5 hours ago
Over the past week I've been seriously thinking over how I want to handle goals in 2020, and I think I need a way to more frequently check in with myself on my goals.
Last year I made very specific, measurable goals that I wanted to accomplish by the end of 2019. Specific and measurable is good, right? Except that I was thinking too far in advance, and my goals, though measurable, were still too big. My end goals became a little overwhelming to me, and when they started to seem unattainable, I just gave up.
This year I decided to make overarching goals for the year, but I'm going to try to make "little step" goals for each month (or two) that will move toward those overarching goals. Does that make sense? I'm hoping to write a post each month about how I did and share it on the blog for some accountability as well - if I write about it, I'm more likely to feel like I can't give up on it!
I decided on four categories this year, spiritual, marriage and motherhood, social, and financial. I did not include health and blog categories as I did last year, mainly for simplicity's sake. It's easier to focus more intently on less categories. I also feel like I don't do too shabby at keeping up on this blog and my health anyway, so I'm skipping making goals in those areas for this year.
Spiritual
Overall Goals: Memorize Hebrews, and spend more time in prayer each day.
Little Steps: Memorize Hebrews chapter 5, and start a prayer page in my journal.
There isn't much to explain here. If I want to actually memorize Hebrews this year, I need to just buckle down and do it. Last year I spent alot of time reviewing and solidifying verses, but this year I want to focus on the initial effort of getting them into my head. I may not know them as well as I'd like, but once they are in there tentatively, it's easier to solidify them later.
I also have a Bible study bullet journal, which I use only irregularly when something stands out to me in my quiet time. I'd like to make it a more useful tool for my prayer time. So over the next month I need to figure out a way to set it up to track the things I want to pray for.
Marriage And Motherhood
Overall Goals: Be a happier and more thankful wife and mother.
Little Step: Start the day with hugging each kid, and greet Derek immediately with a hug when he gets home.
This goal makes me sound a little pathetic, but between getting the kids up and dressed, making beds, doing my own hair and makeup, making breakfast, getting started on school...sometimes I forget to take a minute to look into each of their sweet faces, and give them a hug and "good morning" before all the craziness starts. I'd like to change that. For Derek, he usually gets home right about the time when my nerves are frayed from all the chaos of the day. I don't always greet him properly either, so that needs to change as well.
Social
Overall Goals: Spend less time on social media, and spend more time investing in and encouraging my real-life friends (including family).
Little Steps: Clean out my friend list on Facebook, and send some snail mail.
I'm cheating a little with this one, because I actually already cleaned out my Facebook friends list, and I am hoping to write more about that process next week. Stay tuned for that! My other goal is to send out some good old-fashioned snail mail. I used to be pretty good at letter-writing, but I probably only send out one letter a year now. I'd like to write at least one longer letter to one of my dear long-distance friends, and at least one short note of encouragement to someone. I think it's a pity how much snail mail has declined, because I know the joy of receiving something in the mail that isn't an advertisement or a bill.
Financial
Overall Goals: Save $1000.
Little Steps: Save $100 in February.
That's fairly straightforward, isn't it? I have a secret project in the works that I need some money to accomplish, so I need to really buckle down and save a little more successfully this year. Last year I saved only about half my goal, so if I can catch myself up to where I originally wanted to be at the end of 2020, so much the better!
Reading
Overall Goal: Read more books that I won but haven't read.
Little Steps: Participate in the Read Your Bookshelf project!
This one is more just for fun, but I also do have a ridiculous amount of books which I haven't read. Chantel at An Intentional Life created this fun themed challenge to get us reading our unread books, and I'm going to try to participate each month! In January I have to read a book with a color in its title (I'm gong to read "The White Cottage Mystery" or "Greenglass House"), and February is supposed to be a book that is also a movie (I want to read "The Princess Bride"!).
There we go! My goals for 2020, and my little steps for the month of February. I'm giving myself the extra two weeks in January as freebies, to help me get into the swing of things. The plan is to check in with myself at the end of February and report how I'm doing on the blog (you guys are basically my accountability group, ha!).
What is your main goal for 2020?
