Promises, promises...

The end of the year is an interesting time for me. Typically your work-related appraisals happen now - where you appraise your team and get appraised by your boss. Together you review what you set out to do or accomplish in the past year, and what you have managed. You also look at a SWOT - strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats - and chart out a growth and development plan for the next year. Most people hate this time of year, but I personally like this process. I feel that you can't plan where you're going unless you know where you've been. Doing this at work is one thing, but I have never done it on a personal level. I never got into the hoopla of New year resolutions either.

But this year, with two kids and a busy life, it occurs to me that I should learn something from the process and apply it to myself as a mother, wife and daughter. I need to appraise what I have been doing all year versus what I should be doing ( as defined by the kind of human being I want to become), and to set goals for the next year. I need to make certain promises to myself, to my husband and to my kids and then see over the course of the year whether or not I have managed to keep them. And I need to make promises to myself too. The Bible has a lovely story called the Parable of Talents, whose message is that each of us is given a certain talent by God. If we do not make the best use of it that we can, it is the same as not having been gifted that talent in the first place - which is not only a disrespect to God but a disrespect to oneself. So keeping that in mind, let me think about the good and bad and sort out the things I need to do.

Things to change:

1. I need to listen more and worry about clean hands less. When Chubbocks and his little sister are busy trying to tell me about their day, I need to stop looking at their mud-encrusted hands in shock and horror and open my mind to their words and expressions. Soap and a cast-iron digestion will take care of the rest.

2. I need to spend more active time with them, teaching them things. I used to be more active about it when I worked part time and of late have played a much more passive role.

3. I need to be less impatient, especially with Chubbocks. He really is a pretty good kid and extremely well-behaved for the most part. (NB - that applies to A also).

4. I need to worry less about Chubbocks's eating. He won't eat more if I worry more, and worrying less will certainly aid my digestion.

5. I need to be more strict with Chubbocks about his TV watching.

6. I need to be more regular with ensuring Chubbocks takes things to school for show and tell. I also need to help him with his developmental needs as set out by his teachers - not getting distracted, completing work on time...

7. We need to take Puddi about with us more. It is a problem stage because she loves running about and picks up the most inappropriate things, but she needs it.

8. We need to be more organised about our mountain of family photographs, and they need to be labelled and to be taken out and enjoyed at frequent intervals.

9. I need to try and be more organised about paperwork, especially financially related, and about my clothes.

10. I need to spend less...money.

11. I need to - every now and then - just put down everything I'm in a frenzy over and try to answer one fundamental question - Will this matter to me three years from now? And take a deep breath.

12. I need to get on that treadmill and get ready to participate in the 2008 Delhi Marathon.

Things to continue:

11. Laughing and playing with my kids, husband and parents.

12. Spending time in and effort on the garden. It really nourishes the parts other things can't reach.

13. Experimenting in the kitchen - that gives me both mental and heart satisfaction - mental because it's creative, heart because for all the feminist vibe, it warms the cockles of my heart to see my family relish something I have cooked with my own two hands.

14. Writing - it's something I stopped doing a while back and rediscovered a couple of years ago. It satisfies a deep-rooted need in me, and the creative urge to write has only gotten stronger with each blog or page of story that I write.

15. Saying I love you to the most improtant people in my life regularly. Even if they know it. Even if I forget it.