Blogmas '22 Day 10: Word of the Year

When I was brainstorming my 2023 goals, one of the things that kept coming up was I do all the things I want to do—but I’m not consistent in doing them.

So my word of the year was pretttyyyyy evident. It’s consistency!

Let’s take goal three, for example—Creating a deeper relationship with God through regular prayer and confession.

I already have a regular prayer life. I already go to confession semi-regularly. But I want to do these things consistently. I want to say morning and evening prayer and my rosary every day—and that doesn’t happen. I want to make sure I’m going to confession once a month, etc. (The goal is every two weeks, eventually. Not right now!)

Consistency in fitness, in decluttering, in saving money, and in prayer is what I’m going for this year. Once I achieve consistency—and it’s easy to achieve, it’s almost automatic—then I can think about expanding what I’m doing to continue to reach higher goals. For example, the ultimate goal with working out is to be hitting the treadmill 5 days a week for thirty minutes. THat’s the ultimate, final goal, the “I’m running a marathon” goal. By consistency, I can work up to that goal and achieve it.

Here’s to being consistent in 2023!

Music: “The Echo Carol” (How Great Our Joy), Sung by the Benedictine Nuns of Ephesus in Gower, MO.

Blogmas '22 Day 9: New Year's Goals

If it’s a new year, then it’s time for resolutions and new goals.

My goals this year really aren’t new, so to speak—they’re continuations of what I’ve been working on for the past few years, but with an adjusted focus. Does that make sense?

For example, I’ve always wanted to have a comfortable, cozy, organized home—but I wasn’t sure what that really looked like, in terms of appearance, decor, etc. Over the last year I learned what I like and what I don’t, what works and what doesn’t, and now I can apply that to focusing on this year’s house goal, which is to have a home full of things I love, and organized in a way that works for me and how I live.

An example of this is this lamp I got last year from Target.

I’d needed a new lamp in this space for years, but I couldn’t find one I liked—until I found this one. And finding that lamp solidified the “look” I’m going for in my house, which is English Cottage (think The Holiday or Country Living UK) meets a beach house.

With all that digression out of the way, here are my goals for 2023!

Goal #1: Grow emergency fund

Goal #2: Continue peloton work to become stronger and more fit—continue to have good lab results.

Goal #3: Deepen my relationship with God with regular prayer and confession. (I do do regular prayer but it’s not consistent. More on this tomorrow!)

Goal #4: To create home by decluttering and keeping what I love.

I’m not giving a ton of detail here—I’ll do that in future posts. But these are the four main goals for 2023 and I feel good about them!

Do you make new year’s resolutions or set new goals? I’d love to hear about them!

Today’s music: Ave Maria isn’t specifically a Christmas song, but it appears on a lot of holiday albums, so here’s a good version!

2022 Goals: January Wrap Up and February Tending List

February bullet journal spread

Every year I set goals and every year I say I’m going to blog about them and then I….don’t! So this year, I’m going to do it! I really am!

I set goals using Lara Casey’s Powersheets (You can still get them in teal and coral!) , and here’s the first post from Blogmas, outlining the big goals for the year (And yes, it says 2021….whoops!)

So the way this will work is I will first go over the January list and then talk about February goals. As a reminder, here’s the January tending list.

Yes, I blur some things out :)

Monthly goals

Create healthy snack list: done!

January Cure (aka , apartment therapy January program): Done. It was sort of helpful sort of not. Big takeaway was “calming” the living room—as in, taking out all the decorative things and then adding what I want back in. Good tip! I also had quite a bit of stuff to donate (clothes, books, other miscellaneous things) when it was done.

Wellness challenge: Done, but this was meh. It was Protestant-based, which, OK, but there was a lot of stuff that just didn’t sit right with me. I did print out the recipe ideas and have made some of them, which is good, and they have been good, so a win there.

February budget review: done

Retreat day: also done!

Confession: Sigh. Not done. On the list for February.

Weekly Goals:

Meal plan: Done! Yes! Now, did that translate into cooking every day? Um….no. But I did make some new recipes, and when I say “cooking every day”, I mean cooking what I had planned. I tend to go a little off-piste in my menu planning, in that it’s fairly flexible. So I can do better here, but I got back in the habit of actually writing things down and having the ingredients on hand.

Weigh: Yup. Every week.

Barre 2x/week: Nope. Some weeks I did it once. It’s been so cold that my joints haven’t been really happy, but also this is just…not making it a priority.

Daily goals/Habits:

Bible In A Year: More often than not! It’s getting better!

January cure items: done, unless they didn’t apply to me.

budget check in: check!

I added daily journaling after I took the January photo, because I’d let that slack off, and I hit it about 80% of the time. So, success!