Last year was the first year in...well, maybe ever?...that I actually set goals for the year. I have tended to avoid making resolutions because I have always been sure that I would fail at them anyway, but last year I decided to give it a go. Let's see how I did on my resolutions, shall we?
2019 Goals:
-Spiritual: Memorize the book of Hebrews. I did not do well at this. Before 2019 I had memorized through Hebrews chapter 4, but it had become pretty fuzzy. In 2019, I basically really solidified Hebrews 1-4 in my memory, and that was it. I didn't memorize a single verse of chapter 5. Fail.
-Marriage: Write Derek one note per month. Yeah, I didn't do this at all. Fail.
-Motherhood: Document my children better. I had a specific goal of taking one picture of each kid per week, and writing down one thing about them. I did not do any of that, but I do think I succeeded at the more vague overall goal of documenting the kids better. I shared cute things the kids did and said more often on the blog and on Instagram. In addition, I printed a ton of photos in 2019, which is something I haven't been consistent about before. Semi-Success.
-Health: Go sugar free one week per month. I actually did this! I didn't record whether I did it every month, but I did sugar-free weeks frequently, and I felt great every time I did. Success!
-Reading: Participate in the unread shelf project. I did this, but not as much as I wanted to. I did sort through my unread shelves, got rid of a ton of books I'm no longer interested in, and read a stack of the books I already had. I have a ton more to go though, so it's still in progress. Semi-Success.
-Blog: Try some posting routines. I was semi-consistent with themed posts, like my "Stuff I Like" posts, and "The Wednesday Five" which I started in the fall. Success.
-Financial: Save $1000. I was not as consistent with this as I wanted. I was using a weekly saving chart, which I think would have worked well if I used a weekly budget, but I don't. I work with a monthly budget, often do my grocery shopping monthly, etc. Since the saving schedule was weekly and my budget was monthly, I often forgot to hold aside the money I wanted to save. I only ended up saving about half of the $1000. Semi-Success.
I thought this was going to be a travesty when I sat down to write this post, but I am so relieved to see that I only out-and-out failed in two areas! Being successful or semi-successful at 70% of my goals is good enough for me. Even though I didn't check in with my written goals as often as I probably should have, I did find that just having these goals tucked in the back of my mind helped me make more progress than if I had made no specific goals at all.
So, will I make goals again this year? Yes, I think I will. Stay tuned next week for those!
How did you do at your 2019 goals?
A lot of people like to start off their new year with goals or resolutions, reflection on the year that has just past, or planning for the year ahead. We started our new year with a cold.
On New Year's Day I started to cough a little, and by the 2nd I was sprawled out on the couch and miserable. It took me about a week to finally feel completely better - which means I felt better yesterday. Just in time for my kids to catch it. Clyde started coughing last night (I'm hoping whatever this is more shorter-lived for them).
I've always liked the new year season, though not because I'm a particularly goal-oriented person or a planner. I'm not really either of those things. But the new year always feels fresh, and I ride on that feeling of freshness though cold, brown winter days. When things could start to feel stale, the new year makes them feel...well, new.
Since I was too miserable for the first week of this decade to enjoy any of that newness, my new-year-mode is going to be extended. I actually prefer it this way. For me, the whole month of January is a time of reflection and gentle planning anyway. So the new year in this house starts now.
I felt a lot of pressure to start off the year with a significant post, but this is shaping up to be a regular old chatty post instead. I've decided I'm okay with it. I don't think much on this blog is meant to be significant anyway, not in that way. Ordinary days are significant in themselves, I think more than we know.
Our Start To The 2020's
The last day of the 2010's I spent filling up the last of the petition I've been working on (to stop late-term abortion in my state). I had run out of people I know to ask for signatures, so I texted my sister-in-law, and she graciously set up a time for me to meet her extended family so they could sign my petition. The last line was signed. So a few days into the new year, I headed down to a notary event to get my petitions notarized and turned in. Even though I had been sick, I was feeling functional - but barely, and I had lost my voice. I tried to avoid breathing on anyone or shaking anyone's hands while I handed over my petitions, just in case I was still contagious.
