Most years, I can’t wait to post my New Year’s Resolutions on the blog–I usually spend weeks thinking about my “Big Focus” goals for the new year, and I make sure to post about them so that I’ll keep myself accountable. And even though I haven’t been perfect about keeping all my resolutions every year, and even though I sometimes wonder if they really do make a difference, I can say for a fact that looking back, I have incrementally improved my life little by little through the setting and posting of New Year’s Resolutions. In recent years, I have made huge strides in running, eating less meat and more produce, living a more minimalist lifestyle, and actually doing something about the items on my life’s bucket list because I have chosen to carefully choose and then blog about New Year’s Resolutions.
This year when the new year rolled around, I was five months pregnant and not sure what the new year would bring, so I kept my resolutions low key and quiet. But now, as we are coming up on the halfway point on 2015, I’d like to clue you all in on what I’ve been working on, even if the goals might not be as impressive as in years past.
Every year (just about), I set a goal related to reading. Since it’s important to me to be well-read (and since I have bucket list items relating to the 3 book lists mentioned above), I set the goal of 15 books off these lists to make sure I was making progress towards my longer life goals, but not making it so that I had no time left to read any other books not on the list. I think five books off each of these three lists is a good balance.
How I’m Doing at this Resolution: Not great, but I do have a plan going forward to remedy that. So far, I’ve only read three out of fifteen books (and am in the middle of another one), but I have planned out many of the books going forward that will count towards the fifteen, and I made a list the other day of 10 ways I can fit more reading time into each day and plan to start incorporating some of those ideas soon.
How I’m Doing at this Resolution: Since running my first marathon back in 2012, I have set running goals each year as well. Because of my pregnancy and then delivery recovery time, I have yet to make any progress on this goal. But my 8-week follow-up appointment with my doctor is tomorrow, and I should be cleared to start running from thereon out. It will be difficult to work it out with the baby, but I’m hoping to sign up for a race sometime in October or November.
At first, I wanted to challenge myself to sign up for another half marathon (since that was the last length of race I trained for), but since I didn’t know how my body would respond to having a baby, I decided to go easy on myself (but still set a goal that was challenging enough that it would require planning and careful execution). When I ease into running again, I might try and set a time goal for my 10K, but it’s much too early to be able to tell for sure on that.
How I’m Doing at this Resolution: I’ve been going through the Old Testament at an embarrassingly slow pace, and I’ll admit, I’m eager to be finished with this goal so I can focus more scripture reading time on the books that are a bit easier to understand and to get through. I’m currently at the very end of Proverbs, so I have a good chunk left to go on this goal, unfortunately. I worked it out the other day, and to finish by the end of the year, I basically have to average two chapters a day for the rest of the year. Here’s hoping I can keep that pace up…
A few years ago, I started really getting into genealogy and family history, but since hitting a lot of dead ends, some of the exuberance has worn off. So, for this year, I decided to take a step back and do some service in other ways (namely, by indexing family history records to make them accessible for other people). For more info on what indexing is all about, click here.
How I’m Doing at this Resolution: I started off really strong on this goal and had indexed almost 4,000 names by the time the baby was born, but since she’s come, I’ve only indexed a few batches. I need to get back into the habit of indexing about 40 names a day in order to stay on track with this goal, but if I course correct now, I should easily be able to complete this before December.
How I’m Doing at this Resolution: This was the one resolution I actually did blog about (January’s focus = spending freeze, February’s = walking challenge, March = non-procrastination), but once again, I took a break when the baby was born. Now that I’m more out of survival mode and more into the routine of being a stay-at-home mom (for the time being), I think I’m ready to start back into this one. I’m still tossing around a couple different ideas for this month (so I’m a bit behind for June), but by July, I should be fully invested once again for sure.
So there you go—nothing too big or fancy or crazy this year, but I knew that my REAL resolution for the year would be to embrace my new role as a mother and to soak up every minute of it that I could. And as for THAT resolution–check and check.
All the rest is just icing on the cake 🙂