February Tending List

Monthly Goals

Declutter coat closet and Living Room Shelves: This stems from the January Cure—the “quieting” bit—for the shelves. Now that they’re clear, I want to really dust and polish them and also go through my books to see if I need to donate any. If I don’t, no biggie. If I do, that’s fine.

Coat closet just needs some general love.

Related to this is the next goal….list of monthly zones in bullet journal. If you’re familiar with the FlyLady cleaning system, you know that she breaks your house into “zones” for deep cleaning every month. I’m not going to start deep cleaning this month, but I want the list handy for when that eventually happens.

Bullet Journal Class is something I’m having a lot of fun with, so this is clearly a fun goal, but I’ve set aside three times a week to work on class assignments/journal items in general, to make sure that things get done.

Article Submission List: I want to write for periodicals (both on dead tree and virtually) so I’m going to make a list o places I’d like to submit to and see what their guidelines are.

Confession: Gonna do it!

Stream Romeo et Juliette: Pacific Northwest Ballet is still offering streaming ballets, for which I am very grateful, and their presentation of Romeo and Juliette is a stunner. I can’t wait to see it again!

Weekly Goals

Meal plan: same as last month

Weekly home blessing: This is part of FlyLady’s cleaning plan that I like and that got off track last year. Essential you spend an hour “blessing” (read: Cleaning) your home. I’ve stripped it down to general dusting, vacuuming, mopping, and collecting trash in the office and bedroom.

One barre: An adjustment from last month! :)

Book promotion on Instagram every Friday: Lent, which is coming up, is prime time for promoting my book, and I want to make sure I have a plan for that. This is part of that plan.

Daily Goals/Habits:

Water, at least 6 cups a day: I’m pretty bad about this and I want to change it, hence this goal!

close move ring daily

Bible In A Year: I’m at the halfway point! Go me!

Five Minute Tidy After Dinner: part of the general housekeeping scheme. :) This will mostly be stuff like loading the dishwasher and prepping coffee for the next day.

budget check in

journal entry

That’s the January Summary and the February Plan! How are you doing on your yearly goals/resolutions?

Blogmas day 7: Goals for 2021

Since it’s New Year’s Eve I thought it was a good time to slot the “new year’s goals” entry into the blogmas calendar.

I don’t make resolutions. I make goals. I discovered Lara Casey’s Powersheets in 2015 right after I’d left my job at the Senate, and they literally changed my life. I wouldn’t have written—or published!—my book without them!

(No I don’t get paid to say that, I just LOVE THEM)

So ever since then, I’ve used them to set goals for the year. The Powersheets break these goals down into monthly “tending lists”, which are broken down even further into Monthly Action Items, Weekly Action Items, and Daily Action Items.

I do the “prep work” in November and December, and I usually write out the tending list for the next month on the last Thursday of the month, which was yesterday.

So here are my goals for 2022! (I’m summarizing here. There are some things that I keep to myself, evidence to the contrary notwithstanding. :) )

1) To be healthier by doing workouts I enjoy, and giving myself grace as I learn new things.

2) To have secure finances by tracking daily spending and fine-tuning my budget so that I can increase my savings.

3) To “re-create” my home to reflect my taste, personality, and needs.

(THIS is basically my aesthetic)

Yesterday I made my tending list for the month: (yes I blurred some things out :) )

Each goal has a color attached to it as you can see here. The hot pink is for spiritual growth—that’s a never-ending goal, so I don’t purposely “set that” as a goal each year.

Monthly Action Items

Create healthy snack list: This is harder than it sounds for me. As I’ve written before, one of the hardest things for me post transplant has been the food adjustment. Before transplant, I was never really hungry. You read that right. Never. I might like some things, but I didn’t crave food, or really get hungry.

Post-transplant….um, that changed. :) Which was GOOD! I grew an inch and a half! My body was so malnourished that it took everything I was throwing at it, and I physically filled out. But…I didn’t know how to really eat. And also I’m on prednisone forever, which messes up hunger cues. So before when I was never really hungry, now I’m never really not hungry. I could always eat something.

Throw diabetes on top of that, and it’s messy. So one of the things I want to do this month is create a healthy snack list and then stock my house according. A healthy snack, for my purposes, is one that combines protein+fat+carbs (Yes, people like me do need to have carbs. Fairly regularly, actually, or else the blood sugar plummets and that’s not good either.).

The January Cure is a thing Apartment Therapy does. It’s a 20 day house cleaning/organizing challenge.

Wellness challenge I am all signed up for!

February budget: I use EveryDollar (the free version) and I love it!

Retreat Day: I do this monthly. It’s a day when I turn off my electronics and read, work out, and look over my goals for the next month.

Confession: I’m working on going to confession once a month. So I write it down here so I don’t forget to do it!

