Goals, Money

My 2017 Resolutions

 

2016 was a really big year for resolutions—big not just in what I managed to do, but also big because I just set SO MANY.

Now, I’m all for making a little bit of progress in a lot of different areas, but in 2017, there are a few areas I’d like to make a LOT of progress on.

So I’m keeping it pretty simple for my resolutions this year.

My 2017 Resolutions:

1. Finish our emergency fund.

Way back in 2013, we (Matt and I) set the goal to save a baby emergency fund of $1000, pay off the (little) debt that we had, and then start saving a fully-funded emergency account in earnest. (In other words, we were completing Dave Ramsey’s first two baby steps, and then working on the third.)

While I thought (naively, perhaps) that we’d be able to save up what we needed in no time to complete the fund, it’s now 3+ years later, and we’re still working on it.

True, it didn’t help that we got hit with $2000 worth of unexpected medical bills in 2013, then we had a baby in 2015 and a major surgery in 2015 (where we actually met our insurance’s out-of-pocket expenses of $6000 for the year…ugh), and we had $2000 worth of car repairs last year, but we’ve still just been slogging on, without feeling like we’re getting anywhere (probably because we keep getting hit with stuff, dangit!).

But 2017 is going to be the year—the year we finally finish the dang emergency fund once and for all.

Of course, a goal this big will still require several smaller goals to cut our income where we can as well as try to increase that income as much as possible, but I’ll spare you the details for now and just put it out there that we’re going to make this happen this year.

2. Break myself of my social media and my Diet Dr. Pepper addictions.

I went off drinking DP for over two years after I discovered it messed with my GI system, but then I (unfortunately) went back on it when I did an elimination diet at the end of 2015 because I felt so deprived and the soda miraculously didn’t contain any of the four ingredients I was cutting out. My last DP was on Dec. 30th, and I’m actually feeling all right, with only one day of major withdrawal headaches so far.

As for the social media goal, I realize that some people might have no problem cutting down their time, but this one has been a challenge for me in the past to stick to for any length of time. I think it’s because (as I’ve realized this week), I tend to get on and check Facebook or Bloglovin or Instagram whenever I’m bored or whenever there’s a lull (aka, Raven is actually playing happily by herself) or whenever I was on a computer, honestly. It had become SUCH a habit to just click into it that I wasn’t even thinking most of the time before I did—I just went.

But as I mentioned in my last post, I’ve realized social media can be really toxic for me. I’m really sensitive to certain things, and my Facebook feed in particular seems to always flare up my anxiety in some way almost every time I log on.

So my schedule for the year is as follows:

– Instagram on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday (post 1-2 pictures and link to the blog posts going up those same days). Limit scrolling to 10 minutes or less.
– Facebook on Tuesdays and Thursdays, one time during the day. For now, I’m trying to only check my notifications and not look at my feed at all, but I might eventually just put a time limit on this one as well (probably around 10 minutes, too).
– Bloglovin’ on Saturday. (Only read what I want to, not what I feel obligated to.) I’ve always LOVED reading blogs, and I have this really weird tendency that once I follow a blog, I feel like I have to read EVERYTHING that blogger posts, even if I’m not particularly interested in it. Because I follow dozens and dozens of blogs, that all adds up to a LOT of blog reading. So, with this new rule in place, I’m just going to read what’s most interesting and limit it to Saturdays only. Ideally, I’d like to get my Bloglovin feed to zero after every Saturday (by just marking everything I’m not interested in as “read”). I’m not setting a time limit on this one, but even just doing it once a week with that new rule in place will save me a LOT of time.
– No social media on Sunday. I want Sunday to be for worship and for rest, not for the subtle but consistent anxieties that seem to crop up whenever I plunge too far down the social media rabbit hole.

I feel a little silly that my addiction to social media has driven me to this point, but there you go. Honesty first, folks.

3. Between Matt and I, complete all the temple work for 10 ancestors (and research and find out as much as possible about those ancestors beforehand).

I’ve set goals for years to be more consistent about my temple attendance, but the once-a-month thing doesn’t seem to be working for whatever reason, so we’re going to try something different this year.

For anyone who’s not LDS and is curious about the work we perform in temples, click here for more info (last paragraph) and here.

4. Complete 3 personal photography projects.

I’m currently in the middle of one personal photography project (click here for the Instagram account linked to it), but I want to do two others before the year is through.

I originally thought about setting a goal to have more paid photo shoots this year than last year, but that goal really stressed me out to think about (not because the work itself scares me, but just because I don’t want to push my business on other people). Doing personal photography projects is a great way to keep my inspiration high, my skills sharp (and make them sharper), and to experiment without any potential negative consequences.

5. Set monthly goals, in addition to doing a weekly to-do list.

One hard thing about new year’s resolutions is that it’s hard to predict if your desires will be the same by year’s end, or if your life situation will permit such goals. That’s why I’m going to go back to monthly goal setting (kind of like I did in 2014).

I still don’t know if I’m going to post these monthly goals on the blog at all (right now I’m leaning toward no), but it’s still something I want to try again, especially since it means that every month is a fresh start (rather than feeling like a failure halfway through the year and feeling the need to wait for a new year to start again).

So there you go, my 2017 resolutions. Nothing too exciting or drastic. This year could honestly go in a lot of different directions, so I wanted to keep it simple just in case a lot changes.

 

What are some of your goals for 2017?

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