2020 Goals, Intentions, and Word of the Year

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

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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?

 

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2019 Halfway Check In

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?

 

 

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