Weekly Action Items

These are all health related:

Meal plan: I used to be good about this and then I slacked off. I generally plan for 4-5 days of meals so I have some flexibility if I just don’t feel like cooking and instead have PBJ, or my parents invite me over for dinner or a friend wants to go out!

Weigh: Every week. Yes.

Barre 2x/week: This isn’t barre like pure barre or barre 3. This is ballet barre, using YouTube videos. And no, I don’t mean an entire barre, which is about 45-50 minutes. Right now, my goal is 10-15 minutes of barre twice a week. This isn’t all the exercise I do in a week, but I want to make sure I do these, so that’s why they’re a weekly goal.

Daily Action Items/Habits:

BIAY: the Bible In A Year podcast. I started last May, so I want to make sure that I keep going! (Folks, this is amazing. I love doing it. (Here’s a post on what I’ve learned so far—I need to write another one of these!)

January Cure Items: This is the daily accountability for the January Cure Monthly item.

Budget check in: This used to be called “balancing your checkbook”. :) But this is where I reconcile my budget with my actual spending.

TA-DA! That’s my January tending list and my goals for 2022! How about you? What goals have you set?

CHRISTMAS MUSIC: “In The Bleak Midwinter” from Renee Fleming and Rufus Wainwright

Seven Quick Takes --Second Friday of Advent

-1-

Around these parts this week:

Yarn Along #93

-2-

Soooo this week. It was pretty quiet, which was nice. I got my hair cut on Wednesday. The reason this is notable is because I am terrible at doing hair cuts. I gone like once a year, and I really should go more often. Resolution for 2020—have better hair? (As in, don’t let split ends go one for months and months without end….)

-3-

speaking of resolutions—do you set them? I generally don’t. I use Lara Casey’s powersheets to set goals for the year, and that’s incredibly effective for me. I’m in the middle of doing the prep work for the 2020 sheets. If you haven’t used powersheets before, or have trouble setting and achieving your goals, I highly recommend these. I doubt my book would’ve been published without the work I did with the powersheets. That’s how important they’ve been to me over the last five years.

Her blog is also full of great tips and she walks through doing the prep work with you! So it’s really lovely and I highly highly recommend this way of goal setting.

-4-

Let’s talk about Advent? In my house, I have my tree, nativity, and Advent wreath up. Baby Jesus isn’t in the manager yet, and the Wise Men are making their way to the manager (they’re currently living on the living room bookcase). I keep my tree up until Candlemas (Feb. 2), pretty much. If not the tree, then the nativity for sure. I love Christmas, the whole Christmas season, and so I will celebrate it to the hilt.

-5-

How are you doing on shopping? Are you done? I am, yay! (And yes, from every take until the book is published, there will be a link to buy the book—it makes a great gift, go get it….)

-6-

In terms of Christmas movies, I watched The Nutcracker and the Four Realms last night, and it was pretty good. I think kids would like it. It got really iffy reviews, which I don’t really understand. It’s a fine movie. (Fine as in, perfectly acceptable and you don’t feel like you’ve wasted two hours of your life when it’s over.) If you have never seen Muppet Christmas Carol, you must. (It’s on Disney+!). That’s all I’m gonna say about that. You have to watch it.

-7-

It’s almost Gaudete Sunday! Yayyyy! I love lighting that pink candle.

How was your week? What are you up to this weekend?

2019 Goal Setting!

I really love Lara Casey’s annual goal setting series (here’s part one!), and I adore using her Powersheets. The Powersheets have really been instrumental in setting GOOD goals, and in accomplishing big dreams for my life, so I heartily recommend them! (I don’t get paid to say that—I really do just love them!)

So I always look forward to the annual series, which I read along with doing the Powersheets prep work, and this year, I’ve got four main areas I’m working on:

Faith

Finances

Fitness

Writing

(OK, I couldn’t think of an “F” word for writing!)

First up: FAITH

To be consistent in prayer and deepen my spiritual life to create a deeper relationship with God.

If God is the center of my life—which He is—then I need to make my days revolve around that. To that end, one part of this goal is to consistent in prayer. As a Lay Dominican, I say at least Lauds and Vespers (morning and evening prayer) every day. I need to be consistent in these, because often I’m not, especially vespers, because that’s around dinner and chaos and all that.

Another part of this is getting deeper into the Bible, which is part of the work we do at Take Up & Read, anyway—well, part of the work, it’s all of the work. :) It’s our reason for existing! So I’m taking time to get into the word every day before I eat lunch. Recently I discovered for the first time Isaiah 54, and man, did it ever speak to me! More on the later. :)

Third, getting to daily Mass more often. To that end I’m working on waking up earlier so I can get to the 11:45 Mass on time. It’s downtown so it’s not just across the street, but I can do it! :)

Lastly, incorporate more holy hours. I LOVE holy hours. So I want to do one at least once a week, which will be easy to do once I move because there’s a church less than half a mile away with perpetual adoration. Winning at life!

