Intentions for 2018

This year I’d honestly just like to enjoy being a person. I’m always so focused on feeling like I’m not doing enough professionally, or developing enough creatively, that the rest of my life takes the back burner. Which feels weird for me to say, because I’ve seen some of your annual review posts, and I’d like to know where y’all are getting your Timeturners.

Themes

How I’d like to be in 2018:

• Present: savoring the present moment, letting the future worry about itself
• Patient: this in the context of not being so hard on myself, of giving myself the space to explore instead of immediately demanding perfection
• Process-oriented: knowing that we do our best and perhaps most efficient work when we’re having fun, anyway

I didn’t initially mean to go with the alliteration at first, but when you have two words naturally starting with “p”, you can’t not make the third one also start with “p”. In order to better stay on track with my themes this year, I’ll do some journaling every week or two to check in and see how I’m doing.

Intentions

• As I mentioned in my year in review post, I’m going for 52 books again. This year, though, 35 of them will be books I owned at the beginning of the year. Working on that backlog!
• Cooking more again, and improving my skills/trying new things in the kitchen. At the very least, getting back into the habit of cooking for the week every Sunday night.
• Making progress on a bucket list item once a month (progress on the reading goal doesn’t count, as that’s just my natural state 😉). The Pacific Northwest items are heavy on spring/summer activities, but there’s a few things I can do before then. In support of this, I’m making a routine of alternating “adventure” weekends with “rest” or “project” weekends.
• Finding community in the effort to effect positive change.
• I’m bad at keeping in touch long distance—aren’t we all? I’ll video chat with a friend once a month.
• Getting in creative time daily before work. I started doing this later on in 2017, and find a lot of value and joy in it, despite not being super consistent. Would like to show up more consistently this year, which also supports the effort to get to bed on time!
• This one is more clearly work-related: looking at my process monthly and seeing if there is anything I can do to make it more efficient, no matter how seemingly small.

What are your goals or intentions for 2018?