I’m probably the last one to talk about goals, but here I am! I have 8 Goal Categories I’ve set for myself this year. I’m not creating these goals to stress myself out, they’re just there for me to grow and add positivity to my life. I want to take baby steps towards them each month and I purchased the Cultivate What Matters Planner to keep me on track each month and season. This is my first time using the planner this year, so we’ll see how it goes!
Goal One: Blog / Work
I’ve been pretty successful at turning my blog into a job with a part-time income. However, this year I want to manage how I spend my time better. I want to invest that time into SEO, pinning wisely and ads, which will help my earnings. Last year I went to Haven and it was very valuable and I want to start putting into action what I learned from Haven and from the other bloggers I met while there. I want to put more posts on the blog that I care about. I’d also like to get a week ahead, there are times when I’m writing a post the night before it is due.
These are the words I wrote down when thinking about how I wanted blogging to go this year: Less Stressed, Confident, In Charge, Organized
Goal Two: Rest / Play / Recharge
Last year I worked A LOT. I can remember weekends where I worked almost the entire weekend, just to get things done. I was starting to feel really burned out. This year I want to work on giving myself time to rest, play and recharge. I’ve started to work less if at all on the weekends, even if it means turning down a campaign or writing one less blog post that week. I really enjoy blogging, but I need to figure out that perfect amount for this year that is good for ME and my family. Being a successful blogger isn’t always about taking every job or the final dollar, it’s being smart about it and giving yourself time to refuel… to get your creativity back.
Since cutting back, I got to binge watch a show on Netflix with Brian, which was fun to do on two snowy weekends. I’m reading more. And, I’ll be honest… it feels great to have my weekends back (I still do a little blogging during the weekends, but not 24/7!!). But, this is still a work in progress.
Goal Three: Spiritual Growth
For a long time I have been writing in a prayer journal daily, reading the Bible/or a devotional and I’d try to read 3-4 religious books for faith building every year. However, last year it all stopped. I did write in my prayer journal a little… but, there would be months when I didn’t touch it. It was shocking to me that I had given this valuable part of my life up, but I just couldn’t find the time to do it. Or, I’d tell myself I’d start again next week and I just never did. I grew mad at myself that I was so good at getting up early to workout, etc. every morning, but I couldn’t take 15 minutes for prayer, etc.. I think when we become overly busy, we overlook what we really need in our lives. We make excuses and 1 week turns into 1 month and then before you know it… 2018 is over. This year I want to be more organized about my spiritual time and I’ve been better.
Goal Four: Health
Health hasn’t always been important to me, but unfortunately as you get older… you can either let yourself go or you can take care of yourself and hope to embrace your years more wisely. I have been a long distance runner since Autumn was born, but I never kept track of what I ate. I ate terribly. I have a pretty fast metabolism (which, sadly… isn’t as fast as it used to be) and I think that is the main reason I never really cared about clean eating. But, I think when you become older you also become wiser. I’ve been following The FASTer Way to Fat Loss for almost a year now. I realized that just running wasn’t all that my body needed… I needed strength and core exercises, too. I realized I needed to start eating better. I really try to eat clean Monday-Friday. On the weekends, I give myself a break from tracking. This has worked pretty well for me so far.
Recently, I’ve been trying to cut a lot of coffee out of my diet. I really only started drinking coffee a few years ago (I’m looking at YOU, Starbucks!). But, I started getting my favorite venti once a day or even twice a day. It was a bad habit and a costly one. I can’t even explain how shocked I was when I realized that a venti was 4 cups of coffee and some days I was drinking 8 cups! I started to realize this when I was having trouble sleeping at night. I never had trouble sleeping, but I finally realized it was from TOO much coffee. I’m really trying to cut back on Starbucks and I try to only go on Saturdays now… sometimes Sunday. I’m trying to drink mainly water M-F, no coffee at all. Unless, I’m having a rough day. 😉 I’m trying to eat a lot cleaner. On Monday and Tuesday I do low carb and then Wednesday-Friday I do a diet based on meeting a certain percentage of fats, carbs and proteins in my macros. It forces me to eat A LOT cleaner, because you can’t really sneak in a lot of junk when doing low carb or counting macros. I’m thankful for that, because it has been working for me.
Goal Five: Mom
This goal is for myself as a mom. I’d like to do more fun things with the kids, I feel like we are always running to this activity or that. I feel my kids are in very busy activities, given that Nathan is a black belt in karate and Autumn does competitive dance. Both of those activities go year round and there is never a break. I’ve thought a lot about how our evenings are just so busy. Sometimes I miss the casual evenings when they were babies and tots. They even went to bed earlier then! Now, the kids are in bed between 9-9:30 p.m. and honestly, most evenings I’m so tired that I’m in bed right after them.
So, I hope to work on doing more fun things as a family, being more present, trying to get the kids to be more independent and do things on their own (I’m the kind of mom that wants to just do it, because it is easier… but, I need to STOP that!)… Nathan will turn 13 this year and I also kind of wanted to do something fun for his birthday, such as a trip…
Goal Six: Fun / Travel
Our family is pretty good about scheduling vacations. Brian and I always try to take a vacation alone every year and then we do a family vacation with the kids. Then, sometimes Brian and I will get away for a weekend or we will do something for a weekend with the kids (such as Great Wolf Lodge).
This year, we’ll be doing our Disney trip with the kids. We take them to Disney every other year. This will be our fourth trip to Disney with them. Brian and I were really wanting to go to Greece this year, but then we were looking at flights and Hawaii came up. The flights are actually a lot cheaper to Hawaii and it’s been on my bucket list forever. Brian has been to Hawaii once. We are looking at Maui, so that will be fun! We also may do a small trip to Magnolia… I’ve been wanting to go!
Some other fun items on our list for this year is getting me a new car! My car right now is a 2007 with over 200,000 miles on it. I’m hoping to get a new car this Spring. I am so excited. I still have a cd player in my current car with a CD STUCK inside it that won’t come out. It will be so nice to be back up with technology again! lol!
Some other ideas is updating our bedroom set. We’re also interested in getting a sleep number mattress. I’d like to update Nathan’s room a bit, since he’s going to be a TEEN. These are just the BIG things… And, yes… I get excited about new furniture. Ha! I’m sure we’ll do a lot of other small fun things this year!
Goal Seven: Better Mornings / Evenings
I want to try to think of some ways to make mornings and evenings easier in our household. I feel I get up so early in the morning now (5 or 5:30 a.m.), that I don’t think I could possibly get up any earlier to make it easier. But, I have some ideas on how to make our mornings and evenings easier and I just need to figure out what I want to try first.
Goal Eight: Organize
Our house is pretty organized, except for the closets and basement (finished and unfinished). I also haven’t finished decorating all of the rooms in the house, but I try to focus on one or two of them a year. I’m just a slow decorator! There are some house updates I’d like to do, but nothing major.
Another item I’d like to be more organized on is planning ahead for birthdays and holidays. Especially with Autumn’s birthday being right before Thanksgiving, it prevents me from getting a head start on Christmas.
I’d like to go through my never-ending to do list and just make it realistic. And, I need to track the time I spend on tasks.
I’d like to work on these goals throughout the year as much as I can. Time is always something I don’t have a lot of, so I try to do my best. I actually had a couple of goals on here that I was going to share, but then felt they were too personal so took them off. It’s so hard to know how much to share on the blog. I feel I have to keep some privacy. Anyway, thanks for reading about the ones I have shared today. Have a great weekend!