Second: Finances

I made good progress on this last year, but I still need to save a complete emergency fund. So that’s the goal right now, as well as doing the Contentment Challenge and realizing that buying stuff isn’t going to make me happy, because, yes, sometimes I’ve done retail therapy. But I’ve also been better about that. So progress being made here, but it’s still an ongoing goal!

Third: Fitness

Ohh boy. We know I don’t like to work out, right? Well my goal is to find something I liek to do and do it, even if it’s for five minutes, every day. When I was sick in November and December and my joints and tendons took a huge hit because of the meds I was on, I realized that it was better than it could have been—because I’d been keeping my joints and tendons nice and flexible and warm. But I still had problems with them, and my right knee still isn’t 100% back. So I’m working, right now, on that aspect of fitness—getting back to baseline with my knees. I know I’m closer to 40 than 30, so this is important going forward! Gotta stay sharp.

Also part of this is to continue to meal plan, to eat healthy(ier) snacks, and also work on saving treats for feast days. I want to eat more “liturgically”, if that makes sense—fast when the Church fasts, and feast when it feasts! No, that doesn’t mean hard core fasting, but it does mean saving the special meals like champagne risotto (New Year’s Eve meal this year—YUM) and creamy chicken thighs and things like that for patron saint days or when guests come over. I’m not going to eat lentils and honey a la John the Baptist, but at the same time, I’m not going to go nuts every day, either. Simplicity. To that end, I’m also reading From a Monastery Kitchen * and Sacred Feasts. *

And finally….

Writing

I am currently working on a proposal. It’s been a few months in the working but I was getting so frustrated with it—I was thinking that it had to be perfect, and if it wasn’t perfect I was going to blow it and all these other not happy thoughts—so I took some time away from it. Part of that was being sick in November/December and part of it was a deliberate decision. I backed off and actually prayed about it.

Last week, I dove into it again, and I was shocked to see how the words were coming—I was creating pages that I did not hate! Huge step forward. So I’m hoping to have the proposal done this month and sent to the acquisitions editor (pray for me and my little proposal, please?).

Those are the four areas I’m focusing on this year. Also, I’m moving in the spring, so there will be serious decluttering/cleaning/all sorts of goodness happening in that department as well!

What about you? Do you set goals or make resolutions in the new year? What are they?

*=affiliate links

Goal Setting 2018: April results and May goals

It's MAYYYY! Yay! 

So it's time to revisit my goals! Let's get started. 

Goal Number 1: 

Work through Dave Ramsey's Baby Steps for Financial Peace to cultivate good stewardship, gratitude, and contentment.

April goal: Start the debt snowball; this is baby step 2, where all your debts are paid off. Fortunately I don't have much to do here! 

Status: Started! Yay!!

May goal: Continue working the snowball. 

Goal Number 2: 

Find an agent for my manuscript

April goal: Write a darn proposal!

Status: DONE!  I sent it to a friend of mine to read/peruse, so now I'm just waiting for her feedback. Once I get that, I can make any changes and send it out!

May goal: Send it (hopefully!) 

Goal Number 3:

To deepen and strengthen my relationship with God, because He is the center and the well-spring.

April goals: Confession/Holy hour/Weekday Mass once a week

Status: Confession, check! Holy hour, check! Weekday Mass....no check. Sigh. Something still to work on!

May goals: Confession, Holy Hour, and at LEAST ONE WEEKDAY MASS. Just one. :) 

Goal Number 4: 

Continue to lose weight and treat my body well so I can do everything else I want to do, and honor my body which God made.

April goals: Focus on healthy snacks and regular workouts. 

Status: Did really well here. Lost some weight (yay!), have found new healthy snacks, and I'm still doing yoga classes regularly. I've also continued to make progress on body measurements. I take my measurements on the first of every month, and this is where I can really see progress, or not. So I'm glad to see progress being made!

May goals: Consistent working out--yoga classes; continue to focus on health snacks. 

Goal Number 5: 

Grow Barton Cottage Crafts, to help with baby steps (goal 1), but also to have a creative outlet and for enjoyment. 

April goal: Finis commissions and get new ones.

Status: I did finish my commissions, and I'm working on getting new ones. Part of that is the new Barton Cottage Crafts page here on the site! I'm really proud of it! So in May, while I wait for commissions, I'm going to be working on new projects, as well as starting to plan knitting projects for birthdays and Christmas--because guys, handmade takes time. So if you want birthday presents/Christmas presents, you have to get them early. As in, now is not too early!

