Somehow we are now halfway through 2019! Where has the year gone? Have you had any exciting things happen so far? Any goals completed? Any new goals created?
This morning I am going to be doing a little “check in” post. I am going to look at what I planned and wanted for my 2019 and see where I am personally at. I think June is a really fun month, but also a good time to just take a minute and reflect on where we are at in our year. How any of the goals we’ve set are going. I would encourage you to do the same and share in the comments! We can always use a little pick me up and accountability.
So, I shared a post at the start of January all about the things that I was “Looking Forward to in 2019”, you can read that post HERE. In this post I talked about my “phrase” and my “word” of the year. I didn’t share my smaller goals for the year, but I’ll share a couple of those in this post as well.
I think overall I’ve done pretty well at sticking with the intentions that I set for myself, achieving a good number of things throughout the first half of this year, but I’ve definitely put one goal off and have kind of fallen off track in a couple other spots. I’ll get more into that a little later on, we will focus on the good first. 🙂
So, something I wanted to focus a little bit more on this year on a larger scale was to just “Be Open”. Be open to new opportunities, be open to new friendships, new experiences, to whatever the year brings our way. I feel like I’ve really done this at this point in the year. I’ve tried to throw caution to the wind in some respects and I feel like it has really worked out in our favor (specifically when it comes to our traveling, and our day to day getting out). I said that I specifically wanted to “Keep an open mind to everything and kind of just run with it”. I’m a type A, planner kind of person and so just go with it is something that I am always working on. When we are doing these quick trips, just go with it is the perfect motto to have.
The smaller intention that went along with that was “You can’t plan everything”. I’ve really been working hard at this one. I get really…”uncomfortable” if I feel like things are chaotic (that’s just a nice way of saying I go a little bonkers if I feel like I don’t have things planned properly). If I feel like I haven’t gotten things planned and in just the right order. I wanted to just let go as that was really starting to affect different areas of my mental health. I wanted to get a little looser with schedules, a little looser with timelines, just loosen up with planning. Again, I feel like I’ve really excelled at this one. First off, being in a hotel means that routines and schedules (other than bedtime) just go out the window. We just get out of the hotel and whenever things happen they happen. Not to mention we’ve been doing so much go, go , go travel that I’ve really just had to loosen all the reigns on planning. It’s been so FREEING.
I will say- at the beginning of the year I struggled a little bit. At the end of 2018 I resigned my job and for the first time in my adult life I was aimless in my time. I didn’t have a job that I had to do for so many hours a day. I was able to do what I wanted with my time and my kids. We weren’t tied down to a schedule. And that was HARD to adjust to in a way. On top of that we went from my In-Laws and vacation to a hotel. The things that I would normally do throughout the day, handling the home, tidying, writing, were now in limbo. I could write, but cleaning and everything else that I would normally do was nonexistent. I’m going to be the weird one and say that I actually quite like housework, so this was an adjustment in itself. I ended up figuring out something that worked for me, but it’ll be changing again here shortly (yay!!).
Moving forward with those two intentions I am going to try and come up with a perfect “marriage” that works for me. The ratio of rigid to flow, planning to loose, and see if I can’t find a way to bring a little bit of planning and routines (beyond bedtime) back into our lives. To become a little bit more intentional with my days that we aren’t traveling.
Now, for my word of 2019 I chose “Explore” and I feel like I’m really living that word. We’ve gone around so much just in the short months we’ve been in Germany, not just in our own little community but around Germany and Europe as well. We have plans for just about every long weekend for the rest of this year, as well as our two extended leave periods this year.
When I originally picked this word, I knew that we would be doing a lot of traveling, but I really wanted to focus on exploring with just me and the boys. We didn’t “get out” as much as I had hoped in the previous couple years and with our move I didn’t want to just get back into that “sit at home” type of living. Our boys love exploring and being outside and I want to nurture that love. This meant that I had to be comfortable leaving and going to bigger area’s with just myself and the kids. I have successfully done one market with just me and the boys and have plans for a couple other spots in the coming months to do for us. We also get out and do long walks at least once or twice a week, and one trip to the local town as well. It’s been actually really easy to do, and we’ve really enjoyed “mommy and son trips”.
Some of the other personal goals that I set for myself are one’s that I set quietly every year, eating clean and healthy options, staying in a positive mindset and spreading that positivity, not being judgmental of others and not getting caught up in the petty little problems/drama. I think I’ve done pretty well with all of those but one…
Junk food. Junk food has really crept back in to our lives and it’s not something that I am happy about. I’ve prided myself the past year or two on eating healthy options, cutting out a lot of processed food and junk food, but lately it’s found a place back in our hotel. I could give excuse after excuse of why, but honestly that’s not important. We don’t eat a lot of it, but I feel like we are at the cusp of eating more of it than we should. Chips, candy, sweets, it all needs to be taken back a couple of notches. I am already in a mindset of tailing it back and we’ve already put this in practice as of June 1, but to be completely transparent I wanted to share that.
The other goal that I had that I didn’t share is the goal of starting a podcast this year. Unfortunately, I have made the decision to postpone this goal for a little while longer. I don’t think that it will be a feasible option this year and I also don’t know that I can take on another project at this time. It’s ok to postpone or stop a goal that is doing something negative for you or is just not a possibility for you at that time. Sometimes things don’t work out and that’s ok.
So that is my look at 2019 so far. How is your year going? How are those goals going?
A Cuppa Cosy 