Photo: Tim McGuire
It’s a new year and I’m starting off 2016 with some new goals. I’m not one to make New Year’s Resolutions, but I like setting a few goals, things to work toward in the new year.
2015 was a great year and I did my best to enjoy it up to the very end. And that doesn’t mean I partied the nights away up until New Years Eve (though that could have been fun), it means I simply relished uninterrupted time with my family. My daughter was home from college, my son was out of school on winter break and my husband was off of work for the last ten days of 2105. We played board games together, went for walks, had friends over, watched basketball, watched movies, ate a lot of good food, played basketball, played music, and just plain hung out. My kind of fun, though nothing got done.
Now it’s 2016, and it’s time to get back to work and start the year off right, because during my relaxing winter break, I didn’t write, I rarely worked out, I barely cleaned, and my Inbox went through the roof. The break was awesome, but it is time to get back to real life. Which brings me back to goals, my goals, the ones I set last week and had planned to implement today, Monday, January 4th, 2016. Well, guess what? I implemented what I had planned for the start of 2016!
I won’t tell you about all of my life’s goals, but I will tell you that one goal is to put into action a scheduled weekday writing time (one that’s a little flexible, because I know myself and I know if I don’t have some flexibility in what I’m trying to achieve it won’t happen). So in 2016 I plan to go to the “office” for a couple of hours each weekday to write (The “office” being a coffee shop of my choosing where I won’t be distract by chores at my house). My plan is to walk the dogs and workout in the morning, at about 10:00am go find a coffee shop to write in, and be back for lunch with my husband between noon and one o’clock.
Today started off a little slow, because when I sat down to eat breakfast I made the mistake of working on that Inbox I talked about earlier and as I chipped away at my 5000+ email list, I found it hard to stop. Life often gets in the way of implementing goals but the key for me is to minimize the interruptions and remind myself to keep moving forward. So, I reminded myself of my goal and made myself stop with 3380 emails to go and then took the dogs for a long walk. I got home from the walk later than expected, but still did a few yoga stretches, tossed some laundry in the washing machine, and then when I looked at the dirty dishes, I thought about tossing in the “office” time, but instead I grabbed my computer and headed out the door knowing that 1½ hours of writing beats no writing at all and that the dishes would still be waiting for me, with a couple more from lunch, when I got home.
Weekday morning number one of my 2016 goals moved forward like life in general, not perfect, but worth every minute.
Set some goals for 2016 and keep living your best life.
WRITING PROMPT: Write down your goals for 2016.
