As you might have guessed from yesterday’s post (if you haven’t already, please go check it out and fill out my brief survey!), I want to be more intentional this year with the blog, but I want to be more intentional in other areas, too. In lieu of “snippets” this week I’m sharing with you seven things I want to accomplish this year. I’d love it if you’d share a few of your goals in the comments!
Be caught up on my photo albums at the end of the year. Thanks to a couple of weekend retreats in 2014 and a whole new way of scrapbooking, I’m confident I have the ability to get this done.
Run 750 miles or more. Here, on January 9, 2015 that seems pretty doable. It only averages out to about fifteen miles per week, and when I’m training it’s rare for me to run less than that in a week. Unfortunately, I wasn’t anywhere near that distance in 2014, and I didn’t hit it in 2013, either (although I was pretty close). I’ll turn 45 next week (how did that happen?), which places me solidly in the “masters” race category and on the downhill to “grand masters” – it’s time to start running smart, not hard.
Read at least 25 books, although I reserve the right to increase that number. I may have done this in 2014, 2013, and every other year of my life – I honestly don’t know. I kept a log in Evernote of the books I read in 2014 – at last count, it was sixteen – but I quit updating the list back in July (thank you, Evernote, for keeping a record of my last edit) and I don’t have any idea how many more I finished. I tend to read in spurts so extrapolating an estimate for 2014 won’t work. Do you have any suggestions for good reads? Fiction and nonfiction welcome!
Commit to and complete my capsule wardrobe(s). Awhile back, I mentioned my intent to try the capsule wardrobe thing, and thus far I’ve been really happy with it. I’ve loved mixing and matching the basic pieces I have and accessorizing them. The problem is that after I cleaned out my closet, I was left with … not a lot of basic pieces. I’ve been adding things here and there, as frugally as possible, but I don’t have much so my options are still rather limited. A wardrobe is never truly complete, I don’t think, but I want to get it close.
Write every day – and not just for this blog. I’ve already failed at this one, since I’m just now deciding to do it a week after the year started, but the point is that I want to do a lot more writing, and not necessarily for Internet consumption. When I’m able to write, it clears my head in a way that’s hard to describe. As Flannery O’Connor famously said, “I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say.”
Celebrate Sarah Kate’s thirteenth birthday in a big way. You only become a teenager once, and Mr. Andi and I have decided we want lucky number thirteen to be special (partly because it’s thirteen and partly to balance out all the crappy birthdays she’s had over the years because she was born so close to Christmas). We’re thinking a family trip. Feel free to make suggestions!
Make it through the year with no family member hospitalizations. In 2012, it was the chicken pox (though I still maintain, and the pediatrician agrees, that it was actually a virulent strain of hand foot and mouth disease that Nathan had). In 2013, it was mitochondrial pneumonia, followed a few weeks later by an adenotonsillectomy. In 2014, it was bilateral femoral osteotomies and bilateral patellar tendon advancement. I do not want to sleep on any crappy hospital faux-beds, nor in the regular hospital bed with a sick or surgically modified child.
I’m not sure what, if anything, I can do to prevent this occurrence in 2015, but if it happens I’ll consider the year a success. 🙂
What are your goals for 2015? Tell me in the comments!
This post was inspired by and is linked to This Ain’t the Lyceum’s 7 Quick Takes.
A wonderful set of goals, although I don’t think you have a whole lot of control over that last one, unfortunately… (been there, done that!)
May I suggest checking out Joette Calabrese’s website to see how homeopathy might be able to help with the last goal?
2. I’m going to sarcastically suggest the Dopey challenge 🙂
3. I use Good Reads (although not regularly). It works pretty well for me, well when I use it.
NO Dopey Challenge. Not because I couldn’t run that much, but because I couldn’t get up in the middle of the night four days in a row!
Glad I’m not the only one who feels that way Andi! Well, I probably couldn’t do the mileage, but I don’t even like the 3 events at DL because of middle of the night wake ups!
Two nights is bad enough, and I CAN do the mileage. 🙂 Honestly, too, those events have become so “mainstream” now that they don’t really appeal to me anymore, anyway. I ran Goofy when it was limited to a few thousand people and the event filled up really quickly – seemed like a challenge not many people took on. Now? Everybody does it.
my goals are “m” related. I want to learn the art of massage, memorize scripture, and save more money than in past years.
I want to complete an obstacle course race, I want to reduce my average pace by 4-5 minutes per mile, and I need to finish my great niece’s Christmas stocking.
Hi Andi!
What new kind of scrapbooking are you doing, and why do you like it? I plague myself by taking a billion photos a year and then doing nothing with them. I was in the process of turning them into photobooks, but then the company I was using went bankrupt and it doesn’t look like the newly structured company does digital books any more. *sigh*
My goal this year is to read 100 books, which is pretty doable, especially if I get back into reviewing my children’s books again.
I made it through 2014 without being hospitalized, so I know you guys can do it! 🙂
Here’s to an awesome 2015! God bless!
I’m using Becky Higgins’ Project Life – the digital version. I don’t do a page or spread for each week, just scrap what I think deserves to be scrapped. 🙂