It's the beginning of a new year and I'm not much for making new year's resolutions but I do always like to have a goal or two on the go. For me, there is an important difference between the two.

With new year's resolutions, there is an implied 365-day implementation deadline after which you reflect on the success or failure of whatever it was you intended to do. Goals on the other hand, don't have to fit neatly into a one-year period and therefore, can legitimately extend over a longer period of time than whatever was expected at the outset. 

I believe this is a very important difference because in this way, any progress, no matter how minimal it may seem to others, can still be counted as a step towards achieving the goal, even after a year, or more. In my case, this is much more likely to keep me from abandoning whatever goal I've set for myself, which of course makes it much more likely that I will actually ever achieve it!

This project, Micha Books, is a good example. At first, it was a vague dream I had of doing something positive with my experience coming to terms with my daughter's stroke, beyond her own progress. Slowly, the idea became a long series of small goals spread out over many years - an outline for a book that I felt I could write, learning how to use a specific software to format what I eventually wrote, learning how to build a website and then slowly building one, writing and developing a children's book, etc. The only resolution I've had really, is in the broader sense of the word. That is, a resolve to keep working on something that is meaningful to me. And that's what I do, from one year to the next.

So, as we start this new year I don't have a resolution, but among my more practical goals, is to figure out how to turn my books into e-books. Hopefully, it will take less than a year to do but even if it takes longer, I will still be "happ-e" with the outcome - whenever that is.

I wish everyone a happy (and happ-e!) new year full of goals of all shapes and sizes, to be achieved, all in good time.