It is Tuesday and the count is on. 2022 will be drawing to a close in four days. It is time for reflecting on the year that is ending, but more importantly to look forward to what is to come.
I’m not a resolution kind of person. I never keep them for more than a week and then, for the next fifty-one weeks, I just shrug my shoulders and return to the old ways; however, deep inside a seed of discontent and failure grows as each year passes into the next. I washed my hands of that destructive cycle many years ago, and then moved to the opposite end of the spectrum…I just didn’t think or plan at all. No goals. No thoughts about where I wanted my life to be in twelve months. Truly I lived a “que sera, sera” existence. I could hear Doris Day singing in my head as I floated from thing to thing, telling myself along the way that “whatever will be will be.” It was great for a while. A burden was lifted off my shoulders and put in the hands of the universe. As you might expect, that didn’t work so well either.
Bu-Jo Obsession
Another area of “failure” has been using any kind of system to set and achieve goals. Bullet journals (bu-jo for short) hold great appeal for me, but I get caught up in the design and quickly give up because I haven’t done the perfect job of setting it up. The concept of bu-jo is, instead of writing paragraphs, to do lists, goals, and habit tracking, every item is assigned a bullet point. A system of symbols are also used to indicate a task was finished, moved forward to another day, or deleted entirely.
This year I backed a Kickstarter campaign for a small artisan business called Eight Pentacle Press and received a beautiful handmade, leather bound bullet journal designed especially for people like me. I also have a new fountain pen (which I believe is going to lead me down a new obsession rabbit hole) for planning and documenting my year.
So far, so good.
When I first began the switch to this blog format I wrote a three part post about how I got to this place in my life. I will not say all that again, but if you’re interested you can find it here.
The final result of that story is that I made a commitment to God and myself that I would devote 2023 to reading and writing, to grow in the craft of writing. I love to write. I believe I was born with a gift for it and it is the one thing I have longed to do but am also afraid of putting my words out in the world.
My little blog is a safe place, read mostly by family and friends — for now. The daily writing habit inspired by the movie Julie & Julia, made me long for the discipline to write a post everyday – 5 days a week is my goal. Thus far, before the new year has even begun, I have been writing more that I have in a long time. I have set a night time schedule that I have kept for over a month that is adding at least thirty minutes of reading time to my day. Armed with this success I am moving forward into 2023 ready to add new things to my more disciplined life. I want to look back at the end of next year and be able to check off some pretty big boxes; I want less change of focus and more completed tasks; I want to know that I gave it everything I have as I lay the foundation for a new purpose for my life. I don’t know where all this will end. But that isn’t the point. The point is doing at least one thing every day that fulfills my goals and moves me forward.
Tomorrow I will continue with my 2023 goals and the baby steps I will be taking that I hope leads to a more balanced and satisfying life.
Until next time…
Sheryl
From Where I Sit 
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