Looking Ahead in 2022
So I have been a little MIA for the last few weeks as I focused on spending all of my time with our families and friends during the holiday season. During the holidays, we dealt with sickness (not COVID related thankfully), lots of traveling, spending time with everyone that we could, playing with Melody as much as possible, and surviving. The key word was definitely surviving. Don’t get me wrong, I did enjoy the last few weeks for the most part. But now that the return of normalcy is upon us, I am exhausted!! I feel like I need a break, but technically we just had a two and a half week break. So I decided to start this year with more intention.
What does that mean? Well I am going to try to be more mindful of what I am doing generally. I definitely have not been the best at this so far this year. We have been in a crazy mode of getting my husband ready for a busy work season and getting my daughter through the rest of her Christmas break. Now that both of those things have commenced, I can focus some time on myself.
My Phone
So I have done a couple of things with my phone to make my time with it more intentional.
For Christmas, I received a charging station that I wanted from Brad. It allows me to charge my watch, phone, iPad, computer, etc. all in one place. I set this up on our dresser. I did this with the intent of placing my phone there before I get in bed at night. I am hoping to use my alarm clock for its intended purpose on my nightstand. And this will help me to spend less time scrolling when I should be sleeping. Now the caveat is when my husband is out of town on travel. So I left a phone charger in my night stand for this time only. I want to keep my phone close in case of emergencies. But I will try to intentionally not look at it while it is charging, and I should be sleeping.
I have redesigned my Home Screen on my phone to be more functional. First I removed my busy background and made it a solid color (just my Home Screen, I could not part with my girl as my Lock Screen). Then I went through all of my apps. I removed the ones I don’t want front and center. With everything left, I grouped what I could together. I have three groups: utilities (Ring, Nest, Alexa, etc.), shopping (Walmart, Target, Costco, etc.), and Melody (ABCMouse, Disney+, Nick Jr., etc.). I am currently utilizing two widgets. One smaller one that shows me the weather, and one larger one that is a list of reminders. Now I am a physical planner girl all the way. If I don’t write it down, there is a slim chance I am doing it. But I added reminders here of some of the more major things. That is the first thing I see when I open my phone. Think of this as the goals I make for myself each week instead of the mundane daily tasks I do.
Lastly, I am going to actually try and stick to my screen time limits. Like most people, I find myself scrolling Facebook or TikTok only to realize an hour has passed by and I have accomplished nothing but a few laughs and shares to my husband. Then I tell my screen time notification to ignore itself, and I continue. A big goal of mine this year is to rarely use that ignore button. I will try and give myself grace in certain situations. Some examples are hair and doctor appointments, riding along on trip, etc.
Quiet Time
Quiet time is hard to come by when you have a young child in your house. And if they are too quiet, you may be wondering why. However, I am hoping to use some of the time my daughter is at school and while she is in bed at night to spend some time reading and journaling. Here are some of the books I am hoping to utilize during this time:
Timothy Keller’s The Songs of Jesus - This book contains a year of daily devotions in the Psalms. I messaged my sister in law a lot back in 2020 wanting to find a good devotional. For my birthday in 2021 she gave me this one. I actually did love the layout and how short each day is (which is great when you get little time alone to read), but I got behind in February and never followed through beyond that. This year I had it on January 1, so I started straight from there without having to catch up. My goal is to truly do this 5 minute (at most) devotional daily. I feel this is an easy one that can become a daily habit.
James Clear’s Atomic Habits - I feel like this is a book that most people either own, have heard of, or at least know someone who has it. Unknowingly, I bought this book late last year, and it turns out my mom had a copy already. I had heard about this book through multiple Facebook groups I am in, and I wanted to read it myself. I am hoping that since I am not using my phone in bed anymore that I can make a habit of reading a little bit a night in this book. I love reading, but reading puts me to sleep easily. I am going to attempt this daily for now. I may see that I do not make it far by reading at night. If that becomes the case, I may have to find time while Melody is at school to read a little bit each day then.
Emily Ley’s A Standard of Grace - This journal is a good combination of a devotional and self help book (or at least from what I can tell). I bought this during a Simplified sale last year, and I have not had a chance to open it. Well this is the year I plan to do that. This journal is a guided one. It is broken down by week (there are 52 in here). There is a paragraph or two to read along with some scripture. Then there are two prompts for each week for you to think about and journal. I hope to use this journal around two times a week. Maybe open it on Sunday morning and read through the scripture and prompts. Then think about it throughout the week. Then maybe on Friday revisit it and answer each of the prompts for that week.
