I don’t think there’s anyone who isn’t rather excited to put 2020 behind them and move on to a fresh new year. And since we were home for the holidays this year, I had a lot of time to plan and think through what I’d like to learn and accomplish in 2021.  

Setting goals is one of my FAVORITE things to do each year (although it usually takes me about half the month of January to figure out what mine are). 

I thought I’d share a few of my goals for 2021 in case you’d like to see. I always divide my goals into marriage, mom stuff, casa, self, and work which is so helpful both for keeping track of them and really thinking through how I want to show up in each of those areas. 

  • Go on two dates per month. For the last few years, Josh and I haven’t been great about going on regular dates. It’s so hard to get out of the house with little breastfeeding babies, and then of course this past year with COVID, leaving the kids and going anywhere got even more complicated. But 2 dates each month seems like a doable goal, even if they’re just a walk or a drive to pick up food and eat it outside somewhere. 
  • No phone/social media before 9 am. For the last two weeks of 2020 I took a social media break, which was so wonderful and needed. I’m back-ish (I downloaded Instagram to post some holiday pictures but then deleted it the same day after deciding I wasn’t quite ready). I’m still trying to figure out how much phone time is too much phone time for me, but one thing that’s been really helpful (and has made me feel so present and productive) is not looking at it at all for the first few hours of the morning.
  • 15 minutes of reading out loud with the kids each day. Reading #3before3 is still what’s working best for me with three little kids at home all the dang day. But in the past few months I’ve been occasionally reading longer chapter books to the two older girls at bedtime if Josh puts the baby down and I have enough energy left. It’s a really nice way to end the day and I’m starting to catch glimpses of why bedtime stories are a thing, haha.   
  • Wallpaper the sunroom. I’ve never wallpapered anything before but I found this amazing wallpaper that I think would look really great in our sunroom! It’s a kind of intense wallpaper so I’m just going to do the back wall (which is mostly windows anyway), and that seems doable for a first-time wallpaper project. Nervous but cautiously optimistic! 
  • Learn 6 new piano pieces. I’m an intermediate piano player for sure, but I love winding down my day with a few minutes at the piano once all the kids are in bed. For the past few years I’ve been playing the piano at church, but since we haven’t gone to church during the pandemic I haven’t practiced as much. I think it would be fun to learn a new piano piece every couple of months or so. 
  • Run 2 miles 50 times. I wish I loved running, but I don’t really. What I do love is how I feel AFTER I run, which is the only reason I do it. I know I CAN run 2 miles and have done it several times, but I’m kind of a lazy runner tbh. This year I’d like to run a straight two miles 50 times, which is basically once a week. We’ll see how this goes once summer hits and it’s a million degrees outside…
  • Meditate for 15 minutes daily-ish. This always makes me feel sooo much better and has been key to managing my anxiety during the whole coronavirus pandemic. Normally I just use whatever guided meditation looks good on YouTube, but I happened to read a lot about the benefits of transcendental meditation last year and I’d love to explore that more in 2021. 
  • Launch a #funmamá challenge. For at least the past year, I’ve been so interested in reading and thinking about how to find alegría in our ordinary lives (remember this from last year?). And I’ve especially liked learning how to use my power as a mamá to bring more fun and magic into our family & home. More about this soon but I’m so excited to share what I’ve learned and also learn from others who do this so well! 
  • Write 12 children’s books in 12 months! And last but not least… tan-ta-ra-raaaan! After four years of reading hundreds of picture books for Sol Book Box, this year I want to try writing some! 

Have you heard that story about the photography professor who split his college class into two groups? He told them that one group would be graded on the quantity of photographs they produced, while the other group would be graded on the quality of their final photography project. At the end of the semester, it turned out that all of the best pictures came from the group that had spent the past few months taking tons of photos and refining their technique, not from the group that had spent the whole time studying and theorizing about what made a great picture without actually taking many. 

I’m operating under the same principle and figuring that if I write a bunch of picture books, by the end of the year at least one or two will be good enough to move forward with!

A ver si podemos empezar el 2021 con buen pié. 🙂