This may border on TMI, but what is a blog for if not ocassionally indulging myself in a little oversharing?
I really hate to blow my nose.
I don’t know why. It’s a perfectly natural thing to need to do. But I will sit there all congested, sniffling and snurfling and putting off the inevitable. And yet when I finally give in and just blow my nose already, life is amazing! I can breathe! And I wonder why I didn’t do it sooner.
You may wonder what the heck that anecdote has to do with anything. Well, I’ll tell you: it’s about noticing the extraordinary in the ordinary. Celebrating the small things. And that’s what my goals for 2017 encompass. Nothing earth-shattering on this list, but rather digging into where I’m already planted.
I love my life. I may sometimes gripe about work or any number of things, but more often than not I’ll find myself driving down the road thinking how astounding it is that I get to live these days. I read a quote by Neil Barringham that says, “The grass is greener where you water it,” and ain’t that the darn truth?
Here’s how I’m going to water my grass in 2017:
- More writing and projects, less TV watching.
After dinner I usually let myself turn into a pumpkin. It’s as if because it’s dark outside I become incapable of productive action. Here’s me claiming it won’t be so! The plan is to post here once a week, plus my monthly reading recap.
Plus I haven’t done a cross-stitch or any other type of project in too long. I’m planning to take a hand lettering class and would like to get more into that.
- More rowing while dinner’s in the often, less mindless scrolling through social media.
We got ourselves a fancy rowing machine for Christmas because I wanted it, and yet I’ve only really used it once so far! 20 minutes or so while something bakes is the perfect amount of time to get in a quick workout.
I would also like to run a half marathon in 2017. (Look, I know I say all the time how much I hate running, but I like having a physical goal to achieve, and it seems like completing that would make me feel good. I’d like to prove to myself that I’m capable of it even if I never do it again.)
- More calling my friends, less feeling disconnected.
I hate talking on the phone (except to my parents, true story), but there are people in this world who I like, so I should make time for them. Related to this is planning another girls’ beach trip with my disparate pals and entertaining at our home once a quarter (and getting our back patio area spiffed up).
I’ve gotten all organized for book club this year, because I was determined not to let that die, so it should run more smoothly and fill me up more this year than it did last year.
A few other miscellaneous resolutions:
- Take more pictures with Andy.
When I went to look for one for 2016’s Christmas card, my Amazon Cloud Drive informed me there were only NINETEEN pictures of the two of us from the entire year. And many of those were multiple attempts at the same sub-par selfie. We do fun things together and that should be more evident in our photographic vault.
- Read one non-fiction book per month.
I’m copying this onto my work goals as well, so it will happen.
- Clean regularly.
We have a house cleaner who comes, but only once every six weeks because that ish is expensive. So I set a recurring event on my calendar to do a cleaning blitz every three weeks in between. The carpet won’t know what hit it.
- Keep up with transactions in YNAB (our budgeting software).
Andy is so on top of things financially and I often take that for granted and slack off. But I should be more aware of what’s going on, even if it’s just to log into the software and categorize my transactions once a week. My wallet will appreciate not having to hold receipts for months at a time.
My word for the year? Consistency. Because, as Gretchen Rubin writes, “What you do every day matters more than what you do once in awhile.”
If you’re doing some daydreaming about the year (it’s not too late!), I found this free printable from Love & Renovations very helpful!
