2013 in Review: I Can’t Do It All
It’s nearing the end of December, and I can’t seem to stop thinking about how fast 2013 has gone by. The fastest year in my memory, actually. People say that time speeds up as you get older, even more so when you have children, and I’ve found that to be true.
In the spirit of the annual fresh start, I’m looking back at my 2013 goals, assessing how things went and how I feel about my year. There are quite a few goals that I didn’t accomplish – most of them, in fact – but I’m not upset about it, because this year has ultimately been about growth, which is so valuable to me. I challenged myself in every area on that list of goals. It’s been a year of stretching, figuring out what I’m capable of and what I need in order to have a balanced day-to-day life.
- Read the Bible Daily. This goal morphed into something bigger – to read the whole Bible in the course of a year. And I didn’t get through the whole thing. I’ll keep going in 2014, and will eventually get there, because there’s still so much to learn and understand, and the more I read, the hungrier for God’s Word I become.
- Keep a gratitude journal. Well, I kept one, but I didn’t write in it every single day. Some days, I was just so busy that I forgot, to be honest. But even if I didn’t write down every day what I’m thankful for, practicing a life of gratitude has meant more joy, more peace in every situation, whether good or bad. When you practice gratitude even sporadically, it gets inside you and takes root, because we were designed to give thanks, to worship.
- Find a local church to get involved in. We didn’t find a home church. We visited a few, and we learned some things about the process. It hasn’t been easy, but I feel certain God has a place for us, and we’ll continue to seek it out.
- Drink enough water. I didn’t always drink enough water. It may sound silly, but some days I’m just glued to my computer, and I’m so focused on what I’m doing that I forget. And then the workday ends, and I start making dinner and playing with L, and I forget. I’m working on that, because I’ve noticed that the more hydrated I am, the less I need caffeine, the less I’m inclined to snack, and the better I feel in general. No headaches.
- Exercise six days a week. I didn’t exercise six days a week. But on the upside, not a week went by when I didn’t exercise, either. I just didn’t do it enough to drop the weight I wanted to lose. I learned a few things about myself, though, and about how I need to fit exercise into my life as a working mom. I need to work out before 5 p.m. during the week. And surprisingly, it’s harder for me to fit in a workout on the weekends! I need accountability, someone who will keep on me about whether or not I got to the gym. I need to set clear goals and reward myself for achieving them. For 2014, I’m joining a 30-day accountability group for the month of January, and I’m creating a list of goals and rewards for myself. Hopefully these moves will mean a smaller, fitter me by 2015.
- Cook more healthily, eat treats less. I cooked more healthily, but I still ate too many treats. I’m on a mission for 2014 of shopping better and smarter, cooking even healthier meals, and incorporating some of The Daniel Plan principles into our daily life as a family. This is all stuff I know how to do and did well when I was single; I just need to do it better in the context of our family.
- Get out of the house daily. I didn’t get out of the house every single day, but L and I went for a lot of walks and I was definitely more intentional about not letting my work-from-home status make me a hermit. Being more intentional about getting fresh air reinforced for me how much I benefit from it, which was an important lesson for me.
- Work up to blogging three times a week. I didn’t get serious about this until October, but I’m in a good groove now, and since October 9, I’ve blogged almost daily. It’s now a habit, and I’m up at 6 every day writing, in a still-silent house with a cup of steaming coffee next to me. It’s quickly become my favorite time of day.
- Schedule weekly time to work on my novel. I didn’t manage to fit this in until summer, when my company went on summer hours, which meant we closed at 1 p.m. on Fridays. Through June, July, and August, I went to the bookstore every Friday afternoon to write. When Labor Day arrived, it got tougher to find time, but thanks to my sister-in-law, I managed to fit in an afternoon of writing time on many weekends. And now, my novel is almost 50,000 words. Not finished, but still! Progress!
- Work on my photography skills. I did a little of this, but not as much as I intended. I’m a lot more comfortable with operating my Nikon on its manual settings, but I still have a lot to learn.
- Read 26 books. I did really well keeping up with this during the first half of the year, and I read 18 fantastic books, but when I picked up the pace on my writing in the summer and fall, my reading time dropped. My reading list continues to grow, though, so I want to figure out how to read more in 2014, while not losing the writing habits I’ve established.
What I’ve learned this year: I can’t do it all. I’m a mom who works full time. And even though I work from home, and there’s no commute time eating up my free hours, it’s still incredibly difficult to fit everything I want to do or feel I ought to do into a given day. Also, weekends are never the saving grace I want them to be – they’re filled with household chores, errands, and catching up on the things I didn’t get done during the work week. If I push myself to get every single thing on my to do list done, my relationships with my husband and daughter ultimately suffer. So every day, there are one or two or more things that get cut from my list. The house is never 100 percent clean. The laundry is never 100 percent done. My personal goals are never 100 percent met. And I’m learning to be okay with that, because I’d rather be fully present in my relationships than be 100 percent in everything else.
