My Half-Heartedly Hopeful Resolutions (2018)
I don’t usually make New Years Resolutions. Perhaps I’m just jaded at the ripe old age of 31, but I think I know by now that I don’t change my habits or tendencies easily (if at all). Whenever I think about training myself to develop a new habit (like establishing an exercise routine or scheduling time for independent study), I just laughingly picture myself as a deluded Emma, embarking on one of Jane Austen’s heroine’s futile courses of self-improvement. So to spare myself the disappointment of giving up on my resolves by mid-February, I tend not to think intentionally about my goals for the upcoming year – which is a shame! It’s definitely worthwhile, and even needful, to periodically take inventory of our character, pursuits, and priorities and to make adjustments as needed.
That’s why this year I still don’t have resolutions, per se, but I do have a few personal goals that I’d really like to work on. Not just to check some items off of a list and feel accomplished (which I actually do find satisfying), but to live more of the year I want to live, without feeling like life just happens to me. I easily fall into the faulty thinking that the use of my time and resources is just one of those things that are mostly out of my control. I can let life happen passively around me, like a spectator, or I can exert myself a little bit and try to live that life more intentionally. It may take all year to get anywhere, so check back on me in 2019 and make sure I haven’t entirely forgotten I made this list! That’s always a possibility with me. 🙂
So these aren’t binding resolves or hard-and-fast to-dos, but general areas where I just want to improve. I’m not going to set alarms or make hourly schedules for these intentions. I think that kind of approach can really work for some personalities (schedule-oriented people can really thrive on that). For my personality, it tends to introduce a lot of pressure and guilt into the mix and eventually just sets me up for failure. So it’s important to know your particular traits and what works for you!
1). Read More
This may come as a surprise, being that I’m an English grad and Literature teacher, but reading doesn’t come easily to me. I love literature, stories, and language, but the act of reading is a little laborious because I’m painfully slow. I get fixated on my comprehension, so I tend not to turn the page until I’ve fully understood, and usually critically analyzed, the words I just read. This makes for very slow-going progress. I’ve always been jealous of people who can speed read or power through a book in a single afternoon. I don’t have that skill. Can someone mass market it, please?
It’s even harder now that I’m on mom-duty for 12 hours of the day. My only decompression time is in the evenings when I’d rather just enter a vegetative state and completely unwind until bedtime. However, reading is very rewarding for me and there are piles of books and stories that I want to get into my head. That being the case, I want to try to read at least several (see? No set number) novels this year. Compiling the list of possibilities was very easy to do. I’ve been eyeing certain beloved novels and authors for years.
2. Prioritize Devotional Time
When I was a student in graduate school, it was hard to prioritize devotionals because I was tunneling through piles of assignments all hours of the day (and night). Now it seems hard because I jump into mom-mode the second my feet hit the floor in the morning and it doesn’t stop until bed time. But my kids are mostly self-entertaining now, so there’s precisely zero excuse not to carve out a little bit of time each day to read a quick one-page devo or a small chunk of scripture. The truth is we just don’t always want to do those things, and so any excuse seems like a good one. And yet we should make ourselves do them anyway. It’s always rewarding when we do, and often we will find that our desire to do something will grow the more we do it. Emotions can follow obedience.
3. Declutter and Organize our House
This one is big, because it’s one of those things I’ve desperately wanted to do, but thought I had to put on hold because of circumstances out of my control: the slow-going timeline of our endless renovations. I’m one of those common human beings who gets subconsciously stressed out by clutter and disorganized environments. And yet when you’re living in a reno zone (like we have for the past three years), the entire house is inherently cluttered and disorganized and generally disarrayed. There are wires everywhere, coatings of drywall dust on every surface, and tools piled up in any available corner. It really prevents the house from ever feeling truly clean or functional. That’s not how I want to live for any indefinite period of time.
Added onto all of that, after 6 years of marriage, 2 kids, and 4 moves, we have more accumulated stuff than I’d like to see or hold onto. I’ve been putting off any deep purges or organization overhauls because I thought: let’s get the house renovated first and then everything will have a place to go and I can finally organize. But you know what? Sometimes you have to do things where you’re at. I decided to just jump full swing into clearing out closets and drawers and to amassing some organizational accessories to compartmentalize the clutter. Some of these areas, like the pantry, I’ve been meaning to tackle since we moved in three years ago! And when I finally set about to doing them, it took a mere 1-2 hours (really? Why did I wait this long?!) And the effect on my mental comfort has been immediate! I’m so glad I decided to stop putting something like that off for future events, and to just enjoy the house I have right now and make the most of it. I already feel better about our living space and I’m only about 1/4 of the way into my organization project.
So those are just three things I want to pursue more intentionally this year. What about you? Do you treat resolutions with the same fatalistic pessimism that I tend to? Do you have any vague goals you’d also like to work on this coming year? Am I the only one? 🙂
