2019. The New Year. A time for fresh starts, self-reflection and a renewed sense of hope and purpose. With every new year, comes the time when we ask ourselves, “What do I need to improve on in the next year?”. Some people want to lose the weight they’ve been battling with or learn a new skill or get a new hobby or go on that vacation. Maybe you want to be more organized and actually leave the house at a decent time in the morning so you’re not rushing the kids to school (me!).

Back in December, amid the craziness of the Christmas holiday, Robby asked me one night as he was leaning over the kitchen counter, “So, what’s your New Year’s resolution?” Not an uncommon question, especially since we were approaching year’s end, and yet the look I shot him was, I’m sure, one of irritation and disbelief. “I don’t know. I haven’t had time to think about it. I haven’t even had time to enjoy anything related to Christmas let alone have time to think of a resolution?!?!” This exasperated and deflated comment pretty much sums up my Christmas season, which turned out to be a rat race of a month, leaving me not enjoying the season much. I have always been Christmases’ #1 Fan. Hands down. I’m in love (and always have been) with every tradition that American culture embraces in the month of December. Baking Christmas cookies? Check. Hosting a Friendsmas holiday party? Check. Glitzing up in the tackiest Rudolph apparel for the company Christmas party? Check. Spending a whole evening driving the kiddos all around town to view the decorations of so many other Christmas-lovers? Check. We do it all. Every year. But this year was different. I was much busier this year. Much more stressed. It was every bit of the rat race that people complain about and I usually just push through but for some reason, I just couldn’t this year. I enjoyed the whole season very little, which left me at the end of December waving “bye” to Santa and his sleigh gratefully, for the first time in my life.

You see, I had some major struggles in 2018. Probably more than I’ve ever collectively encountered in one year up to this point in my life. I knew it was a hard year while going through it, but until I brought my bah-humbug attitude back in check and finally started my yearly reflection, I didn’t realize the toll it had on me and my spirit. The story of the Year of Crap 2018, may come to be published on the blog yet, but for now, I’ll just leave you with this summary: It. Sucked.

So, once January hit and all the hustle and bustle of Christmas was behind me, I finally made time to reflect on where I’ve been and where I want to go in 2019. The one thought that kept resonating with me is, “How can I prioritize things in my life so that I’m spending more time doing things that support my personal growth and personal enjoyment and less things that detract from it?” If we’re living each year with the same intentions and going through the same motions, is that truly living? Are we moving forward or standing in the same spot we’ve always stood? My mission this year is to move forward with massive strides and make efforts every day to be the best version of myself that I can be.

After several days, I came up with, what I feel, is a pretty good list of things I plan to focus on this year, so that I can get more out of the year and I hope to leave 2019 a little better than I found it.

