I love a new year. I know that there is essentially no difference between December 31, 2024 and January 1, 2025, but going into a new year is one of my favorite feelings.
I am a big goal setter, but I have learned over the years to not do resolutions. I cringe deeply when I see someone setting a resolution to “exercise every day”. Listen. That is just not gonna happen. Let’s be more gentle and realistic with ourselves.
I’ve also had goals on my yearly goal setting list for multiple, multiple years in a row (like making money from my blog LOL). Every year I think I want to do better with hospitality, and every year I get to the end of the year feeling like I didn’t accomplish that.
And then sometimes a year will surprise me, and I will have hit goals that I didn’t even really intend to hit.
So, all that to say…I like to set intentions and “to-do” lists for my years, instead of resolutions or even goals.
2024 was a decent year for our family. We celebrated 12 years of marriage, and for the first time in a long time, we didn’t have a pregnancy, a new baby, or a move. It feels like our family is hitting a level of maturity, even though we still have a baby and some smaller children. We feel more stable than we have ever felt, which is a weird feeling when so much of our life has been marked with thriving on change and chaos.
At the same time, I am not going into 2025 feeling THIS IS OUR YEAR energy. 2024 brought some ruthless hits to people around me, and I’m feeling more and more aware of the brevity and unpredictability of life. I am now more fully aware that the main points of life are entirely outside of our control. And this is both terrifying and freeing.
We know that 2025 will continue to bring some big changes for our family, but we are excited and anticipating what that could look like in the months to come!
Here is some of our hopeful “to-do” list in 2025:
- Run a half marathon in under 2 hours
- Attend the Homesteaders of America Conference
- Walk or run all the way around Caesar’s Creek Lake
- Read 100 books
- Build an addition on our home (or at least make concrete plans for it)
- Become more involved at our church (I have specifics for this, but just am not sharing them on the blog)
- Get away for a weekend with just Theo and I
- Raise 80% of our own meat
Those are just some small dreams that we have for the next year!
I came across this a couple of month ago and it was a good reminder to me that I really need to be working on being quiet, humble and doing “the next right thing”. I think I so often want to be loud, well-liked, appreciated and seen, so I’m also working on just letting myself and my family live a simple life well, instead of living a big life poorly.
Happy New Year, everyone. Thanks for showing up here and for following along! I so appreciate all of the comments, messages and support from each and every one of you!
