2020 Goals, Intentions, and Word of the Year

It’s the 1^st of January of 2020. A New Year. A New Decade. Talk about a completely fresh start to make changes, accomplish goals, reach dreams.

I’m not going to lie; I’m oddly struggling with writing this post. There are a couple of reasons for this, one of which being that there is just so much that I want to accomplish this year, so much I want to do and see, that it feels difficult to mark that down in just a few sentences or words. Another reason is that I’ve changed my approach to the new year this year. In years past I haven’t done resolutions (for several reasons, last year’s post described it best which you can read HERE) and while I am not doing them this year, I do have several goals that I want to reach/go beyond this year.

And with making goals comes the possibility of not achieving them. Of failing. And therein lies my other reason I am struggling.

I’ve talked about my fear of failure before and also about how I am trying to push past that and recognize that failure isn’t a BAD thing. I’m also trying to continue to recognize and remind myself that what I consider “failure” isn’t always actually failing. Since I have things that I want to accomplish this year, I want to hold myself accountable to actually doing them, rather than allowing my fear of not accomplishing it all get in my way. Thus, setting goals for the year.

Now, after all that build up, I am only going to give a broad outline to my goals. I like to play things a bit close to my chest and so I’m going to give you my little outline for the year, when I am going to be focusing on things and then keep you posted as to how they are going.

For the first half of the year I really want to focus on my website and my SEO. A Cuppa Cosy has become such a big part of my life over the past couple years (specifically the past year) and I have been mostly focused on content, developing my voice, deciding where I want to “fit”, what I want my posts to look like. I haven’t really been focusing (beyond key words and hashtags) on pushing the posts and website out far to the public. I want to settle on a good theme for the sight, optimize my posts on SEO, and get myself settled on Pinterest.

The second half of the year I want to focus on publications and putting more of my writing out in the world. I’ve been looking at maybe freelancing or submitting articles to various blogs and magazines. I want to put some of my travel photography out into the world a little bit more as well. Ultimately I would like to start looking at monetizing some of my work. Putting my thoughts and pictures out maybe beyond just my little corner of the internet. And I think that this is the goal that I am keeping the closest to my chest and the one that terrifies me the most (in terms of failing).

In other goals, I want to switch my focus to quality over quantity when it comes to content. I don’t want to put posts out just because I feel like I need to have content up and I don’t want to have blog posts that I don’t fully like to be put up simply because they need to go up. I want to make sure that everything I am posting is 100% my standards. I also want to take a little more time “away” at times. When we went away on our Summer Holiday I didn’t have any blog posts go up and I posted on Social Media intermittently and to be honest, when we came back I was so refreshed. I had a clear mind and a much better outset for the rest of the year. I want to do that a little bit more. I am not able to do that during our Winter Holiday (which we are currently on) just due to the amount of posts I have and want to share, but maybe come our Spring Holiday and Summer Holiday I might do that again. I want to have a few weeks a year that are just a breather.

On the personal side of things, I would like to focus on reading a wider variety of books this year, as well as some of the longer books that I’ve put off for a while now. I want to bring some of my reading content to this blog rather than just keeping it separate. I want to continue to cherish a love of reading with my boys as I find that is such an important part of children’s lives. I want to focus on them as much as I can because we don’t have too much longer that we are all together at home like this. I’ve been very recently introduced (or reminded) that the school years are coming and that’s a bittersweet change. I want to remind myself that it’s ok to feel happy and sad, blessed and frustrated. We are human and we don’t only feel one thing at one time.

Obviously, I want to travel more. We’ve seen so much just in the short amount of time we’ve been in Europe and I can’t wait to see more of this side of the world. I’ve got some big plans to go to some new places, places we never would have thought about, places that are completely “foreign” to us. We’ve definitely got a few big trips in the works for this year, but I also want us to make use of long weekends and even overnights here and there.

Finally, I want to make sure that I am getting more quality one on one time with my husband. Our boys are getting older, I’m a little less paranoid about leaving them with other people (not that I was ever crazy paranoid about it, but it did make me a little anxious as they are a handful) and as much as we’ve really transitioned well to parenting and our family life, I think we could use a little bit more of that carefree date night feeling. It’s so important, and while we are definitely homebodies and love our at home on the couch date nights (that will never change and still happen every week), we are in Germany! We have gotten out just the two of us and done quite a few things that wouldn’t have been possible with the kids (or would have been much more difficult) and I want to do more of that in 2020.

A final note to touch on, my word and intention for 2020. I am keeping the same word and intention from last year going into this year. I really resonated with “Be Open” and “Adventure” last year and I feel like they still fit with how I want to live my life this year as well. I want to continue to be open to new opportunities, to say yes to more experiences and chances that I may not get again (this also plays into my goals for 2020). I also want to approach life with an “adventuring” outlook. We are living our biggest life adventure right now here in Germany and I want to just keep living that.

And that’s that for 2020! Do you have goals for this year? What are they? How about your word and/or intention?