I said in my initial post on my resolutions for 2017 that “this year could honestly go in a lot of different directions,” and boy, was I right.
For starters, I said that because I was sure I’d be having a baby by the end of the year, which I knew from my experience with Raven would throw ALL my usual goals and such out of whack. (And, had I not miscarried, I would have indeed had that baby as planned in October). I knew that if my pregnancy was anything like it was with Raven, I would be so sick during the first trimester I could hardly do anything, and so exhausted by the middle of the third that I still could hardly do anything. So I didn’t want to hold myself to too much.
I was also unsure if Matt’s work would be relocating to a new location, thus prompting us to also possibly relocate somewhere. But, as it stands now, since the company appears to be staying put for the next 5 years at least, we decided to buy a home instead of continuing to rent since financially, it made a bit more sense.
That had not been in the original plans for this year AT ALL.
It also wasn’t in our plans to deal with tragedy and death and miscarriage all in the first three months of the year, but so it went.
So yes, I had one thing right about this year back in January, and that’s that it could honestly go in a lot of different directions (and it has).
Nevertheless, I’m not one to set resolutions and forget about them by mid-February, so here I am, doing a little check-in post to keep myself accountable.
Here goes.
Resolution #1: Finish our emergency fund.
We were making really solid progress on this one until we decided, somewhat suddenly yet not suddenly, to start looking to buy a home. And while we didn’t have to dip into our savings *too* much to pay for our down payment and for the closing costs, we still are further away from this goal than we were at the beginning of the year.
Realistically speaking, I don’t think we’ll complete this one this year, but our plan is to keep adding to it more seriously now that we don’t have a down payment fund distracting from it at all.
Our plan is to put anything extra from our regular income into the emergency fund and if we happen to get any extra money that was unanticipated (such as from a raise or bonus or side income), then we’d put some into the emergency fund and some into paying off our mortgage early. Once our emergency fund is completed (hopefully by sometime next year), then we’ll shift our focus to really putting that same money into our retirement since we’ve had to take a break on that for about a year and a half.
Resolution #2: Break myself of my social media and Diet Dr. Pepper addictions.
Sigh.
I was doing REALLY well on both of these things through February...I had outlined a solid plan for when I would check social media and had been largely following it, and I hadn’t touched a drop of DDP since late December.
Then we got hit with a lot of stuff, and I started to rationalize that because I’d been so good, I could afford to treat myself a bit so that I could have some help getting through those tough times. Well, I’m currently back to drinking a bottle of Diet Dr. Pepper a day and currently have zero limitations on my social media use.
However, that’s not to say I’ve made NO progress…just that I’ve let myself backslide a lot. Before this year, I would spend a lot of time scrolling through my Facebook feed, and I also felt the need to read ALL the posts in my Bloglovin feed, which stressed me out more than it should have. Now, I do check FB multiple times a day, but it’s usually just to look at my notifications and check the first 4 or 5 posts in my feed (since those will usually be the most important, though that’s an imperfect assumption sometimes). And with Bloglovin, I’ve gotten into the habit of reading only about half of what’s posted and of just marking the rest as read so that I don’t get stressed out by my feed anymore.
Because I’ve been spending a lot more time on other things (like checking things off my weekly to-do list or reading or spending quality time with Raven), I haven’t been too strict with my time on social media in the past few months. However, I’ve noticed that lately I’m spending way more time than I’d like to on it with Raven around, and I don’t want her to have this image in her head of Mom on the computer all the time. So I need to rethink this resolution so that it’s not as strict as before, but so that it gives me more of a strict boundary line while Raven is awake.
Resolution #3: Between Matt and I, complete all temple work for at least 10 ancestors (and research and find out as much as possible about them beforehand).
Now THIS one I’m rather proud of so far…not only did I find ten new ancestors on Matt’s side for us (a previously unknown feat for anyone in his family), but I also found enough for ALL of his siblings who were interested to take 5 names apiece to the temple! This has been a matter of a lot of prayer for me this year, and I have seen those prayers answered in abundance, and it has been a very special experience for me, indeed.
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.
Resolution #4: Complete 3 personal photography projects.
I started a project early this year (of photographing the lesser-known nooks and crannies of Logan, Utah), but now that we’ve moved to a nearby suburb, I think I’ll need to expand this one to include all of Cache County. Also, I burned out of this one pretty hardcore because I kept getting snowed/rained out many times that I wanted to go shoot, and then I got busy with moving. So that is a project I’m interested in picking back up, but it will have to be with different parameters.
Currently though, I’m challenging myself to participate in the Clickin’ Moms 2017 Summer Scavenger Hunt. While I’m not planning on posting to my Instagram every day with things on the list, I am planning on trying to post at least 15 photos from the list. (And, bonus–I’m hoping that doing as much of the scavenger hunt as possible will also help us to fit in a lot more fun and play this summer than we would have otherwise!)
A third, very informal “project” I’ve been doing lately is to try and take a lot more photos of reflections. It was something I hadn’t played with much before, and it’s something that I’ve started to make myself notice now and capture on camera. I’ve also been pushing myself to be a bit more experimental with certain aspects of my photography, which, while not a formal project with defined guidelines, is still helping me to improve nonetheless (which was the goal of the resolution in the first place).
Resolution #5: Set monthly goals, in addition to doing a weekly to-do list.
This resolution by far has been the best one for how crazy this year has been. After a wake-up call in February that I needed to make these monthly lists about more than just nagging tasks, I’ve been attacking my monthly (and weekly!) goals with renewed vigor and have been pleased with how much I’ve been getting accomplished most weeks (and months) this year so far.
Since I was so very right in assuming that this year would bring a lot of change, I’m glad that I had this built-in way to keep myself progressing on goals that were important to me, while at the same time giving myself flexibility to change things as time went on.
Did you set any resolutions for the year? And how do you limit your social media time (since I obviously need to work on that one)?
