New Year
The holidays were everything I wanted and everything I needed. I had an abundance of holiday music and Christmas movies. I had all my favorite chocolates and my homemade cinnamon rolls with lots of frosting. I had champagne with friends and coffee with my early morning walks. I was able to take extra time off work to sleep in and stay up. And as the year came to an end, I brought in the new year ready for the change in the calendar and an empty page for new goals. I carried with me a big grin and an open mind.
This past year needed some soft landings and some quiet reflections. It was a great year, but it kicked my ass. Life was bigger than I ever thought possible and my memories are so big and so special, a lot of important things ended up taking a back seat to process. I needed some time to appreciate all the experiences that I had and all the struggles I went through. When January 1st came, I wasn’t ready to set my goals for the upcoming year. I needed a few weeks to just enjoy and settle into all that last year offered.
Mid way through the month, my page is open and my goals are starting to flourish. I know l will have struggles this year and I also know I will have some really great moments. Life will never get to be exactly what we set in front of us. But setting goals helps restart and recharge where we want to go. It helps us work on our weaknesses and find new strengths. My new years resolutions are based on small habits that can help build successes. My hope is, these successes can carry me through to the end of the year with little celebrations and ways to learn about myself. I am not looking at becoming a different person, just a better person.
I get out my notebook and jot down ideas and inspirations. I look at my successes and my failures of the past year and spend time sitting with it all. As the month passes by the pages fill with more specific ideas. I feel like the change in the calendar is a time to recreate what went well and what I want to change.
My new years goals are more about challenging myself to step into a different space than challenging myself to be a different person. This year I am returning to some previous goals that have slowly fallen away.
Limit my time on social media (and my phone for that matter). I have fallen into the habit of picking up my phone whenever I have a blank moment. It might be between clients. It might be while waiting in line. It might be to zone out in the middle of a long day. There is little good that comes from checking my emails 15 times a day. Or scrolling through social media, which is mainly suggestions and ads at this point. To fill up this down time, my goal is to have a book to read, a notebook to write, or to do absolutely nothing. The last one is the hardest one.
Make a new recipe once a month. I have a brand new kitchen that is beautiful and has plenty of space to meal prep. I want to use this space to become more confident in the kitchen. I also want to create memories around the joys of making food. I love to pour a glass of wine, put on some good music and make meals. The past few years I have been stuck making the same recipes and getting really comfortable with the same old same old. The new year and the new space is ready for some new inspiration.
Stretching. I spend much of my day on my feet. I am moving weights and moving around. I am working out and walking dogs. Activity is something I don’t lack. But self care is. I would like to stretch for a few minutes every day and do a nice 20 minutes of stretching on the weekends. When I have done this in the past, my body really enjoyed it.
Spend time with friends. As my world gets divided between Tacoma and Port Townsend, I feel so fortunate to have two communities filled with amazing people. But my world is not an either/or. My world is an and/also. With the business of last year, friendships were on the back burner for all the things that needed to get done. This year, I am craving couch time and girls nights.
That is my starting point, actually there is a whole page of goals for the upcoming year but I decided to keep it simple. If a goal doesn’t get accomplished I don’t think of it as a failure. I think of it as not the right goal right now. I give it some time, but if I am struggling to achieve my goal after about 2 months. I put a pin in it. I’ll come back later to see if it was too big of a goal. If it was too vague. Or if I just couldn’t do it. I would rather build my year on finding things I enjoy than using up all my motivation for things I don’t need to.