New Year's Resolutions...

Good things from last year
• Made a lot of new friends in Brooklyn.
• Joined a feminist knitting group that meets every other week in various bars around Manhattan and Brooklyn.
• Threw pasta/movie parties, pizza parties and a bigger dessert party (vegan chocolate rum cake!).
• Spent two wonderful weeks in California at the AAEC and AAN conventions.
• Moved to my new apartment, and finally started decorating it and organizing it.
• Saw a lot of great movies for the first time via Netflix: Harold and Maude, Heathers, They Live, The Dead Zone, Pee Wee's Big Adventure, Trading Places, Better Off Dead, Falling Down, Control Room, Miracle Mile, among others.
• Saw some great live bands, particularly Le Tigre, Ted Leo, and X.
• Purged a ton of random junk and clothes and books that had been weighing down my life since, like, high school.
• Got the best roommate ever, my childhood friend Márta, a photographer and all-around amazing person.
• Got an awesome cartoonist boyfriend, Masheka Wood.
• Picked up some new cartooning clients, including Detroit's Metro Times the Minnesota Women's Press, and Girlfriends, and got a cartoon into the Los Angeles Times.
• Appeared on Rise Up Radio and the Ted Rall radio show.
• Did a lot of home cooking with whole foods, tried many new recipes, stopped eating lots of microwaved meals, cut back on meat.
• Started sewing again.

Bad things from last year
• After becoming debt-free by the end of 2004, ran up over $2,000 in debt on cartooning-related trips and conventions. It's down to $500 now, but still... I'm going to have to cut back on those trips this year, at least until I have more cartooning income to support them.
• Failed to get a submission together in time for a comics anthology I was supposed to contribute to. Didn't spend any time trying to get new cartooning clients (aside from attending the AAN convention and WAM conference).
• Neglected this blog.

And my resolutions for 2006...

Things to do
• Start exercising again. I've got a gym in my freaking apartment building.
• Totally redesign my website and do more blogging here.
• Open a web store with more Mikhaela Toons products that will hopefully actually sell (T-shirts, buttons, whatever).
• Do at least one mailing of cartoon packets to potential client newspapers. I've never done this and that is bad.
• Travel to Europe or Latin America or Hong Kong, since I've only ever left the country TWICE (once spent a week in England, once spent 3 hours in Tijuana. Have never been even to Canada. Really)
• Organize my room and art supplies and cartooning paperwork.
• Go to bed earlier, get up earlier.
• Get out of the house more, get to more events in the city, but ones that don't cost big $$$.
• Do life-drawing and other things to hone cartooning and art skills.
• Single-handedly bring down the Bush administration (I kid, I kid. But wouldn't that be cool?)

Things to stop doing
• No more credit cards--debit cards only.
• Put down the Tivo. Just put it down. Down. I've gone from being a totally TV-free girl to a digital cable Tivo addict.

I'm sure there's more, but whatever. Happy New Year! What are your resolutions?