Focus for 2014

Every year I set goals.  I write them on a 3x5 card.  Post them on the board.  Let them marinate.  Sometimes they are fulfilled, but often not.

This year I did something different.  I took a more minimal approach and chose words to represent what I want to focus on this year.  Here are my words.

Strength

Finances

Hackschooling

Create beauty

Contentment

On their own, these words don’t say much.  They certainly don’t communicate any significance to others.  Here is a bit of the back story.

Strength. Physical and mental.

 The mechanisms: Physical: daily exercise; cycling 3x/week, running 3x/week, yoga, body weight exercises, weights. Train for specific races and events.  Mental: daily Khan Academy, scripture memorization, Latin. 

Finances. Increase awareness of our personal finances. Increase income. Increase savings. 

The mechanisms: You Need a Budget software. Smart Passive Income blog.

Hackschooling. Develop creative ways to engage myself in learning and researching and writing. This is for personal development as well as professional development for Classical Conversations Challenge II.    

The mechanisms: Classes and seminars (both live and online), experimenting, reading.

Create Beauty.  This encompasses art, gardening, cooking, hospitality, home repair. 

The mechanisms: currently undefined.

Contentment. Different than happiness - more like living with joy.

The mechanism: Daily gratitude. Prayer. Intentional, focused, undistracted time with my family members. 

This year will be more about being and doing, and less about having.  I’m looking forward to it.

ambivalence

When I started this blog, I thought I knew exactly how it would move forward.  It hasn’t followed the path I anticipated though.  For one thing, it’s hard for me to be consistent with posting.  Blogging takes real work.  I have a new respect for those writers who post every week.  

I also think I edit ideas so much in my head that not enough ends up on the page.  I talk myself out of some posts because I don’t think they matter enough to be made public. I am my own worst critic and not a very good team player on my private brainstorm committee. 

I’m still trying to find my voice; find what it is that motivates and inspires me enough to put in the work of writing.