May goals: See above. :) 

Goal Number 6: 

Have a beautiful, peaceful, welcoming home so I can appreciate what I have, encourage hospitality, and cultivate peace.

April goal: Get another KALLAX unit for the living room. 

Status: The one I want isn't in stock--and wasn't for ALL OF APRIL. Grr, IKEA. Grrrrr. So I'm waiting for that. In the mean time, working on keeping spaces clear. I did do a lot better in having people over in April--I would say come on over, knowing the house would be presentable. So that's great. 

May goal: Pray that the KALLAX comes back in stock? :) If it does, that'll happen. If not--continue weekly clean/focus on certain areas (FlyLady zones, if you're familiar with those), and keep inviting people over. And continue contentment challenge--that fell off in April, so I'm doing month three now!

Goal Number 7: 

To nurture my creativity so I can learn new things, inspire myself, stretch my mind, and feed my soul. 

April goals: Knit two new Quince projects, start reading Artist's Way, get new commissions. 

Status: I knit the projects! Yay! And I have big plans for more new ones....I didn't read Artist's Way, but that is definitely on the list for this month. Commission--see above.

May goals: Start new knitting project; start reading Artist's Way. (I have to DECIDE on new project. I think it's going to be a tricolor cowl, but that means getting yarn, or a cowl with a textured stitch, in order to really "get" working in the round done.) 

This month, my brother is getting married--NEXT WEEK, holy cow!--so I didn't go hog wild on my goals. My daily goals are balancing my checkbook (yes, old school!), lectio, knitting, and working out 5/7 days a week. So they are important goals, but it's not a ton, so I can really focus. I didn't want to stress this month. I want to celebrate and enjoy this big moment for our family! :) 

2018 Goals: March update and April goals!

So, if you're new to this, I use powersheets to set my goals. I love Powersheets! You can catch up on this year's series by going here. 

March was the longest month. It really was! But there was progress made in some areas!

Goal Number 1: 

Work through Dave Ramsey's Baby Steps for Financial Peace to cultivate good stewardship, gratitude, and contentment.

March goal: Finish baby step one--get an emergency fund in place. 

Status: ACHIEVED! Guys, I am so proud of this. And it was so enjoyable to know that, when I was having computer issues earlier this month, I could go to the store and know that if it needed repairs, I could pay for them! This fund also allowed me to replace part of my Bionic Ear without freaking out. 

April goal: Start baby step 2--also known as the Debt Snowball. This is where you list all debts, smallest to largest, and start to pay them off, by moving as much money as you can toward to the smallest debt. Once that's paid off, that money + the minimum payment for the second debt goes to the next debt....you see how this works? I will have the first part of the snowball done by this fall. Yay!

Goal Number 2: 

Find an agent for my manuscript

March goal: At least one two-hour block of time outside the house working on my proposal. It doesn't have to be finished. But I have to dedicate at least two hours to drafting one. 

Status: yeah...no. AGAIN!

April goal: GET IT DONE. And I've already started! I've written out the basics of a proposal and now I just have to tweak/re-write the sample chapters. I am ON IT. 

Goal Number 3:

To deepen and strengthen my relationship with God, because He is the center and the well-spring.

March goals: Weekday Mass once a week, confession once a month, holy hour, daily vespers (evening prayer).

Status: Everything but that weekday Mass--because every time I tried to go, there was no place to park. I'm not kidding. So I tried, God! But I did get in a holy hour and daily vespers. Confession, no go either...I wanted to go wen I went to Mass. Face to face confession is offered at my parish on Fridays, which was the day I wanted to go to Mass as well. But no parking. Sigh. 

April goals: confession, holy hour, Mass once a week! 

Goal Number 4: 

Continue to lose weight and treat my body well so I can do everything else I want to do, and honor my body which God made. 

March goals: Daily yoga glo classes, weekly meal planning, go to bed by 10:00 (be IN bed, not necessarily asleep). 

Status: I did REALLY well here. I attended a yoga glo class almost every day! The meal planning was OK, as was the bed thing. 

April: Focus on healthy snacks, regular workouts--yoga glo strength courses, continue meal plan. 

Goal Number 5: 

Grow Barton Cottage Crafts, to help with baby steps (goal 1), but also to have a creative outlet and for enjoyment. 

March goals: Keep trucking. :) 

Progress: I finished my drachenfels shawl  and am almost done with a current commission. That means that BCC is open for new work! If you'd like a scarf or a shawl, please contact me and we'll talk! I can do them in solid or variegated colors. Shawls at $45, and scarves are $35, and shipping is included! 

April: finish new projects (I have two that I want to knit), get more commissions!

Goal Number 6: 

Have a beautiful, peaceful, welcoming home so I can appreciate what I have, encourage hospitality, and cultivate peace. 

