GOALS & HOPES FOR 2015

So it is that time of year where I start seriously looking to the next year. To be very honest, 2014 has been good to MacroBoy & I. We have really started to line up some of our bigger personal goals & by organising those aspects we should be able to really use 2015 as a year to finally hit those goals.

So I have a lot of goals for 2015. Even though the list below is huge, it is really just a conscious stream of thoughts that I had when I was relaxing over the last week & a half while I’ve been on holiday.

First up is the boring stuff, the professional goals. I couldn’t possibly work in a big corporate & not have a professional development plan.

Professional

• I want to learn to listen with the intent of understanding rather than listening with the intent to reply. As a manager, you almost start forming your reply before someone has finished their sentence as you know almost everyone is looking to you for an ‘answer’. I don’t want to be the one looking for & giving the answers all the time, I want to hear what the person is saying & really understanding where they are coming from.
• I want to understand where my worth comes from. How do I add value? This is big, huge, epic. This will be such a challenge but I feel if I can really articulate how I add value & where my genuine strengths lie then I will be much better placed to move on to other roles that interest me in the future.

Cooking & Food

• We have so many amazing cookbooks from a wide variety of cooks & chefs. Our goal is to cook one recipe out of a different cookbook every week of 2015. This will require a little bit of planning but it’s definitely doable & I’m looking forward to eating 52 new & different meals.

De-cluttering

• This is going to be tough, but I am going to get rid of 365 things in 2015. I am going to try to make them meaningful also (i.e. not tiny things, like socks haha). I want the main focus to be on either donating or giving away before simply throwing an item away. This will be a genuine challenge as I have actually spent 2013 & 2014 getting rid of quite a few possessions so I think 2015 will be the year where I say good-bye to a lot of things I’ve been ‘hanging on to’ during the culls of the last couple of years.
• I am already ahead of the game here with a donation pick up scheduled for 8^th January which will result in 87 items being donated. Almost a quarter of the way there!
• In the same theme, I am going to focus on using up all of my existing cosmetics stash before purchasing anything else. I will try to blog about things as I use them up & document whether I would purchase them again.

Blogging

• Blog at least once a week for a total of 52 blog posts in 2015.
• Add some variety to my blog posts. I’d like to cover, sewing, crochet, cooking, natural health & well-being as well as some gardening.
• Blog about the memorable meals we make in our ‘Cookbook Challenge’.
• Blog monthly about what I have de-cluttered & what I have ‘used up’ in my cosmetics stash.

Health & Wellbeing

• Continue to visit my amazing myotherapist and acupuncturist I am very much into treating myself naturally first & looking at other more conventional options second. I have come to rely on these 2 women to really help me feel my best in 2014 & I am hoping to greatly improve on the experience in 2015.
• Start a weekly magnesium soak to help with sound sleep, removing toxins & setting myself up for the week.
• Workout on my rowing machine for 30 minutes, 5 times per week, every week in 2015 (except when I’m on holiday of course). I need to improve my fitness, the reality is, I also need to lose a significant amount of weight, however I just don’t think focusing on weight-loss does my mental state any favours, so it’s not off the table forever, but it is off the table for 2015.
• Improve my flexibility. Along with my fitness dramatically decreasing in 2014, so has my flexibility. I need to get back to stretching. Stretching is much more my thing than yoga. I’ve tried it, I want to love it, but my mind just wanders far too much & I spend the whole session trying to pull it back to stillness lol. I have downloaded a stretching app & I will see how this goes with teaching me all the main stretches again.
• Weight-training at least once a week. I have simple, 3kg weights, so definitely nothing too difficult, but enough for me to ‘feel the burn’ after a few sets of reps. I just want to feel stronger by the end of the year & I’m hoping this is a step in the right direction.
• We pick up our camper trailer in March. I want to take at least 2 trips of at least 5 days next year with the van. I’m also hoping for a few more weekend getaways & am so looking forward to what this purchase will do for our work life balance.

Crochet & Sewing

• Complete my Dad’s chevron crochet blanket before the Bendigo winter hits
• Crochet some boot cuffs
• Crochet cotton face washers to use as part of my natural skin care routine
• Crochet a ‘shades of purple’ blanket for me to use in the caravan
• Crochet a blanket of gray, teal, orange & turquoise for Macro Boy to use in the caravan
• Sew one pencil skirt
• Sew one short tunic top
• Sew one long tunic dress
• Sew placemats for the caravan
• Sew a peg bag for the caravan

Personal Development

• Enter a crochet project in the Bendigo Agricultural Show in late October 2015
• Focus on natural health care. I’ve started developing & exploring natural health remedies in 2014 & I want to expand on this in 2015. I am aiming on making some natural skin-care to solve some of my skin problems & I want to focus on immune system boosting now that I am taking the train each day.
• Take one technology-free day per month. No social media, no surfing the internet etc.
• Read one book per month (easy enough to achieve by reading on the train).

Finances & Household Expenditure

• Track our gas, electricity & water usage weekly so I can identify patterns in our usage. Mundane but I think this will be useful.
• Designate 6 individual months of 2015 as ‘no spend’ months. This is going to be SO tough, but also really worthwhile I believe. Now that we are a single income household I think it would be great to take half of the available months of the year & try to stem any unnecessary spending.