1. Bible Study. Years ago, Robby explained to me that he felt more things in life started going wrong the less you go to church. We both come from Christian households and have went to church together since we started dating. Robby grew up in the Catholic faith, me in the Baptist faith. As a Catholic, he always made church attendance a priority, even when he was a young, single guy (likely nursing a hangover from the night before!). Once he said this, I noticed that his observation was right. Not that missing church here and there will set your life on a course of unfortunate events but I believe that the single act of not being in tune with your personal relationship with God, tends to set our priorities off-course. Gradually, the suck of daily life creeps in, pushing out positivity and the natural inclination to bounce back from negative experiences. Before you know it, you’re steeped in self-pity and negativity and the longer you stay there, the harder it is to get out. I don’t want that to be me and I don’t want to let negativity be my go-to attitude. I know I’m going to have days that life is gonna stink and I’m going to complain, but I don’t want that to be my default. Ever. I hope that in making my faith and relationship with God more of a priority, I can push out the negativity easier.
2. Personal Growth. I am fortunate enough to work at a company that encourages personal growth and acknowledges the benefit of increasing one’s emotional intelligence. Did you know that emotional intelligence (EQ) has proven to be a better indicator of success than IQ? The beauty of living in the world we do today is that we have so many resources at our fingertips that weren’t there in years past. We have books that we can “download” to our tablets for free from our local libraries, all from the comfort of our sofa chair in our living room. We have YouTube. Hello?!?! All the TedX talks available at the push of a button? Score! Another great one is Podcasts. I’ve just recently found a couple that I’m really liking and because I think everything played on the radio now is total crap, I’m digging the Podcasts. ALL. FOR. FREE. It can cost you zero dollars to invest in your personal growth!
3. Less Facebook. We’re all guilty of this one. I’m ashamed by how much time I spend here but because I know how guilty we are (society, all of society), I’m going to put it out there. Let me start with a little back story. Last year was a bad one for me (see paragraph above). I was spent every day. I had so little time with my family, I had zero time to plan meals and provide good food to my family, I had even less time to spend doing things just for me (things I love: reading, writing, relaxing). My go-to excuse of lack of time is because life is so busy because kids, work, activities (last year I had family struggles to add to this list). STOP. Stop making the excuses, Self!  We all have the same amount of time in a day. Yes, life is busy. I worked a full-time job as a Director of Nursing last year, had three kids, had aging and ailing parents to attend to, a husband that owns a business and works another part-time business that requires travel on top of that. It is busy. But here’s the thing…. It’s not going to slow down anytime soon. So if I want to be more in control of my time, I’ve got to take a good, hard look at how I spend it. And, I realized I spent it scrolling through the mind-numbing Facebook posts all too often. Robby and I would get the kids in bed, sit down on the couch, chat for a few minutes and when he flips on the tv, I would open my phone. I always intend to spend a few minutes and before I know it, I’ve spent the last 45 minutes reading about what character Becky Smith is most like on Saved By the Bell or watching a video clip of a dog skateboarding. What a waste of 45 minutes of my day!!!! Pulling out the iPhone and opening up my Facebook app is my default because I’m too tired or I don’t have time to read (what I tell myself). But if I have time to spend thumbing through Facebook, I have the time to pull out a good book (what is the reality). I’m using the Screen Time function in my phone’s settings to check in with myself to see how I’m doing. So far so good, I’m keeping Facebook to less than an average 20 minutes a day. Go me!
4. Read More. This bullet point should really be, “Read more, Facebook less” because that’s exactly what I thought of when I realized how much time I spent on Facebook. I would, hands down, any day of the week, prefer to read a book than to scroll through Facebook. Even if I have a 10-minute window, I noticed that I would feel better about how I’m spending my time if I picked up the book instead of the phone. Already in January, I’ve read four amazing books! Three were historical fictions (I’m digging these so much right now) and one was a book on developing my leadership skills, which also helped fulfill my #2 goal of personal growth.
5. Stop putting off things I want to do, simply because it’s hard to do them with kids. Not gonna lie… This one is going to be a struggle. The last seven years of our life have been dedicated to rearing kids. For seven years we’ve had an infant or toddler or both to keep alive. Because of this and because raising kids is hard, I’ve found that we’ve become accustomed to staying at home versus doing something fun or something we’d like to do, simply because it’s easier. Who wants to go somewhere when you’re breastfeeding, or you know the toddler won’t nap in public or you don’t want to pack 3 bags of stuff just to head out on the town for the day? Nobody, that’s who. But, what I’ve noticed in our lives is that there have been things that we have perpetually put off, in the hopes that “next year it will be easier” or “once Denver gets a little older, we can do that”. It’s become our mantra and while it’s still certainly true, I don’t want this to be our crutch. Example: Yesterday was my hubby’s birthday. I wanted to celebrate but we didn’t have a babysitter. So, I rounded up some friends for dinner and bowling with kids. It was hard. The older two did great but Denver is still young enough (not quite two years) and is so incredibly rowdy and wild, that it became a bit of an exhausting ordeal by 7:30. But we did it. We stepped out of the comfort zone and did something we wanted to do and made it work for the whole family. It wasn’t ideal, but we made it work. I’m hoping that the more we push ourselves to get out and do, the more accustomed our kids will be to being out and doing, and the more tolerant of those things they will be. Example #2: I have wanted to go to the Japanese Festival at Missouri Botanical Gardens for probably six years now. Six years, I’ve let this sit on my list. I’ve watched it come and go and always thought, “Next year it’ll be easier”. Well folks, this year, we’re going to the Japanese Festival. We just are.

I know setting goals are all well and good. We all make them but how often do we fall short and we start March already having put those goals on the back burner? I bought a cutesy little planner (life is better with cutesy stationary right?) for like $4 at TJ Maxx and have been using this side bar for tracking my goals. Having a good process to view my progress and keep myself accountable will hopefully put me on the right track to succeed.

If not, there’s always next year right? (Hahaha- totally joking!)

–Pan

What is your 2019 New Year’s Resolution? It’s the middle of February….. Have you checked in with yourself on your resolution progress?