Happy New Year!

Welcome back!  I hope you had a great New Year’s Eve and Day.

I decided to begin the year by doing my annual jump into the cold Pacific Northwest ocean.  This was my sixth-year plunging.  I just love the feeling of a fresh start each new year brings.  It doesn’t get any fresher than diving into cold water in even colder temperature. The ocean was about 46F and the air temperature was 38F (notice how warm the lady behind me looks).  It was a little bit warmer than two years ago when we had snow on the ground.

After my masochistic swim, I decided to make some goals for myself this year. When I was younger, I used to make somewhat long resolution lists and of course, never follow through with most of them.  Eventually, I gave up on the idea.

Last year, I tried just one goal.  I hoped that calling it a goal instead of a resolution would psyche me into following through.  It worked and I managed to find a way to keep the downstairs of our townhouse purged and organized enough that when company came, it took me only a short time to clean up.  I knew that if I set the goal too high (like trying to do the entire house), I would fail and walk away deflated.  I found a great vlogger on YouTube (my other addiction) who taught me my organizing style and the rest is history.  It made a difference to find a system that works with how I am wired!  If you are interested in seeing her videos, you can find her channel ClutterBug, on YouTube.

Since I was so successful, I stepped up this year by creating six very doable goals for myself

1. Family dinners – these don’t always happen since my husband works odd hours. Most of the time I use that as an excuse not to sit at the table.  This year, I won’t be using excuses.  Since I know trying to do it every night will only lead to me failing, I have set a short-term goal of three days a week.  Once that becomes a habit, then the goal will go up by one day and so forth.

 

2. Blog – I know that I fail at this because I don’t set specific times for me to work on a post or pattern. As with my first goal, I know I can’t go full speed ahead or else I will give up.  To begin, I have set myself a timeline of one post every two weeks for a month.  Then, gradually increase to one a week.  This will be a mix of blog post about crochet, knit, and yarn as well as free patterns (I already have a few written).  To achieve this, I have set a time everyday in which I spend designing free patterns and writing posts that interest you.

 

3. Books- I love to read. I was an avid reader up until about a year ago when I decided to do craft shows and write patterns.  It is so easy to binge watch Netflix and work on yarn projects but not so easy to read at the same time.  I have written a list of books I purchased throughout the years and never got around to reading.  I have given myself an hour a day to read while my boys work on their school work (we homeschool).

 

4. Organize/purge upstairs- We only have two bedrooms and one bath upstairs and the purging in one of the bedrooms has already begun! I’m using the same system as I used last year so I know it will work.

 

5. Limiting phone use- I don’t think I need to explain this to most of you. It’s my kryptonite when it comes to distractions.  I have limited checking into Facebook and Instagram to 10 minutes in the morning and 10 minutes at night.  This will be the hardest one for me.

 

6. WIPs- I don’t know how well I am going to do with this one but I am going to try not to have more than two WIPs at a time. This will not count the ones I will be writing patterns for.  This will be for my personal projects.  I have already cut my 2018 WIPs down to three from the nine I found while organizing.  Wish me luck!

 

Did you set any goals for yourself this year? I would love to hear them so please leave a comment below.  I would love to know you stopped by!

I hope your 2019 is filled with love, joy and lots of yarn!

Carolina