New Year, New Goals

New year, new goals...am I too late???  It's been a busy holiday season but since I'm stuck inside due to some extreeeeeeeeme winter weather in our area, today felt like as good a day as any to write these thoughts down!

Last year I wrote a post with my goals for 2013 (a couple days earlier than this) and even though I didn't accomplish any of them, I think it was a good exercise.  It gave me a focus, for a few months anyway, and to be honest, some of those goals really were in the back of my head all year.  It was also fun to look back on those goals at the end of the year and reminisce and reflect on the year gone by.  Life throws you a curveball sometimes and things go the exact opposite of how you planned!  What 2013 taught me was that even when I have everything planned out in my head, God can take me a different direction, and I can survive.

So, I'm going to try again.  I've also picked a word to live by for 2014, and I'll talk about that later too.  Without further ado, here we go!

1.  Read at least 1 book a month.  So...12 books.  If I get all 12 read in 6 months, great.  I'll read more.

2.  Work out at least 4 days a week.  Last year, I said 5 days a week.  Because that clearly didn't happen, I'm going to lower the bar a little so maybe I can attain this one.

3.  Finish that honeymoon scrapbook!  I think this is the year!!!

4.  Get organized.  I'm following this plan from Clean Mama at the moment.  I started following her in 2012 but lost steam when I started my grad school course started up again.  And then of course I never got back into it, we moved, and life just generally took over.  Now, I am done with any more grad school, we live in our own home, and generally I take more pride in our home than I ever did before in either of the rentals we lived in.  And I am desperately needing to get organized, so hopefully this will be the motivation I need.

5.  Finish our house, once and for all.  When we moved in back in July, our house rehab was mostly done.  And now, it's even more done.  But there are still little things to accomplish, like touching up paint, painting a few more pieces of trim, getting blinds/window treatments, adding in some more artwork, replacing outlets that the previous owners painted obnoxious colors...that sort of thing.  So Hubby Blue and I agreed to focus on one room a month and hopefully we will knock out all those little jobs, so that by 2015, we're just dealing with maintenance!  Hubby Blue also wants to build a shed in our backyard, so there's that.  It's hard to think about gardening when I look out my window and see three-foot snow drifts, but I would love to start a vegetable garden again and just generally enjoy our home.

6.  Read the Bible more.  I started my goal to read the entire Bible in 2013 and got about one-quarter done.  I'm going to pick up where I left off and see if I can't finish this year!  I also want to do another Bible study.  Right now my mom and I are working through a Beth Moore Bible study on the book of Esther, and I'm enjoying it so much I would love to do another one.

The word I've picked for myself for 2014 is INTENTIONAL.  I want to be so much more intentional this year.  I want to schedule my time intentionally: instead of saying I want to read "x" number of books, I want to be in the habit to read every night before bed; instead of saying I want to finish a scrapbook, I want to plan a day every month where I will actually do it.  I want to plan meals ahead of time and get back to being more prepared for the week ahead on the weekend so I can actually enjoy evenings instead of feeling like I have to cook and clean all night.  I want to be more intentional about exercising and get into a better routine.  I want to be more intentional at work.  I have a tendency to work until I can't work anymore, and I want to get away from that.  I want to schedule a time to leave every day and stick to that and tell myself that what isn't done today will just have to get done tomorrow.  I want to be intentional in my marriage and make plans to spend time together instead of spending every night Hubby Blue is off watching TV on the couch.  I want to quit Facebook.  GASP!  There, I said it.  Facebook is such a time-waster for me, and I want to drastically cut back on the time I waste on it.  I want to be more intentional with the friends who are most important to us.  And I want to be more intentional about my relationship with God.  I want to read the Bible more and I want to go to church more often.

I often feel so hurried, like there are never enough hours in the day to get done all that I want or need to get done.  Couple that with Hubby Blue's impossible schedule, and I often just don't like our life.  That sounds harsh, but I guess maybe a better way to say it is that I don't really like our lifestyle.  We run here and there, we watch too much TV, we rarely do fun things, we make last minute decisions, we don't see each other, we don't see friends, we don't go to church, we don't eat meals together.  Some of those things are unavoidable thanks to our work schedules, but I think some of those things can change.  So I want to be intentional about that.  I want to make changes where we can and be happy for that.

With that said, I'm going to end this post and get to doing some of these things!  I'll check back in from time to time and see how things are going.  And someday soon, I'll have to write about what our New Year's Eve looked like this year...because sometimes being married to a cop changes everything you thought was normal...