March goals: ZERO OUT (with alarm at 9 pm); zone clean weekly; weekly surface clean; contentment challenge; finish Emily Ley's simplify challenge! 

Status: Zeroing out just isn't me....I sort of tried but it doesn't work. I'd much rather come down in the morning and clean a bit. So that's what I switched to. I'm in zone cleaning weekly, and doing the weekly surface clean. 

The Contentment challenge is almost done!

The biggest thing I did this month: 

Sorry it's blurry!

This was a terrible corner on my first floor. I hated it. I had no idea what to do with this empty space. 

So I was sick of looking at it, and went on an organizing spree. I dumped my old stereo that I NEVER use from my book case, and added a new shelf of "favorite books". That gave me more space in all my bookcases, yay!

Then I went on the IKEA website--motivated by a birthday coupon--and looked some something that would fit here. KALLAX would! KALLAX is pretty!

KALLAX IS HEAVY. I had to open the box and take the pieces in piece by piece. :) After an hour, I had entered in the realm of adulthood, because I had put together a piece of IKEA furniture. 

And now, behold!

Isn't that much better? 

So, for April: My goal is to get another one of these units to go in my living room, to hold some other things that are currently being "stored" crappily. :-p I will also continue weekly cleaning (both detailed and surface). But I want stuff up off the floor. I'm tired of living like a college student! :-P 

Goal Number 7: 

To nurture my creativity so I can learn new things, inspire myself, stretch my mind, and feed my soul. 

March goals: Shawl--finish? Maybe? Continue Artist's Rule. 

Status: DONE, on both counts! Yay!!!!

April goals: Knit two new Quince and Co. projects, get new commissions, start Artist's Way reading. 

Progress is happening on the first project: 

It's a really simple project, but I love this yarn. I'll talk more about these in the next yarn along. 

So, March had ups and downs. But it also had some great progress!

Cultivate: A new book for intentional, God-centered living

Guys, I am so excited to share with you a new book from Lara Casey, who is the founder of the amazing Making Things Happen Conference, and the author of Make It Happen. 

Lara and I in March. 

Lara is an amazing woman, y'all. She is a true lover of God and a woman of prayer. She is so supportive and a fantastic cheerleader. Without her products (the power sheets!), I would not have been able to accomplish the things that God wants me to do, and I say that and mean it. They helped me get so much clarity  about my goals and what really matters. Make It Happen, Lara's first book, helped me go even deeper, but truly, the conference was a breakthrough. Lara is so generous and shares so much of her hard-won wisdom with anyone who follows her on social media or attends the conference or reads her blog or her books. She has a huge heart for women and God. 

That's why I'm so excited about her new book, Cultivate, which comes out this spring! If you've never met Lara, or can't attend a MTH conference, then I hope that you will get your hands on Cultivate. 

Lara knows that good goals are goals that are deeply rooted in what matters. Cultivate, according to Lara, is a story about God's grace--how it's transformed her life from an instant life into a cultivated life. 

Cultivated lives are messy. They grow slowly. But they are lives that trust in God, and wait on His perfect timing. And believe me, I know about waiting for that perfect timing! I know how hard it is. How often my prayer has been, "God, I know you're in charge, but if you'd just let me see the ending now, I'd be so happy." 

That's not how it works. 

Through Lara's writing and her ministry, I've been able to further my relationship with God, to open up, and to trust more completely in Him. It's been a wonderful boost to my faith and encouraged me to become more rooted in my faith and its practice. And with Cultivate, Lara will share how focusing on what God wants her to focus on has changed her life--for the better. 

So, Cultivate details: It comes out on June 27th, but you can pre-order now! If you do, there's a great bunch of pre-ordering gifts you will receive, like a getting started video, desktop backgrounds, and more (a coloring page!!!!), to help you really cultivate what matters.  The book also has a study guide included! Yay! 

The link takes you to a landing page where you can  preorder (from your book seller of choice),  claim the bonuses, and access even more goodies! 

Lara is real. She's not afraid to share the mess. And in doing that, she helps you do the real work. 

She didn't pay me to write any of this. :) I am so privileged to be a part of the Cultivate launch team, so that's why I wrote this. But it's not an ad--I genuinely love Lara. I know this book will be extremely helpful to you, and I personally can't wait to read it for myself! (And yes, I'm going to be talking about this book a lot, because I'm really excited about it! There will even be a place in the sidebar where you can click to pre-order.) 

Do yourself a favor and pre-order the book (pre-orders are really helpful to both authors and publishers), get the bonus goodies, and prepare to be changed and to learn! 

Growing through the dirt--Making Things Happen Conference 2017

This isn't just a normal hallway. 

Off this hallway, big things happened. 

Weeds were pulled. Seeds planted. Connections made. 

