Happy New Year!
The past few days, I have been relaxing and reflecting on the past year. I reviewed my new year’s blog posts for 2020 and 2021. I was eager and driven, running into 2020 and then cautious moving into 2021. I am excited yet grounded, stepping into this new year. 2020 and 2021 were full of lessons and learning more about myself than I intended. I hope that 2022 provides peace, calm, and happiness. I am very excited for ’22. It is the year that I will be getting married, finally traveling more, and hopefully creating some strong healthly habits in my daily life.
I was reluctant to create goals for ’22. I think back to my eager, innocent self moving into 2020 with a long list of goals and a fire in my heart. Only to be vastly disappointed at the end of 2020 by a long list of goals that were never completed. In 2021, I focused more on a vision board, knowing that even if something didnt happen, it would be something I hope for one day. Even though I was reluctant, I ended up creating a list of 22 things I wanted to do for ’22. This idea is based on 22 for ’22 that the podcast Happier with Gretchen Rubin talks about in episode 357. For my 22 for ’22, I wanted to create small yet effective goals. I chose goals that I knew I could realistically accomplish no matter what was happening in life/ the world.
I choose goals like getting married (already planned), walking 20 minutes a day, painting/ deep cleaning my house, and traveling to some places (which are already planned). These are all things I know will happen, things I already planned on doing. I hope filling a list of realistic goals and checking them off will give me a ton of motivation and excitement for this year ahead. I turned many of my goals into a vision board. Putting pictures to written plans is a neat way to visualize what you want to accomplish. It helps me to see what I want and go after it!
Also, based on the podcast Happier with Gretchen Rubin, I chose a word of the year for the year ahead. Last year, I chose the word balance. Choosing this word was a “be careful what you wish for because you just might get it” situation. I intended to find a calming balance between priorities in my life. 2021, my year of balance, gave me eye-opening challenges in finding balance. I was the busiest I have been in my entire life this fall. I learned to balance spending time with my fiance, spending time with my family, my new home, traveling for work, taking 2 Ph.D. classes, and a social life. It was not easy or perfect. It was challenging but taught me the balance I was seeking.
This year, I was a ton more intentional with my word. Knowing that if you focus on one thing, you will see the good, the bad, and the ugly of that thing. I wanted to focus on HOME this year. Since buying our house in May, I haven’t been able to put the TLC into our home that I would have liked. We have dreams of painting our home with more historical colors on the inside to align with its history and origins. We want to make our house cozy and feel like a home. It is incredibly exciting to think of all our projects for our neat early 1900s home!
With my word of the year, I created a goal for each month of 2022. I want to focus on a different area of our home. I want to paint, deep clean, organize each area of our home by December, so by Christmas next year, we are in a home that is fully painted like we want it, deep cleaned, decorated, and all small projects are completed!
I plan on making intentional moves in 2022. All the goals I accomplish, every project in our home, I want to be done with gratitude and thought. I have a good feeling about 2022. I am excited to get married, travel more, and accomplish some goals we have for our home! I hope that the hardships we have all faced the past 2 years will lessen and everyone can focus on happiness this year.
Cheers to a new year!
Maria Does Things 