December Update: A final update of 2011 Aims!

Well what a year that was! I'm sure that you've had a fair amount of retrospectivia and nostalgia and so this post will be short on it (after all my stand post is usually heavy laden.) However I will say that this year has been a great year for me, I really feel like I have lived it very fully indeed. I really like the position I find myself in this year.

1.I will give at least a 10% tithe in addition to any other giving I will do.

Already done! This goal has become so much easier as the year has gone on and it's been so great to really purposefully pursue this. Strangely enough I am doing much better with my money this year than I did in previous years and I have still somehow ended up buying a few little gadgets which I didn't really need. I haven't been a perfect steward of God's money but I have been a better one.

2. Making Prayer a stronger habit. 

Certainly seen some real growth here. Only this morning I was discussing prayer with my girlfriend and working out some applications to do. 

3.Use Skype more to chat to people back home/Britain

I have certainly used Skype more since setting this aim and since I started to go out with Charlotte this has not really been an issue at all. However in more recent times I have slightly neglected staying in touch with some friends in favour of a few I stay in contact with more. 

4.  I will improve as an EFL teacher.

I can certainly say that I have improved as a teacher it no longer takes me as long to plan a basic lesson, I can identify areas to work on after lessons. I have taken part in some webinars, I have started taking part in a few eltchats and I have formed a teachers blog.

5. I will improve my Russian.

I have again definitely improved as I recently looked at a university "intermediate" exam and could easily do all but one of the exercises. This is despite several periods of poor efforts in studying. 

6. I will write more songs.

This goal failed amazingly! In the whole year I only actually really wrote one song. I should regret writing this goal down however I really learnt from having it. Sometimes being creative is hard, sometimes goals fail, and it's okay for that. If I hadn't set this goal then I would have chosen something I wanted to do less..and I might have done it but it wouldn't have been what I really wanted. 

7. Host a weekly meal at my flat.

There have certainly been high points and low points with this aim. I am overall please with some of the gatherings I hosted. I think I would have tried similarly had I not set this as a goal but It did prompt me at a time when I was feeling really down to take that step of imitative and organise something and that really did make all the difference on that occasion. 

8. Regular and higher quality blogging.

Well I personally I believe I have grown a lot as a blogger this year, I've set up a second blog for teaching and reached a few landmarks I have also taken part in a free online blogging course from Jeff Goains and i'm preparing a few changes for next year. 

9. I will get involved with some form of charitable work in the Ukraine.

The first few months saw a few visits to an orphanage in Ukraine but after a while unfortunately things stopped. More recently I visited another orphanage and hopefully I will be able to visit the kids there a bit more this year. 

10. I will make a Public video each month.

Well I didn't make a video for every month, mainly due to lack of responses to challenges I set. However I did enjoy editing them together. Would you like some more next year?