Last week I had the incredible privilege of attending the Making Things Happen conference. It's a hard conference to explain. Essentially, you could say it's about goal setting. But it's about more than that--it's about living the life that you want to live, about being in touch with your purpose and getting rid of fears, lies, assumptions, and other muck that's holding you back from pursuing dreams and the fullest life. 

These dreams don't have to be big. They could be, in the world's reckoning, quite small. But to each person I was privileged to meet at this conference, it was about making their lives, and their small corners of the world, better. 

I went into the conference feeling discouraged. I didn't feel like I was ever going to meet my goals of getting the book published and meeting smaller, more personal goals. I felt like I had been planting seeds, but wasn't seeing results. 

"How would it feel if we got pregnant, and then had a baby the next day?" Lara Casey (the conference founder) asked at one point. It's absurd, but it's true. One of my big takeaways was that I wanted success to be easy. I didn't want to have to keep sending out proposals, keep exercising....keep whatever-ing. I wanted success now, measurable results NOW! And that's not how it goes. 

It's about God's timing. Not mine. Lara loves gardening, so her talks had lots of gardening metaphors. "Peonies grow through the dirt, and so do we" was one I really liked. 

It takes work for a seed to grow. And faith for a farmer or gardener to plant that seed and hope for a harvest. 

As part of "growing together", we had focus groups. The ladies in my focus group were amazing. We got down to the real, hard things and then started to build up from there. 

I met amazing, God-loving women who want to make good things happen, and that inspired me. I know that these women want to help me grow, just like I want to help them. When you're real with someone--really real, no holes barred, crying in front of them sharing fears real--for two days, you know that at the end of it, you're accepted and loved and supported. It's truly an amazing feeling to have that support. 

Growing little by little is powerful. The items on my action list are slowly being tended. I'm being very intentional in how I spend my days and my time. This time is all I get--I don't want to waste it. 

Another big take away for me? "We practice to get better!" That's one of the things I hate about exercise--I'm not good at it. But hearing this, even though it's sort of a duh truth, gave me the encouragement I needed. We do practice to get better. And often, I don't want to practice the stuff I'm not good at. But I have to, to see any growth. 

The Carolina Inn, where the conference was held. 

At the conference, one of the questions we journaled about was: what is your definition of success? Here's mine: 

Doing what God has created me to do with a joyful and contented heart.

So everyday, I'm going to sit down with my planner (which Emily L. so graciously gifted all of us!), my mug, and my PowerSheets, and make things happen. Especially things that will further what God has created me to do. 

2017 Goal Setting

The last week of the year usually brings a few things for me--time with family, lots of books, and goal setting for the new year!

Ever since I discovered Lara Casey's powersheets, I've adored goal setting--and I've actually been getting things done. Her shop is called "Cultivate what matters", and that's what the powersheets do. Without them, there's no way I'd have finished my manuscript, written book proposals, sent queries, or upgraded my website/social media presence. That's probably the biggest thing the powersheets have done for me, but I've made progress in other ways, too. 

(And, no, I don't get paid to say this--I just love powersheets!)

I got my 2017 set in November and spent a few days doing the prep work. This is one of the best parts of power sheets. It's where you really get down to the reasons why you want to do things--why do you want to save money, or take that trip, or get that thing? What's your real motivation? Are you afraid to do big things? What's defeated you in the past from reaching your goals? (Lara's current blog series dives into this stuff, too!) 

So after doing the prep work and figuring out my "big" goals for the year, I then break those goals down into monthly, weekly, and daily goals for each month. The idea is that everything you do here is intentionally helping you meet a goal that will help you do what matters in your life. 

With all that said, here are my goals for 2017: 

1. To deepen my prayer life through more regular attendance at daily Mass and more times of daily prayer/devotions. If I don't have a deep, solid relationship with God, nothing else matters. 

2. Pay off the rest of my debts and grow my savings account. One of the things I really like about post-transplant life is my ability to travel, and I want to do more of that--and traveling takes money! So by cutting back on buying things I don't need (I'm doing the contentment challenge in January to help with this), I'll be able to pay off debts and have money for fun things like traveling! Again, there has been progress in this area, but I need to be more consistent. 

3. Be physically, mentally, and emotionally healthy by instituting regular workouts, weekly meal planning, and keeping up with my journal (I've been letting my journal slide of late. I don't want to do that!). I have grown in this area this year, but it's erratic growth. I need to make it a much more permanent part of life.  

4. Get the book published, offer a ebook for sale, grow the blog, and write what matters. I want to write things that matter to the people who read them--things that help you, inspire you, make you laugh, whatever. I don't want to write click bait. I want to write things that improve the lives of my readers. (So tell me what you want to read, OK?) 