Then I had to stop at the grocery store, because by this time we were basically out of food after the holidays. I wanted it to be a short trip out of the house so I could go home and continue to rest and recover, but we just plain needed a few things. So I did a little shopping trip at Walmart, and then headed back out to my car.
As I was pushing my full cart across the parking lot, I noticed a flutter of wings overhead, and then a flash of white in front of my eyes, and I looked down and realized a bird had pooped on me. I was completely grossed out. Do you know how many germs birds carry?
I'm admittedly very slightly germaphobic.
I went straight to my car, parked the cart on the sidewalk, and set my purse down on the front seat while I rummaged around looking for hand sanitizer. As if hand-sanitizer would be effective against bird poop, but it was better than nothing. After I finished dousing my pants in it, I turned toward my cart full of groceries and closed the door.
Then I heard a click.
And my keys were still in my purse. On the front seat of the car.
Thankfully my phone was in my pocket, not in my purse, so I called Derek and squeaked out what happened (remember, my voice was gone). He called my parents, and they came to rescue me about 40 minutes later. Not too bad of a situation overall, but a little embarrassing. I haven't locked myself out of my car since I was 18.
So yeah, that was a good start to the new decade.
New Year's Day Though
I actually take that back, the true start to the new year was a good day. My cough had barely started, so I didn't realize yet that I was getting sick yet, and we decided to take a trip to Rocky Mountain National Park on New Year's Day.
Unfortunately, the last couple times we have visited the park there ends up being a storm rolling in, and we can't see any of the mountains. The weather was clear and bright, right up until we entered the park, and within five minutes we could see nothing. Cars were stuck in the snow on the mountain roads. And we forgot to bring snow pants, because we thought it was going to be a beautiful, bright day.
We made the best of it though, and we still enjoyed the wintery beauty and saw some wildlife. We piled the kids out of the car, walked for five minutes in the snow, piled back in. Then we stopped at a taffy shop on the way home. I've decided I'm not really a fan of saltwater taffy unless it's fresh. This was the fresh stuff, and it was so tasty.
Ten Years Ago
Between signature gathering and being sick, I haven't had much time to truly reflect on the fact that 2020 is not just the marking of a new year, but a new decade. I didn't look through the last ten years of pictures (that thought overwhelms me), or find old journal entries, or anything like that. But I can remember where I was in life and how I felt ten years ago.
We were living in our first home, with three rambunctious dogs. I was working as a dental hygienist a few days a week, and it was the heyday of blogging. Derek was working for our county, and we were scraping together any extra income we had into saving for a ten-year anniversary trip to Italy. We had been married for two years, and had decided we wanted to start trying for a family, but things weren't exactly working. I wondered when, or maybe if, we'd have kids. It was a little premature to worry too much, but worry I did. My biggest prayer for the new decade was a houseful of children.
And here we are ten years later, in a different house, only one of those dogs still laying at my feet, and five tiny pairs of shoes pounding on the second floor over my head. We never took that trip to Italy. And we were okay with that, because dreams change over time. I've received more than I ever thought to ask for ten years ago.
When I think back over the last ten years, I think of the faithfulness of God in our lives over this past decade. There have been stresses and joys and sorrows and triumphs, and the Lord has been our anchor through it all.
I don't like to think about where I'll be in the next ten years. I know my oldest will be graduated from high school, and my youngest will be right in the middle of middle school. That thought alone is overwhelming to me. Ten years is too far in the future for me to think about. I don't know where we'll be living, or what exactly our lives will look like. But I imagine that in ten years, when I look back again on the previous decade, I'll still see how God is faithful to us through it all.
So yes. I'm ready to start the 2020's.
---
I want to write more about my plans for the upcoming year, or changes I'm already trying to make, but I think I'll wrap up this post here for now. The kids are awake, and this is our first week back to school in 2020, despite being sick, so I have alot to catch up on this week! The house is slowly being disinfected of whatever bug we caught, and I'm working with the kids and myself on developing good habits - one of those habits is that blogging has to happen first thing in the morning, so we can start school on time! So I'm off to pour some cereal bowls and crack open some books.
How was the start to the new decade for you all?
Hopefully smoother than ours, ha!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
