I Resolve to Have a Happy New Year!!!

Life is a journey and I have learned to make resolutions that move me in the direction I want to go. I know that every year I can grow and become wiser through all of the experiences I have, books I read, people I meet and choices I make. Sometimes I lose focus in one part of my life and gain ground in another. That's just how life works. My New Year's resolutions are pretty simple. I want to become happier and healthier this year and to continue on my journey to get connected to people and more organized overall.

To be happier I will work to build a closer relationship to God by spending more time in His word and His will. I will spend less time with things and working away from home, and more time enjoying the very special people in my life. I also plan to pursue the hobbies and activities I enjoy. I am choosing to stay positive in both thought and deed in every situation and decision this year.

To get healthier I will follow the advice of my personal trainer, Jonathan Roche. I have been following the NEWO (No Excuses Workout) plan for a couple of years, and last summer had built myself up to the point where I was running intervals for 45 minutes to an hour three or four days a week and doing NEWOs three days a week. I'm still here with new motivation, and I'm ready for the new challenges he's bringing to me this year.

To connect to people I will continue to plan family days every couple of weeks, invite family and friends to our home regularly and be open to invitations to join others. I also hope to travel to Washington state this summer to visit the growing family I have there. I will continue blogging and updating my status on Twitter and Facebook, and join in chats to keep up with those I don't see often. I am awful with writing letters

To be better organized I will continue my daily routines and work on focus areas every week with friend FLYLady on my shoulder. This year I'll develop weekly meal plans and add monthly freezer cooking sessions with the help of Leanne Ely saving dinner in my meal planner/recipe binder. (Click here to read more about my organization journey.)

For each of my goals, I will set baby steps to help me on my way. And as I work for each of the small goals, I will remember to be kind to myself. I guess my resolution is to keep on keeping on, but in a much more positive way. And if I don't feel happy with my life at any given moment, to at least be content in all things. I want to remind myself that the many blessings I have been given are ample.

The new year has arrived and a fresh start has been laid out with the drop of a ball and the blast of fireworks. Thank you for reading my blog and letting me share my resolutions. Whatever positive goals you have decided to focus on and meet, I am hoping you have the most wonderful year in 2010! I plan to do the same.

Looking in the Rear View Mirror

As the end of the year approaches, I am already planning a brand-new, fresh start for the year to come. As a teacher I really get two "New Year's Days". One in August as the school year starts with new faces and routines, and one as the next calendar turns to its first page. Both are used as a renewal in all parts of my life, although I often have higher hopes than reality allows.

So today I am spending some time looking over my shoulder to reflect on the successes and positive changes I have made over the last year. I am much more organized here at home than in years past, thanks to FlyLady and the support of my Twisters. My closets are in good order with clean clothes in season and very little clutter stashed, I shop and cook from a menu more often than not and I feel in control of my day most of the time. Having daily routines means we have a home that is comfortable for my family and ready to invite guests over regularly. Having a menu and shopping list means that I can delegate the shopping and/or the cooking too. That is definitely motivation for me.

I am also drawn now to see what goals fell by the wayside, or parts of my life that were neglected or ignored over the past year. I was really doing well with fitness in the middle of June. I cannot remember what it was that got me away from eating right and exercising regularly, but I know that by the time August rolled around, I was out of the keeping healthy loop. That is a habit that fell away, but I need to make it a goal to get back to moving five or six days a week. The part of my life that has really been neglected this year is my spiritual self. Since truth comes by hearing, and hearing comes from the word of God, I feel I need to recommit to reading God's word on a regular basis. The rest of my life will fall into place when I get His Spirit back into my life every day.

My job has been very challenging over the past year and a half, but feels especially so this school year. I do know the feeling began when I became team leader for my teaching group, and many responsibilities that I used to share with other teachers have fallen completely to me. I had all new teachers on my team last year, so I think last year's challenges are understandable. This year we only had one new teacher, but the situation has really not improved. I want to be able to walk away from work with it "finished" at the end of the day. Instead, I work until 5 or 5:30 each day, go home and after the boys are in bed I do at least another hour of tasks. In the end I am not finished and need time during the weekend to catch up. My boss has told me that if I find I have a problem, I can't complain about it unless I have a possible solution. So I have proposed passing on the team leader status to two of my more experienced teammates. They can each do the extra tasks for a quarter of the school year, and I will just do my portion of the tasks. Whew. I feel better already. Now I just need to try to work on streamlining more of what I do and become more efficient with my time at school. I want to be done at 4 p.m. every day, or at least most days. Now how do I do that?

Whatever I end up resolving, I need to remember to enjoy life and the people in it. Then I need to toss that rear view mirror aside and focus on the ride ahead.

First Things First

I have decided to do a review of the resolutions that I have made over the past couple of decades. It is interesting to me to see the changing of resolutions as time passed and priorities changed in my life. I had to do a bit of work to find resolutions from the past, but I found the goldmine of my journals that I have saved and a couple of years ago brought them all together into a single box along with a few other keepsakes. I guess I should have it in something a bit more special than that, but at least they are together. Would you believe that when looking through my journals January had the most frequent entries over the years? I hope you can hear the tone of sarcasm clearly enunciated. There is something about the fresh start that a new year brings, so I should not be surprised to find I have almost always made a resolution and I almost always documented it. The first day of the first month of the year was the day that I started on many new journeys of growth. There are a few years that are missing documentation, but for the most part I found dozens of resolutions. There were some years when the resolution was the same as the year or two previous and some years there were resolutions made into multiple parts of my life. Spiritual, family, health, and organization are some general themes that have repeated through the years. And I know that some resolutions were made at times other than New Year, or I jumped in a bit earlier as I wanted to start during my break in late December.

The next most frequent time for me to record in my journals was in the spring. I usually still had the resolution I made on my mind at that time, but I would either be making excuses as to why they were not being fulfilled or I would be recording checklists at how far I had progressed to meet my goals. Some goals were multiple years worth of steps, and some were expected to be changes that were made immediately and continued forever. Some resolutions took several running starts and some just crashed and burned with little hope beyond the first week or two. Life simply takes over and the resolution sometimes fizzles out despite the early enthusiasm or promise that my life or soul would be improved by the change.

So now to reflect again on my most successful and life changing resolutions.There is no other habit that brings a better sense of starting my day than making my bed each morning. If the rest of the house is a bit cluttered, then the bed being made neatly with pillows piled and bedspread smooth across the plane of our king-sized furniture brings hope that the rest of the tasks I need to do can fall in place soon. The idea is that I can have peace and feel productive all with one act that at most takes a couple of minutes of my time. It also sets the day's momentum. The day's routine has began and I have crossed this task off the list with an effort that makes me feel like I am disciplined and in control of the day.

There is an unsettled feeling for me if I am walking out the door with the bed left unmade. It happens because someone else is still there, which is a phenomena at our house from time to time, but I still do not like it. More often than not, if I walk out the door with the bed unmade then I return home to the unkempt room with an overwhelmed feeling. This is just not right. I have made the bed at 5:30 or 6 p.m. before just to get the peace that it brings.

Since the day over thirteen years ago when we moved into our brand new home and I resolved to take on this task daily (December 8th, 1995) I walk into my bedroom, and there is order and beauty that comes with having everything in its place, including pillows, sheets and bedspreads. Yes there have been days over the years when the habit was left undone, but through reflection I discovered it is very little effort for a big mental payoff. I resolve to continue.