Looking Forward to 2015

The older I get, the faster these new years seem to creep up on me.

And now I sound like my grandmother.  Poetic justice strikes again.

The highlights from 2014 are all here, but today I want to talk about 2015.  The hope, the promise, the butt-slimming goals.

If I was in the uber-organized and beautiful Pinterest-perfect life mode, as admittedly unrealistic as that is, I would have made this list before the year was over, so I could be ready to jump in with both feet on January 1.  But here it is the 3rd, and I am just now thinking about it.  Please tell some of you are as scattered as I?

That’s actually not entirely true.  I did have the forethought to install two new apps on my phone.  The first, called “Expensify,” to help me track my business expenses and mileage.  I haven’t used it yet, since I spent the last two days power watching the final two seasons of “Dexter” with Robb, while the pair of us downed disgusting amounts of lemon ginger tea, cold medication, and leftover holiday candy.  The second app is called “Goal Tracker” because I do have the best of intentions and I want to hold myself accountable.

And speaking of being accountable, I’m putting these goals down for the whole world to see.  (The whole world?  Inflated sense of self, perhaps?)  I’m hoping these goals will help me deal with some of the challenges I know are coming up this year.  Challenges like my BFF and next door neighbor moving 15 minutes away.  I know this sounds like a small deal, but who will I borrow eggs from?  Who will I go to when my oven dies and I am left holding an unbaked casserole?  (This literally happened just a couple weeks ago.)  Who will pick up my mail when I (hypothetically) go out of town?  I also have the challenge of my oldest son graduating high school this year.  Again, I never would have thought of this as a challenge, but here I am, freaking out about it like I have nothing else in my life.

So, this year’s goals.

• Journal more.  And take more pictures of family.  I looked through my photos from 2014, and they were practically all of food.  #foodbloggerproblems  You would think I didn’t love my kids at all, looking through my photo collection.  Having them get so close to adulthood has made me panicked to do better at recording our family life.

• Family time.  My kids don’t know this yet, but I’m going to be requiring 1 hour of their time on Sundays this year.  One precious hour a week for us to spend together, no distractions, talking about life, the universe, God, and love.  And there might be pancakes.  Maybe I’ll even force them to do Sunday selfies.

• I want to see what I can make myself do.  This sounds like a weird goal, I know, but I really want to push the limits and make myself stronger.  I have become, in many ways, such a soft, weak, pathetic procrastinator.  Can I force myself to look at my budget and bank account every day?  Can I push myself to get my taxes done on time, maybe even early this year?  Can I make myself stay ahead of schedule on blog posts?  How many days in a row can I motivate myself to exercise?

• And speaking of exercise… that one is already in the goal tracker.  It’s not a list of resolutions without an eat-right-and-exercise component, right?  We have this big family vacation coming up this summer, so it makes an excellent source of motivation, with a built in time frame.

Of course, all of this is just another way to say that I need to focus on the things that matter.  Which means I need to know and remember what those things are.  Have you ever seen that object lesson, where they put a bunch of sand in a jar, then small pebbles, then bigger rocks?  The big rocks don’t fit because the jar is already full of sand and pebbles.  But, when you put the big rocks in first, then the pebbles and sand, there is room for everything, because the sand will just fill in around the rocks.  That’s the kind of life I want.  The kind where the big stuff is firmly in place, and the little stuff can find it’s own way into my life.

And that’s my wish for you, too.  A rich, full life, where all the important stuff is right.

Happy New Year, my friends.

Love, Jen