It’s December 31st again, what? This year has flown by, and I’m excited to get into the next one. Usually I’ve got a touch of seasonal depression around this time of year, but I’m feeling really good right now about, well, just about everything! Teaching, my students, lesson plans, our photography business, Chris, the cats, my awesome friends, creating projects, and everything else this new year will hold. It all just feels right at the moment, and I honestly can’t remember a time when that’s really been true about everything in life. (Wait, am I jinxing myself? Knock on desk.)
This year I actually chose a phrase for my One Little Word: NO DAY BUT TODAY. The song “Another Day” from Rent is one of my all time faves, and I’ve been getting goosebumps listening to it (on repeat) lately. It’s also a great song to rock out to in the car.
So much will happen this year, so much of it which will take a lot of time, but I’m determined not to let TODAY slip by. Over the last few years, I’ve dedicated a lot of my free time to my job. Like, a lot. Way more than I probably should have, but I’m a perfectionist when it comes to creating and designing for my classroom. Would it be super fast and easy to hand write all my quizzes and tests? Heck, yes, but I just Can’t. Do. It. I have to have them in the same template and format as all my other assessments, and I have to make it professional looking. I just have to. Luckily, after several years of going about lesson planning this way, I’ve got a lot of ready-to-go resources, or at least templates to streamline things. So this is the year I give myself a deadline on planning each night. I’m excited to think of the fun projects (or even just emptying the dishwasher!) that I’ll be able to get to with this extra time.
This is especially exciting because I got a Silhouette Cameo for Christmas, and I’ve already had so much fun with it. Creating with that guy, and really working on Project Life this year to get down our stories as they happen (instead of 3 months later, or over summer break), are my two big creative plans this year.
TODAY also means making time now to be healthy and get my exercise in. I like to play the, “Oh, I’ll go to the gym tomorrow,” game… everyday. Chris got his membership a few months ago, too, and I thought the accountability would be good for both of us, but we’re both just the worst. So we, along with all the other new year’s goal setters in the world, are planning to make more time for the gym this year, along with choosing healthy foods over junk. We’ve slowly over the years begun introducing more unique ideas and foods into our diets (almond milk instead of cow’s, Ezekiel bread, green smoothies, flax and chia seeds, ultimate salads, etc.), so we’ve at least started in the right direction.
TODAY will also mean embracing changes and challenges. I tend to shy away from change. Change scares me. It’s different, and I don’t like it at the time. Yet I always end up loving the “New”, whatever it ends up being. New job, new house, new friends, new cameras, even new office chairs. We’ve got quite the big change coming this year– we’ve decided this is the year we try to bring a tiny human into the world. Yes, the ultimate change and challenge. I am equal parts terrified and so excited, and we’re not even pregnant yet. This is something we’ve been looking forward to for so long, and now that the time is finally right it’s easy to feel a bit overwhelmed. I am hoping by taking time for myself this year, and releasing the “teaching is my whole life” aspect, that I’ll figure out how to balance the work life with the new family life we’ll be finding ourselves in. It will be big changes for both of us, work-wise, but like I said at the beginning, I’m feeling surprisingly good about this year and what’s in store.
So that’s that! My word for this year, my reasoning, my hopes and fears, and all that good stuff. This is the last post of 2014, which was a great year. We worked hard and played hard, took time for friends and families, loved on our cats a ridiculous amount, and came out of it stronger than ever as a couple. Here’s to 2015 being an equally fabulous year, if not more so!
