It's a snowy day here. So snowy, in fact, that nobody in my house went to school or work today. I've spent the morning sipping coffee, and making progress on the sock I'm knitting, and thinking about the year ahead. I am by nature a planner and a lover of lists, so a new year feels like an exciting time to me. A time to start over, to be a better version of myself, to make new and better habits.
I know a lot of people hate the idea of New Year's Resolutions. They feel like they are setting themselves up to fail year after year, but I think that's much too harsh. If you didn't run the marathon you wanted, did you at least run more than the year before? That's success! My goal last year was to try a new recipe every week. I absolutely did not achieve that. I could feel like I failed, but in truth, I made almost 30 new recipes last year! And my family liked most of them! How is that failing? I feel pretty damn good about that.
This year, my husband and I are giving ourselves some challenges for the month of January. A month feels like a manageable length of time to try something out. We want to start the year focusing on healthy habits after a long holiday season. (My holidays include three birthdays, besides Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years, so yeah, I ate and drank a little too much.) Our January Challenges include no sugar, no alcohol, a walk every day, and some other form of exercise of our choosing. If the weather is extremely bad, as it is today, we will bundle up and at least walk around the block. "Other exercise" can mean different things to both of us. I have a hiking trip planned for July, so I am focusing on squats and simple exercises to strengthen my back. Four days of hauling your life in a backpack up and down the Porcupine Mountains is motivation to build a little muscle. My husband is sticking to basic push-ups and crunches. To keep us accountable, he drew up a chart so we can check off our challenges each day that we complete them. At the end of the month we will evaluate how we feel and decide how we want to challenge ourselves in February.
My longer range goals for 2019 include paying off our final debt, a home equity loan we had taken out to do some work on the house. It's been hanging around for awhile and we haven't made much
effort into paying it off, but this year it will be gone! We are so motivated to be debt- free before he retires in a year and a half. It has really helped to sit down together now and then to review our finances and our goals together, and to plan what we want the next few years to look like. Our nest is quickly emptying and I have mixed feelings about that. I don't want to dwell in the past or hold on to a role that is no longer needed. I want the future to be something we look forward to together. So, this summer our reward for paying off the loan will be two kayaks we can use on the rivers and inland lakes that are so plentiful where we live. The summer after he retires, we are making tentative plans to take a train cross-country to Seattle. (If you have any ideas for the best things to see and do
there, let me know!)
An emptying nest can be a source of sadness, a loss of identity and purpose, but it can also be a time of re-evaluation and renewal, just like the New Year. A time to set new goals and challenges for yourself. Even if you aren't experiencing an (almost) empty nest like I am, I hope you are looking
forward to 2019 with optimism and intention. What are your resolutions this year?
Comments
Post a Comment