One Line a Day: A Five-Year Memory Book - As you may recall from a previous post, every Sunday I write down memories from our week. Then at the end of the year, we sit down as a family to read each one (this year Melody got to read some too!). Well this is quite similar but on a grander scale. See you write a memory every single day for the entire year. Then you start back over the next year. And this continues for a total of FIVE years! Each year as you write your memory for that day, you can look back on your memories from the previous years. It is a really neat concept that I am eager to start!
My Blog
Let’s just dig right in to my goals for my blog!
So as you may have noticed, I decided to revamp my website. I do not intend to change my logo as that has been with me for quite some time. But I did think it was time for an overall visual change. Squarespace is a great tool, but it is taking some time to get everything just as I want it, so bear with me. But I found a general template that I love. I like that it is almost laid out like instagram. It is just so much more visually appealing at first glance. There is not a whole lot of color outside of the pictures (which is where you want the focus), and you can see so much more at one time when you are searching for something.
I am hoping to write some more meaningful posts this year. I feel like 99% of my blog contains crafts, trip reports, recipes, or what we did last week. While I totally plan to continue that trend (I have a slew of things I have lined up from this fall and the holidays to write about), I want to add in some more thought provoking posts. I don’t want to blog out of routine or habit. I don’t want to feel forced to write a post that day because I haven’t posted about our trip yet, and we have been back for 5 months already. I want to feel more inspired to blog.
I want to rejoin the Instagram world in regards to my blog. I do have a personal account that I post to fairly regularly. But I want to post more to my blog account as well. I may even do a clean up of some old or unflattering posts. I hope to become more involved with reels and stories. So be sure to look for that this year.
My Health
I am not talking about losing 30 pounds before summer or spending as much time as possible at the gym. I am talking about being more in tune with my body and what helps and hurts me without focusing on the impact it has on my weight.
Food - Again, I am not planning a diet or even a so called “lifestyle change”. We are in a semi-chaotic season of life. I am sure the next ten to fifteen years will not become any less chaotic. So I want to be better about listening to my body when I eat. I want to listen when my body tells me I am full instead of getting halfway through a bag of chips and realizing I want to throw up out of being miserable. I want to be more aware of how certain foods impact my body. I know ice cream makes my stomach feel awful, but I still indulge. Why? Can I find alternatives that won’t make me feel this way? And that is simply an example. Other foods impact how I feel as well.
Wellness - Am I going to go join a gym tomorrow? No. Would I like to eventually join a gym? Yes. But again, the goal isn’t a number on the scale. The goal is to not feel exhausted. That may seem counterintuitive, but it is true. Based on experience, exercising did give me more energy after doing it for awhile. But first I do want to start with small goals and habits. For instance, walking up our stairs truly takes the breath out of me. I want to focus a bit of time each day to just walk the stairs. And hopefully get to a point of not being near death after a few trips.
Other Habits
I do have a few other habits that I would like to put into place or continue pursuing.
Meal Planning - I have tried many versions of meal planning throughout the years. This year I just want to keep it simple. I have a planner I bought last summer for this purpose. It is a weekly planner that gives me space for not only listing out my meals by day, but I also include my grocery list by day too. Well I am literally going to do this week by week. This seems easy enough and may even be a ridiculous habit to some of you. But I have always went big here. I have went as big as planning meals for over a month at a time. I have planned meals two weeks ahead of time. I have even planned every single meal for every single day in said week. But this time around, I am going to simply plan out general lunches and dinners for each day the week before. I won’t get ahead of myself and try to plan too far in the future. This will keep me from buying things, plans changing, and we throw stuff away.
Daily Planning - I don’t feel this is a habit that is going to change too much. I do have some monthly planners I hope to keep up to date on a more daily basis, but my daily planner is pretty much attached to me. I went these last 3 weeks without it, and I could totally tell a difference. Not just in the lack of accomplishing things, but how I felt. Because I didn’t write all the things down, I felt like I was always forgetting to do something. And I just felt off by it. But I will definitely continue it! I do hope to maybe incorporate some of the scheduling aspect of my planner this year, but that may not be a priority.
Family Budget - I designed a spreadsheet years ago that we still use today when doing our budget. I have tweaked it some, but the general idea is still the same. Every year I say I am going to budget better, but it just falls by the wayside and gets overlooked by the end of the year. I mean I complete the entries, but I never really keep us in check with our budget. And that is totally the purpose. This year I want to be more mindful about looking at the budget daily. Entering things as we do it, and noting where we are starting to approach going over certain line items. I want to also see where we might can cut back and reevaluate our spending.
So I am going to end things here. I am sure I could keep going on all the things I would like to accomplish or put work into this year, but I feel this is a good starting place. Please be patient as I try to make this all a new habit in my current lifestyle. If you have any new goals for 2022, be sure and comment them below! I would love to read about them.
