I'm definitely feeling the New Year energy - which is a good feeling I'm going to enjoy for as long as it lasts. Our friends headed off on Friday, and although we had a great time, after 3 nights of 9-10 people (including 5 kids!) in our 3 bedroom, 1 bathroom house, we were pretty exhausted and happy to have some downtime. So after a day yesterday where the kids and I didn't do much (we hung at my parents for a while but otherwise chilled at home), I've woken up today ready to start to think about 2025 goals! I still have another week off work which is fun, and will give me chance to build in some personal routines before I add work back into the equation. This year I will have a word of the year, a Goals list separated into themes (Personal, Health/Fitness, Work, Home and Family/Relationships), and a fun/little things list (this is called Bucket List in my planner). So lets get into it!
Word of the year: Courage
Courage to have honest conversations, courage hold boundaries with the kids, courage in my new work role, and my new side business, courage to keep posting on my blog.
Personal Goals:
Read 25 Books in 2025 - I haven't never properly tracked my reading, and over the past decade my reading volume from year to year has fluctuated a lot. At times I have read dozens of books in a year, other years only handful. Last year I might have read 15 or so, but it wasn't consistent. So this year for the first time, I'm going to set a goal of reading 25 books in 2025. This seems very achievable, and possibly I will overshoot this by a lot, but if I struggle with reading at some times it feels like this is a goal I could still achieve. Mix of fiction and non-fiction (I usually read more non-fiction, but I actually have two fiction books next on my reading list so maybe I will read more fiction this year!). I'm going to track my reading in the back of my planner - so that is also fun. I will report back :)
Image by Wix
Create a blogging rhythm - I've been blogging here for about 9 months, and have never had any kind of plan, I've just blogged when I felt like it. Sometimes it has been 3 times per week, sometimes 2, often only 1. This year I would like to get into a rhythm where I write say 3 times a week, and perhaps have a little bit of a theme for each day. It is a bit difficult with my schedule to be consistent, but I think if I try (and hold boundaries with the kids - see courage above!), I can do this. And I'd love to see this blog grow over the next 12 months.
Move my blog to a different host - My current hosting service does NOT allow for easy commenting, where you can leave your name and email/URL. Instead, you basically have to comment as "Guest", or you have to create a login which is such a hassle. I did not know this when I signed up, and I don't like it at all. I think I will look to move my blog to Wordpress this year, as it has a good comment section, and is great specifically for blogs. Just have to work out how to do this without losing all my previous posts (there are how-to guides online so surely it is do-able).
Have one solo day off ("shouldless" day) per school term. So the Australian school year is divided into 4 equal-length terms of 10-11 weeks, each separated by 2 weeks of school holidays (except the summer which has a 6 week break). I receive 20 days of annual leave (PTO) each year, which doesn't include the week between Christmas and New Year (we get this off free as well). So this year I would like to use 4 of those 20 days to have a day off work AND parenting, to do things just for relaxation and fun.
Write daily in my new 5 year journal - I'm very excited about this. Only challenge is I'm not sure WHAT to write in it. Do I write a line about my activities that day, or is that too boring? Do I write something funny that happened or that the kids said? Do I write a reflection or random thought? My guess is probably a mix of those - basically whatever I feel like - but it just takes a bit of time to get used to it I think.
OK, tomorrow I'll be back for Health/Fitness and Home-related goals.
Hope you are enjoying that early January feeling, if you experience it too!
Yay for continued blogging and you know how important I've discovered boundaries to be.
Good luck with the blog move. I am confident it will really help user engagement and Wordpress is a great program.
Love your goals and hope in particular you can give yourself a shouldless day about quarterly! I am shooting for about every other month. I hope moving your blog isn’t too bad! It wasn’t as bad as I feared it might be but it was a nerve wracking process for me!
I light your word of the year! Mine is light. I was going to choose breathe but light feels like the right word. I want more of a sense of lightness and I would like to be lighter physically by the end of the year. I have gained weight on prednisone but should be able to taper off it starting in late Feb when I have recovered from surgery.