New Year, New Goals

Photo by Amanda Ngur

Can you believe it's 2016? I can't! The past year flew, and I feel like I'm scrambling to get new goals and ideas down on paper before this one is too far along! Resolutions have never really been my thing, but in the last few years I have been more diligent about goal making and implementing. My love of lists comes in handy this time of year...other than when I have toooo many lists.

I'm currently reading "Make it Happen" by Lara Casey, which has been challenging me to really think about my goals and purpose in my life. I'm only halfway, so I'm hopeful for some direction by the end, but either way, it has been helpful to really reflect on the past year and where my life seems to be heading. It's funny looking at goal lists from a couple of years ago and seeing what I thought I'd be doing or already accomplish by this time. Yep, not realistic for the most part! Or priorities have changed. A small example was the goal to have replaced aging vehicles by now, and then they keep on running, and you begin to think, heck, I'm going to drive this until the wheels fall off!

For the past few years I've made long term and short term goals based on categories like family, finances, career, artistic, faith, pleasure, education, physical, and I'm newly adding a prayer category. It sounds like a lot, but it helps for me to categorize like this. Most overlap in different ways anyhow. I have certain career goals and financial goals for saving that play into family goals like owning a home in the near future. An artistic goal is to just make and create more freely and working on my pen and ink drawing skills in particular. This artichoke is one of my favorite sketches from the fall. So that's what I'm working on so far in this new year, and I look forward to sharing new work and works in progress soon! Happy New Year!