Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Family Goals 2012

This goal topic is much more subjective. I think it's the reason I was having trouble writing the big blog post about all of my goals for the year. I'm trying to come up with some measurable, objective goals...but I think not killing my kids is probably a given. The rest is just so... Yeah, I'm having trouble finding the words! :) Anyway, I'm going to try.

My goals as a wife: My first is to be more intentional about praying for my husband every day. In actuality, I probably pray for him every day, but it's more quick prayers when things come up rather than intentional time with specific, thought-out things. I recently got a 30-day prayers for your husband thing from somewhere on the Proverbs 31 website (I think - or Renee Swope who's affiliated with them). I'm going to start there and then I think I'm going to read The Power of a Praying Wife by Stormie O'Martin. I think I've read it before, but I'm going to re-read it! :) Second is that I am going to try to put on makeup and do my hair every morning. That sounds silly, but I don't really ever do it except on special occasions. I know that my hubby likes it when I make an effort to look nice, but before now it was an effort. It was just one more thing I didn't have time to do. Now that he has been taking the 'first watch' so to speak (getting the kids up and dressed and breakfasted) I have a little more time in the morning, so I am going to use that time to look a little more put together. I think this is a win-win goal! I can't tell you how much better I feel about myself taking that extra time to look pretty! I have another one, but it's big enough I'm going to save it for another blog.

My goals as a mother: I will pray specifically and intentionally for each of my children daily. We pray a lot with them during the day, but I need to set aside that time for my kids just like I do for my hubby. Also, I need to be more consistent in my discipline.  I find that I get tired and let them get away with things I shouldn't and then I get angry when they do it one too many times. I'm not sure how to track this one. I think what I have to do is give myself permission to change my mind. To stop warning them they will get in trouble and just take a ticket and put them in timeout. Next, I want to spend more quality time with them. That may sound silly since I'm with them all day long, but I find that I spend less time doing things like crafts and such than I did when I just had one. Anyway, I have decided to put together a special half-hour time or so that is specifically mommy-child when I'm not trying to get anything else done. I'm going to put activities in a container and let the kids pick out what we will be doing that day together. I'm excited about this one...And I'm hoping that by spending some 100% time with them, they will not be as needy when I need to do other things like cleaning and cooking and whatever else I need to get done during the day.

Family goals: We have decided to implement a family night and a date night into our weekly routine. We actually started the family night a couple of months ago, but we are continuing it this year. So Saturday nights are a time when we do an activity as a family and have a Bible story. Date night was re-implemented at the start of the year on Thursdays. We would have one once a month, but we thought that wasn't enough. We will still probably only go out once a month, but we decided that putting the kids to bed a bit early and spending that evening doing an activity together was an important time for us. We tend to get distracted at home with the many different things that we need to do, so it's a mental reminder that we don't do those things on Thursday nights.

I'm going to call that done. I'll have one more blog of goals for the year in a bit, but that's enough for now. I'd love to hear about some of your goals! Have a great day! :)

Sunday, January 8, 2012

Writing Goals for 2012

It doesn't seem like I'm going to have an opportunity to write my full 2012 goals blog that I have in my head. Instead I'm going to try to post several smaller blogs with individual goals that hopefully won't take me as much of a chunk of time to complete, so maybe I can get them done!

First, I'm going to tackle my writing goals for the year. After writing my NaNoWriMo post last month I've been seriously thinking about my career as a writer. I believe this is what I am supposed to be, so I need to make it a priority. Even right now, when my life is seemingly completely consumed by my young children, I can make time to write. I have decided several things. First, I will expect and plan for writing time each day. It is extremely surprising how much I can get done in an hour a day! It has been very exciting to see my story moving forward. Second, I will attempt to complete 20,000 words every month. I came very close to that goal in November, so I thought it was an achievable yet difficult goal. It will take some sacrifices and intentionality to actually meet that goal, but it helps me to make sure I'm prioritizing my writing. My third and final writing goal for the year is to finish my first novel. Theoretically that could be done in 3-4 months (which would put the final first draft at 100-120 thousand words). Then I would have to do at least one major rewrite before I could give it to anyone to read and critique and such. So even if it takes me twice as long as I want it to and the rewrite a few months more, I can still get the book completed by the end of the year. So that is what I'm going to do.

I have chosen to do several things to make it more likely that I will accomplish these goals. First, I have downloaded the WriMoDemon app for my iPhone. It allows me to set a goal for the month and it tells me how many words I need to write per day (622 for 30 days gets me to 20k). It will then average my total words and let me know how many words I'm averaging (633 so far). I am also tracking my daily count in a word document because I decided that I wanted to keep that info (and WriMoDemon doesn't keep it at all). Finally, I have told people my goal. By sharing it I have people who will be asking me about it and therefore keeping me accountable. That is super important! :)

Feel free to ask me how it's going. I welcome the accoutability because I  am so excited about you all getting to read the book when it is finished (some of you may even get to be beta readers for me - you know who you are!). Also, just to share my excitement, I have written 5,070 words so far this month! That's 25% of my goal! And there was one day I didn't get to write at all. I didn't let that get me down though. I knew I could make it up. And I did. Yay! Anyway, it's a good thing I decided to split these into several blogs because this ended up really long! (I'm watching the Broncos beat Pittsburg, fyi) :)