Books for the new year.

I love the fresh start of the new year.  The beginning of January is one of my happiest times of the year. I set my goals and intentions the last few weeks of December, and seeing them in action gives me so much satisfaction and joy.

#shelfie

#shelfie

A theme that’s already started emerging for me this year is help and coaching. It’s harder to accomplish goals in a vacuum. One of my self-care goals for Q1 of the year is to get our youngest sleep-trained by the end of the month. If you know us, you know that we are incredibly lackadaisical about kiddo routines, which has backfired! After three years running of sleep deprivation, I finally bit the bullet and hired a sleep consultant. I don’t want to jinx it, but so far, it's been a game-changer.

Books to me are like consultants that live in your bag. They are such low-barrier ways to access expertise and a fresh perspective.  No better time to start a reading kick than in the new year. My January reading list:

Work

Lifestyle

Home

Spiritual

  • She Reads Truth Bible – I have it in the Navy LeatherTouch and love it - it feels so special.
  • The Soul Tells a Story - all about the discipline of writing and the practice of creative pursuit - motivating and inspiring.

What are you reading? I'd love to know!

Welcome, 2018.

It feels kind of fitting that this is the last day of 2017. New Year’s Eve, and I’m feeling impatient and burned out, like I’ve felt for so much of this year. Nothing’s working today – our internet, the baby’s sleep schedule, even my latte was subpar. I burned the bacon and cut my hand on foil (???).  Break out the champagne – I need a new day and a new year.

family photo.jpg

When I reflect on 2017, I can’t say that I knocked my goals out of the park. Twenty-seventeen was the year of parenting two under 3 and working full-time. That’s pretty much it.

And yet (because there’s always God’s goodness) –  there was our first house, and Judah’s first birthday. There were parties and dinners with friends, getaways and a gala.  We got to watch our boys grow. It was a yearlong season of trial and error and no sleep and long days. It was a year of beauty, and blessings, and also a very ordinary kind of hard.

Going into 2018, I’m not working on big milestones, but a day-to-day that’s aligned with my priorities and values. In past years, I’ve chosen a word to describe the theme for the year: intentional, present, creativity. This year, I’ve chosen a chapter: Proverbs 31, a vision for daily God-seeking, housekeeping, child-raising and working.

My goals for the first quarter of 2018 stem from my priority buckets: self-care, relationships, personal growth, resources, and work. I use a Day Designer, and I love that for each goal, there’s a section for monthly actions, a weekly routine, a daily habit, and what progress looks like. I’m ready to turn the corner into 2018, with lots of scaffolding via coaching, scheduling, and microactions. I’ve hired a sleep consultant, found house cleaning help, and signed up for a women’s study. I’ve penciled coffee dates with the hubs into my planner and financial check-ins. Baby steps. Progress, not perfection.

We’ve been sick for the better part of December, and off work for this last week. This time has been so crucial to helping us slow down, readjust our priorities, and remember what it’s like to have margin. I’ve really lowered the bar for myself these last few weeks, trading in “adventures” for hanging out at home, and big organizing projects for just one load of laundry. Even today, we had plans to go to Cortina’s for lasagna and tiramisu, and instead I made a weeknight bolognese, in my sweatpants, with leftover pecan pie for dessert. In many ways, these weeks have been the perfect transition to a new year. If there’s one lesson I’ve learned in 2017, it’s that simpler is so often better.

Tomorrow, we’ll have breakfast while watching the Rose Parade, a tradition for me ever since I was a little girl. In the afternoon, we’ll head to our favorite bed & breakfast, with a room overlooking the water. It’ll be our fourth year there, our annual family retreat starting off the new year with each other.

“We were together. I forget the rest.”
— Walt Whitman

the new year.


Twenty-twelve was the year of China, of change, of soaking in the California sun, knowing that we would be leaving it for a while. Twenty-twelve was a trial run for 2013. Many of my goals and intentions took root last year, with January 1 just making it official. As this month rolls on, I'm learning even more about my productivity and how I'm spending my time... like how the key to a productive day for me is starting work at 7:45 a.m., having exactly two cups of coffee,  going from task to task without stopping for anything other than bathroom and lunch/snack breaks and then ending the day with a workout, dinner, a tiny bit more work and then an early bed time. Stopping means letting my body realize how tired it is, so better "breaks" are moving from an intensive task to a chore-checker task like putting away the laundry. And yes, at the end of the day, there's usually a thing or two still left on the to-do list, but I'm ok with that. This year is about enough.