Personal Challenges

Remember back in January when I posted about my personal goals for 2012?  Well, I have tried to keep myself accountable, and I have realized that achieving goals is hard work.  Duh, I know. Feel free to laugh.

My list-making personality loves to think of stuff, write it down in logical order, and then expect for it to happen … the implementation is always what bogs me down.  So, for better or worse, here is where I stand on my goals halfway through the year:

Reading

My goal was 12 challenging books in 2012.  I have read a lot of fluff, but only a few of my reads qualify for my goal.

• Technical Challenge- Knowing and Teaching Elementary Mathematics by Liping Ma *Excellent information, but just dry as the title implies
• Length Challenge – Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell *1024 pages of drama as lovely as I had hoped for.  It is much darker than the movie, but just as good if not better.
•  Density Challenge – Moby Dick by Herman Melville – My 9 year old asked for this one, love that kid! *Plodding, yet much more engaging than I expected. (density isn’t the right word to use here, but I can’t think of another way to describe the many layers of deep thought that this book demands.)
•  Spiritual Challenge – Psalms plus lots of background work in Samuel, 1Kings and 1Chronicles by … well… God (funny, I’ve never written down the author for the Bible in a book list before.  I wonder exactly how it is supposed to be documented. Something to research later.) *I am always amazed at how much I continue to learn from these books that I have read dozens of times.  King David’s story particularly struck me this time through.  He lived a hard life, achieved greatness, failed miserably, picked himself up, failed again; and God still loved him.  Forgiveness is beautiful.

Just in case you are curious, my plans for future reads include:

• Political Challenge – Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
• Linguistic Challenge – The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne (okay, I’ll admit this is one of my favorite books, but I want to re-read it and its huge vocabulary kinda’ fits the challenging category)
• Personal Challenge – Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes – I have started this book at least 6 times, and never finished.  I am determined to eventually win this battle!
• Emotional Challenge – The Book Thief by Markus Zuask 

Creating

I was waylaid on my crafting goals.  In the mean time I started a blanket for my oldest and decided to finish it before starting anything else.  Crochet is new to me, so even though it is very simple, I am fairly happy with the results – except for that lousy stitch in the middle of my photo.

… Still hoping to get to those stockings before another Christmas passes us by.

Journaling

This is where I feel most successful this year.  I am thrilled to have finally moved Liberty Hill House from our old site on Blogger.  The switch was time consuming, but not as painful as I expected.

I have finished several “catching up” posts from previous events including an index for one of my literature units, and another birthday party.  I can always find lots more to do on this, but the major events are all in my scrapbook and I’m staying current with the photos I take every day.  Honestly, there is a lot to be said for not loosing ground in the first place.

So that’s where I stand.  Progress, not perfection.  Honestly it’s not that bad for half a year.

BTW – If you know how to correctly list the Bible in a bibliography, please let me know.  I’m extremely curious now.