Dear Me

Dear Me,

Well, Snow, 2017 was an awesome, weird, and stressful year. It was awesome because you wrote 200 poems dedicated to the Blessed Beauty, Baha'u'llah, and attended the 200th anniversary of His birth. It was weird because you found Greg's ashes in one of the storage boxes your sister brought to your apartment. It was stressful because you focused too much on the political drama going on in America and across the world.

Twenty eighteen will be a successful and spiritual year. There are three reasons you can believe this prediction. First, unlike last year, you have written down your goals. Second, you have decided on a writing theme for 2018. Unity is the theme for this year, and it is a theme which can encourage your creativity. Third, when you find yourself stressed by the drama going on across Earth, you will open the Baha'i Prayer app on your smartphone, and say a prayer revealed by Baha'u'llah.

Before we list your goals for the year, you have to determine an evaluation schedule, you do not need to evaluate your goal every month. Reevaluating your them every three months ought to be enough. At that time, you can look at the goals you have achieved, as well as those, waiting to be accomplished. That way you will know what you still have to do, and how to go about accomplishing them. The months for reevaluation are March, June, September, and December.

You have decided on 18 goals for this year. If you find those are too many then you can remove some in March. At that time, you can make a new goals list for Naw-Ruz. If you have accomplished some of the goals, you can either add more or rewrite the list with the unaccomplished goals. If you accomplish some of the goals before Naw-Ruz, it is a good indication that you did not have too many goals.

Goals for 2018

1. Clean off the top and out the drawers of my computer desk.
2. Publish a collect of 12 poem from "The History of the Divine Feminine" .
3. Declutter by cleaning out the boxes in my bedroom.
4. Edit and rewrite "Scavengers" , with an eye toward publication.
5. Each day say one of the prayers 'Abdu'l-Baha revealed for America.
6. Participate in "I Write in 2018"  on a weekly basis.
7. Read and review between 7 and 28 items a week.
8. Participate in "Project Write World" .
9. Post at least 3 times a week to my offsite blog1.
10. Participate in "Invalid Item"  on a weekly basis.
11. Walk around the block at least 5 days a week.
12. Write, address, and send "The Snail Mail Forum"  cards.
13. Update my status on Facebook 1 time a day.
14. Respond to prompt for "Blogging Circle of Friends " , "Blog City ~ Every Blogger's Paradise" , or "30-Day Blogging Challenge ON HIATUS"  every day.
15. Read article on BahaiTeaching.org2.
15. Work and attempt to finish poems and/or novels I began before 2018.
17. Read e*lix*ir journals3.
18. Do surveys 3 or 4 days a week.

How do you intend to reward yourself for achieving your goals? Are you going to reward yourself with a game of solitaire, Sukodu, or Mahjong solitaire? I suggest either Sukodu or Mahjong because those exercise your brain more than any other solitaire game., and, at your age, you need to exercise your brain. After you have accomplished some of your goals, I suggest you do an online search for brain games or memory games. That way you have more than just a few online games if you need more reward, but do not download games to your cell phone because it is too tempting to play them. Use your smartphone to access the articles you want to read, that way, when you are away from the apartment, you have something to read that will help you achieve your goals.

Yours Ever,
Snow (Neva)

Word Count: 624

Footnotes
1  https://poet999.blogspot.com/
2  http://bahaiteachings.org/
3  http://www.elixir-journal.org/