The Year of Fail

I can’t believe it’s mid-November already.

On reflection, I think I can say that the year has been notable for a few things – many of which I did not finish or do persistently.

  • The Flickr photo challenges. This was not helped by the changes to Flickr, which I still don’t like. (I thought I was having the usual website-changed-and-I-can’t-stand-it visceral reaction that would pass when I got used to it. I’m used to the changes now but the dislike remains. It’s all the black on the screen, I think. And I can’t abide how all my photos look so crammed now.)
  • The New Librarianship MOOC. (As a result I did not even contemplate starting any other MOOCs this year.)
  • The International Librarians Network pilot program. (I don’t even recall how my partnership fizzled out. Should probably at least write to them…)
  • CommentJuly. Perhaps this simply happened too quickly after BlogJune?
  • A careful reading activity I wanted to do. And other reading challenges. (I think I should just quit joining online reading challenges. I don’t do book groups well, even online.)
  • Mentoring the ANZ 23 Mobile Things.
  • Doing some admin stuff for LINT. (Which, now that I’m blogging it, I should manage to get around to doing it.)
  • A myriad of other little projects.

The reason for all the fail is the extremely busy year I’ve had work-wise, I think. I can’t, and don’t want to, go into all the details here but it’s fair to say that I have learned a lot, and I have a lot to reflect on.

And while I feel disappointed with myself for not having finished certain things, I must remember that I have finished or persisted with others.

  • Weekday walking. Started this in February thanks to my sister.
  • BlogJune.
  • A paper for VALA2014 with dear @morfaine.
  • Daily meditation. Only started this in September, with @morfaine. It’s been very good to do.
  • And of course all the work “stuff”.

I think I’ve just tried to take on too much this year. The things that I did manage to stick with have all been good for me.

There are quite a few other things I’ve yet to do still this year.

Play with my neglected new camera.

Finish all this year’s work stuff.

Plan for next year. What do I want to learn/do next year?

How has your year been?

2 Comments

Petra Dumbell 14 November 2013

I think it’s sad that you call the post “a year of fail”, that sounds so completely negative, and does not seem to be true as you have done/started quite a few things. Maybe you need to set yourself a challenge, come up with 20 (30, 50?) things that were great about this year. And then add to the list: “I did not get burned out this year because I looked after myself and realised I am not superwomen. Well done me”. Having said that, I think I would have described my year in a similar way. And btw, is this a gender specific issue? I can think of a number of women who struggle with the same things, and not many men! They seem to be better at listing the things they have done in their heads/blogs 🙂

flexnib 21 November 2013

Good point, Petra! When thinking about this post, I tried to get past the feeling that I’d failed, but couldn’t, so in the end I just gave in. It’s really that dislike of not having finished everything I start, that gets to me.

I have started, and continued with, or finished, quite a few “good” things, so I ought to focus on those and not worry about what I didn’t manage to stick with.