and my local post office is near the cemetery, every post office run will now include 2 circuits around the cemetery.  I live in a house with a lot of stairs, and even though I try to be efficient and do as few trips up and down as possible, I may just stop being so efficient if the tradeoff is being more active.

More quality time with Mario.  Certainly  not end of the list, but least well-defined.  We spend time together, but the quality varies.  Less TV, less technology, more outdoor time, more joint projects.  If we both decided at a relatively late age that we wanted to get married and be together, we should actually do more together things.  For anyone reading anything into this, don't.  Things are fine, we're happy, our anniversary is coming up mid-month, but marriage, or any relationship, is always a work in progress and we're always in the process of figuring out how to make good better.