Sarah Mae Keeps Busy

Y’all. Resolutions are so hard to keep – hard to keep track of would be more accurate to say. At the beginning of this year, I drew out these cute and hipster bullet journal type charts where I could keep color coded track of how I did with each resolution every day. I should have known that I would not be able to keep up with them. I have never been a person capable of doing one particular thing every single day. Maybe that will be a resolution some year, though I don’t know what it would prove. Either way, I think I lost track of my resolutions around February. Despite my inability to track my progress I have still managed to make progress in a few areas. Let’s go over some successes.

One of my professional goals was to write 100 blog posts this year and I have stayed on track for success on that one so far. It has been a struggle, don’t be fooled. But I haven’t dropped the ball on this one yet. Another goal was to read 12 books in a year. While I have read 2 books so far, we are near the end of March and I am not near the end of my current book. Reading is sort of like working out where I am glad I did it while I am doing it and right afterwards, but until I am actually into what I am reading I would usually rather be sleeping. My final success has been beginning a 1,000 Hours Outside chart. So far we have had quite a few good hours out side this year despite the ice storms and unending cold. It will be hard to keep track once spring really kicks in and I get busy with the garden, but I shall not be discouraged.

And now for the fails. These are the biggest challenges for me. The biggest fail has been spending less than 2 hours on my phone per day, but I swear I have a few good reasons. The biggest is that I am an avid podcast listener. Especially if I find one that I like, I will binge that thing until I am sick of it. And of course, I also use my phone a lot for work and housekeeping things like grocery shopping, list keeping, you know what I am talking about. I believe that the easiest remedy for this one would be to amend my goal. When I wrote this goal, I still had many social media accounts and they were the a real distraction to my day. Since then though I have deleted most of my socials and most of my time spent on my phone is either productive or providing background noise for when I am working.

Another goal was that as a family we would work towards only watching TV on the weekends. We have not even started on the track. I cannot keep one consistent TV free day a week, much less 5 TV free days in a row. Where we sit now, I am not sure this is an attainable goal as a whole family. However, I have been partaking in a lot less TV personally. I have been spending a lot more of my evening time doing self-care like showering and tweezing my eyebrows, you know, things moms do not always get to do. I am not sure where we are going to end up with this one or what a proper solution would be at this time, but I will keep tabs on it.

The last goal that I am unsure about is Family Bible time 5 nights of the week. Dinner time with a 3 year old and 14 month old is not easy. While I have gotten better about getting dinner on the table at a decent hour for us it’s still a bit messy. I think that if by the end of the year we are at the very least, consistently doing 2-3 Bible readings a week I will be satisfied.

The greatest thing I have learned about setting goals in the last few years is that the are not set in stone. I can change them as needed. I can set them higher or bring them down a notch if I need to. In the past I saw not meeting every single goal or intention I set for myself as a complete failure, but that was mostly driven by my anxiety. Now that I am managing my anxiety better I know that it is totally acceptable, if not more reasonable, to adjust your goals as necessary in order to gain that overall improvement you are going for. I hope that by the end of this year I will have this lesson more deeply rooted in my heart so that when issues with meeting my goals arise I can instinctually make adjustments as needed and I won’t have to think about it too much.

I need to know though, do you set personal/professional/family goals for yourself? I need to know who and where the other people are who are like me. I know I’m not the only crazy driven lady out there.