5. Fuel my creativity by continuing to learn Italian, working on new art and knitting projects, and, of course, reading. I love learning new things! 

6. Simplify my space: Less stuff, more beauty, more organization, and increased hospitality. I made big progress on this this year as well--cleaning out my closet, taking many books to the secondhand shop (along with CDs and DVDs). So I'm proud of the progress I've made here. But there's more to do!

So those are my six big goals for the year. Each month, these get broken into monthly, weekly, and daily things I need to tend (in powersheets parlance). Daily things are things I want to make a habit--like exercise, checking my checkbook against the online transactions, reading the Bible for 10 minutes every day, practicing Italian. Stuff like that. 

Weekly things are things that get done every week: Daily Mass at least once, making a meal plan, doing a basic clean of the house, putting a certain amount of cash into my emergency stash here at home. 

Monthly tending are bigger things that I can do throughout the month. Some examples from my January tending list are editing my Nano 2016 novel, going to confession, completing a 30 day exercise plan.  

Some things are broken into monthly and weekly categories. The contentment challenge is broken into three months, with a weekly topic in a corresponding book. So there's a monthly "task", but also something to read each week. So the weekly devotion is written in my weekly tending list, so I don't forget to do that. 

I also write the daily tasks into my planner. That also helps keep me on track, because if my powersheets aren't easily available (though I always keep them on my counter, so I can find them quickly!), I can see at a glance what I'm doing that day. It's also great for things like the weekly cleaning--I can dust on Monday, vacuum Tuesday, etc. 

I find this is a better system than making resolutions. Resolutions are OK, but they usually don't have a plan or a why attached to them. "Lose 20 pounds" is a nice resolution--but how to do it? By going through the powersheets, I have an idea of how to do the things I want to do, how to achieve my goals, and how to be accountable to myself. I only have so much time here and I want to use it to the best of my ability!

Do you have goals for 2017? What are they? 

Hitting Rewind

So, 2016 started out with me being sick, but I could still make progress on my goals. 

Then we got a week in to 2016, and that all went out the window. 

I'd forgotten how much pneumonia takes out of you--the whole if I try to get dressed/put on make up/make a meal, I spend the next day wiped out and paying for it. I am feeling better, in that there's much less pain, I can breathe regularly, my heart rate is better, and I can take deep breaths! I'm sure my PFTs will be better on Monday. But as far as "normal activities", not a lot is happening yet, beyond the basic basics. 

That's OK--it just makes my goal tending Powersheets page look a little forlorn, these days. :) 

I go back to clinic on Monday for a follow-up, and assuming we don't see anything terrible, I will slowly start increasing things. But that, I don't just mean activity, I mean daily things, like writing/editing/reading--things that don't sound terribly strenuous, but can be when you're dealing with a limited supply of energy. 

One thing that has progressed, so far, is my art--I'm really glad to have decent brushes now, and to be playing with color and form. I will finish my Sketchbook Skool class by the end of the month, and that was one of my goals for this month, along with editing Tempest (and I did that, too--at least a first pass edit.) So this month wasn't a complete waste, goal-wise. 

And this might sound odd, but--the nurses I had in the hospital were pretty great. I don't mind spending time with good nurses. :) 

So I'm going to ease back into goals next week, and start February with renewed vigor--and hopefully a rescheduled California trip! 

Goal Setting for Dummies: Using Power Sheets

"Goal setting."

Does that phrase give you shivers? I know it used to for me. It seems so grandiose, right? It takes me back to when I was in high school and everyone asked "what I was going to do" after school. Most of us sort of mumbled our major or shrugged. I knew what was my major was going to be, but until I figured it out, it was nerve wracking, right?

So many articles have been written about goal setting that I don't think what I'm going to write here is new. But if you're new to this, here's an article from lululemon's website that talks about it.

Anyway, I'd always liked the idea of goal setting, but I was never very good at it. That is, until I found Lara Casey's power sheets (And no, this isn't an add for her. It's a great tool I use in writing that I thought I'd share with you. :) )

Basically, the Power Sheets break goal setting down into manageable chunks: short-term and long term goals, and most importantly, why you want to achieve these goals. The set contains six months' worth of sheets, and a lot of detailed prep work. But they are magnificent, guys. Each goal gets broken down into daily, weekly, and monthly goals, which is so helpful for someone like me, who needs that step-by-step accountability. For example, for the past few months "write three blog posts a week" was a goal. Then there was "daily writing 30 minutes", and in the monthly section, it was manuscript goals. I also have prayer and fitness goals.

No matter what your goals are--climbing Everest, finishing your dissertation, learning to draw, whatever!--these sheets will be an enormous help. If you're like me and need accountability, then checking off the boxes every day will be a big help.

Do you have goals you're working towards? How do you push yourself to accomplish them?