January 2021 Goals

Before I start this post, I wanted to say that I still need to respond to your comments on my last post but thank you for your kindness, understanding, and thoughts. You really are the best blog readers and kindest commenters EVER and I don't take that for granted. Thank you.

I don't pick a "word of the year." I don't make year long resolutions. And last year I gave up on my monthly goals in March when the pandemic hit. However, this January, I am realizing that the global pandemic is going to be here for awhile and I can't continue to live like this is a "short term thing." So I'm back to making monthly goals. Plus, every year just when I've decided not to make any goals, I read Bekah's first goals post of the year and I get inspired. Hahaha! Thanks Bekah :) So read on for my January 2021 (also known as "the pandemic is here to stay") goals.

1) Pick out December pictures for the yearly calendars.

I did fairly well with this goal and had picked out monthly pictures up until June of 2020. So when I sat down to make the calendars (AKA frantically try to get them done in three hours to take advantage of a good sale), it wasn't as stressful as if I had to go through ALL our pictures for the year. But man, was it super easy to make our calendars for the first months of the year. My hope is that in November 2021 when I sit down to make our yearly calendars, they are a piece of cake because I will have done the hard work throughout the year. We shall see...

I already know this picture will make the cut for December 2021 

so I have one down, many more to go :)

2) Cut back on caffeine and up my water intake.

This is often a goal for me. I had been doing fairly well with cutting back on caffeine and then March hit and I thought, "Well, it's only for three weeks that I'll be stress drinking more Coke" and then three weeks turned into two months, four months, nine months and well... So I'm once again, going to be trying to cut back on caffeine and drink more water. I'm seriously thinking about getting myself one of those daily water trackers cups/bottles because I think that might help me. Plus, I think they're really cute! Ha!

image from here * image from here * image from here

I really like the last one but I don't think it's work appropriate :)

3) Enjoy being outside.

I read Tamar's post about snow and it made me realize that my main engagement with snow this year has been considering it work -- I've done a heck of a lot of shoveling lately. Her post made me want to find the fun in winter. I made some progress in that regard on Saturday. I need to keep getting outside and enjoying winter, not just surviving it.

We headed out for a walk to the library on Saturday 

and I loved taking these wintry pictures.

4) Keep making progress on the Camino walk.

This is a virtual walk that I signed up for in June. I wanted to track intentional walking I did and not just all my steps from the day, if that makes sense. I had hoped to finish this in six months but, thanks to headaches and full-time work, that didn't happen. However, I have not only kept up with my walking over the break but I've actually gotten less far behind. I'm hoping to keep chipping away at this because I want to finish. So here's hoping I end January even less far behind than I am now.

5) Figure out new ways to share what books I've read with people.

I used to track my weekly books on Instagram using a hashtag (#natashareadsonfridays). I stopped doing that because, once the pandemic hit, my reading suffered. I mean, I was still reading, but mostly I was reading quick comfort reads and not anything I was particularly proud of sharing -- think lots of Nora Roberts. For 2021, I am going to try and post every book I read (with a mini review) here on the blog. I love reading other people's blog posts about their reading and I want to contribute to the book blog conversation.

6) Have a weekly family game night and eat take out that night.

This was a goal Rachel came up with and I LOVE it! We have a lot of games that we don't really take the time to play. We also got a holiday gift of money to be used for nice meals of take out. If we have take out it takes the cooking (and a lot of the clean up) time out of the evening and gives us more time for game playing. I'm already looking forward to these nights :)

7) Help the kids stay in touch with family and friends more through email.

This was another of Rachel's ideas and I really like it. I used to write letters to my grandparents and cousins all the time when I was little. I love that Rachel wants to keep in touch with family and I am happy to provide email addresses for her and give her the time to write emails.

8) Organize the basement.

Our basement got upended when the pandemic started and Dave started working from home. What was supposed to be a temporary three week disruption has now been going on for close to ten months. So we need to clean and reorganize and reclaim our basement. It's a disaster and I'm done!

9) Participate in the "I Spy" photo challenge.

This is a last minute entry because I got an email from Lysha over at A Camera And A Cookbook about this photography challenge. It sounds really fun so I'm going to commit for at least the first month and then see what happens after that. If you want to read more about it, and join in, you can read Lysha's post here.

image from here

So those are my January goals. If you're really interested you can come back at the beginning of February to see how I did on these.

Let me know below -- Do you set monthly goals? What is one thing you're hoping to accomplish in January 2021?