Happy new year - it's time to conclude!!!

Happy New year everybody!!!

It is 2013.
21.12.12 was uneventful. The world didn't come to its end. It goes on.

And so shall I.
It is a new year and it's time to conclude the year that ended.

I had many plans for this year and I had many plans for this blog.
I actually was doing great for the first part of the year, but then something wonderful happened - I had my baby boy in the end of April. I did manage to keep the blog running for 2 more months afterwards, but as my son grew up I wanted to spend more and more time with him which left me almost no time for my lovely blog.

I still hope to make it happen and to fulfill all my goals.
So let's see what was I thinking of in January 2012:

1. Sketch, sketch, sketch!!! As much as possible!!! And keep it documented. - And I drew almost every day for several hours and loved I every minute of it!! I think that today I would be capable to draw a rose or a tulip, something I couldn't do a year ago.
   Regarding the documenting - I did it for a while, but then I dropped it... at that time it didn't matter anymore. I managed to discipline myself.
2. Learn how to draw a Chinese calendar characters and Zodiacs, being ready for every year in advance. - I never got to it, leaving it for this year. 
3. Do a 5, 10, 15 minutes exercise once a week. - Did it for several times and got bored, so I dropped it. Maybe sometime in the future.
4. Draw 12 flowers this year, one for each month. - Drew only 6 of them, not always for a complete month. I do hope to still complete it in the future. 
5. Work on Portraits and human figure. - Oh, come on, how naive can you be!!!
6. Being ready a month in advance before holidays. - The idea was to create illustrations at least two weeks in advance. Well, Sometimes I managed to do that, although it was always a struggle. 
7. Learn about Adobe Illustrator Brushes and symbols - I did use them several times, it was fun.
8. Do Drawspace lessons more often. - Ha ha!!!
9. Become a regular on Illustrator Friday. - Not even close!!!
10. Learn how to shade properly. - Didn't. Still want to. 
11. Learn to draw water and water drops properly. - Didn't. 
12. Learn to draw domestic and wild animals. - hate to repeat the same thing again and again. Didn't.
    
    Other things are in order:

1. Keep developing my Graphiking gift shop. - Worked on it for periods of times, the assortment is bigger, and amount of visits is larger, now it's time to enlarge the income. 
2. Keep blogging - at least once a week. - Did it up to October. 80 posts in total. 
3. Develop readership for this blog. - Didn't. 
4. Work on some HTML, CSS and just make the blog and the shop look better. - I guess there are some things one cannot do. This is the one for me.
5. SEO. Nothing to add. - I've learned a lot by myself and took a short and very effective course in December. 
6. Do an Airbrush course. - Moves for the next year. 

So let's see. There were 18 items planned. 7 of them I managed to do, some of them better and some of them worse.
I don't know whether it's good but there are some things I am really proud of:

1. I started to plan my posts in advance, which led me to 79 posts in 10 month. This is more than a post per week in average.
2. I drew like crazy during these first 6 months and it was a pure fun!
3. I took a SEO course justr recently and I already have 3 sites to be promoted. I will share these sites here in the future.
4. I discovered that I loved blogging! I never thought I would like it this much. I just hope I will be able to maintain my blog this year too. 
5. WeeklyDoodles visits are steady and growing. It's 105 per day in average this year opposite the 46 last year. It is growing.
6. And I had a baby :) (should be first in this list, really)

I know that I didn't manage to meet all my goals this year. I know I will be adding more things to my list during the years' course. And I'm sure that some of these goals will not be completed, maybe at all.
But at least I have a plan.

Wishing you a great holiday season,
Dalia