2017 really flew by. I know I’ve said it before but it seems like the older I get the faster life is moving and honestly I’m not sure I like that. Our family dynamic has shifted already quite a bit and although I can appreciate this stage of life, I do miss my boys “needing” me like they used to.
So before I get into my 2018 goals and resolutions, I’m going to provide a recap of my success and failures at last year’s.
On the financial side I did pretty well overall. Successes include finding us a new home that is both smaller and more cost efficient; keeping the emergency fund intact; surpassing my goal of $3800 in extra income funds; and reducing my credit card balances overall. I did not pay off two of my cards as I had hope too though. I had one paid off but various issues (plumbing repairs, new tires, etc.) means it once again has a balance. I’m going to work on that again this year.
My Personal/Career goals was more of a mixed bag of results. I did well with finding 3 hours of “me” time a week. I took not one but several mini trips; one to Tennessee, one to Bowling Green, one to Indiana, and of course our annual Holiday world trip. I enrolled in two different webinars, one covering freelance writing tips and the other on crushing your New Year’s resolutions. The resolutions one fizzled a bit with connectivity issues but I have the PowerPoint presentation to review so I’m counting that as a success. I was not able to write 5 days a week. I only submitted one piece of writing for publication, not three. My goal of reading 36 books is also a bust. I think I will end up with 32, perhaps 33, so that’s close. And I was not able to do one blog post a week. I ended up with 22 posts, which is just shy of 2 a month. I wrote 11 blog posts in 2016 so I doubled my efforts this year but I think I can do better with this one in 2018.
Healthy Living was definitely my biggest challenge this year-no surprise to me but still disappointing. I definitely don’t feel that I drank less diet coke and more water. No excuses there, I just don’t like water and I do like diet coke. Some weeks I exercised three times a week but I definitely didn’t do so consistently despite splurging on a gym membership mid-year. I’ve also discovered that it is nearly impossible for someone who sits at a desk job a minimum of 9 hours a day to get 7500 steps 5 times a week. The only goal I consistently hit in this category was getting 6 or more hours of sleep a night.
There you go, some successes and some failures. I’m still thinking about my goals and resolutions for this year. My initial thoughts were to keep very similar goals for this year but I’ve also thought about reducing the goals down or perhaps focusing on one a month or 2-3 a quarter to see if I achieve better results that way. In the end I’m pretty happy with my efforts this year, especially considering it was a year with so many big life changes, including a move to a new home and Nicholas leaving home for college. As I sit here battling a horrific cold or respiratory infection, I do realize that my health should be a bigger priority this year though. I’m definitely not getting any younger as my aching knee and muffin top will tell you so healthy living goals will most certainly find their way on to my resolutions again this year.
