Friday, January 11, 2013

New Year

This Christmas season was such a blessing. Being home again with so many family members and friends was wonderful! I'm so glad it worked out for Jonathan and me to spend this Christmas in BC with my side of the family, many of whom I haven't spent Christmas with for several years.

I will write some update posts about our Christmas vacation soon, but tonight I wanted to write a post focusing on the New Year. I'm not really one for making lots of New Year's Resolutions. Some years I do, most years I don't, and the years that I do I end up not keeping them for much more than a few weeks. But this year I want to make some resolutions, and I want to make ones that I will keep. So I'm giving myself some leniency in the resolutions that I make. I don't want to make them so rigid that if I miss a day, I will be off of the routine for the rest of the year and end up not keeping them throughout 2013. So I've been thinking about ways I can make subtle, but lasting changes in my life. And I've come up with several that I think will work. I may add some as I come up with more. I may even realize that some of them aren't as important as I thought they were in the first couple week of this new year, but I want to make a real effort to keep as many of them as I can.

Since I've just recently returned from the Generation of Youth for Christ conference, many of my New Year's Resolutions are spiritual. These are the ones I most want to keep this year. I hope you will encourage me and help to keep me accountable to these resolutions as we move from month to month. Thank you in advance for your support!

Relationship
  • Spend more quality time with Jonathan - we've decided to write down 24 fun things to do together this year, and twice a month we will pick an activity and spend time doing it together
  • Be more intentional to communicate with the people I love in their love language
  • Find ways to give more thanks, encouragement, and appreciation to people
  • Look for local organizations where I could volunteer and meet new people
  • Get rid of blogs (not friends' blogs, but ones of random people I've collected over the past few years) that take my time away from my family members and friends

Spiritual
  • Read from my devotional every morning
  • Do the quarterly lesson study daily
  • Read a chapter a day of Ellen White's Conflict of the Ages series (About two years ago my mum and grandparents learned that if you read a chapter a day in the CotA series, you will finish all five books by sometime in mid-October, I believe. This will even leave time to read through Steps to Christ as well, I think, or at least give some lenience for a few missed days here or there.)
  • Daily read the corresponding Bible passages to each chapter in the series
  • Memorize a Bible verse a week (for starters)
  • Be more intentional in counting/writing down my blessings
  • Start to prayer journal again
  • Join a Bible study
  • Give more, either financially (might be tricky at the moment, but God can bless even a small gift) or of myself or my time

Physical
  • Walk, hike, or ride my bike more often (maybe we'll start it off at two or three times a week and raise that number as I improve)
  • Be more open to playing/doing sports that Jonathan enjoys (because as much as I hate to admit it, reading probably isn't a sport...)
  • Explore Maine and the surrounding regions either on foot, bike, or car (but try for the first two as much as possible)

Creative
  • Be a more consistent blogger
  • Write more, and look for places to have that writing seen and read by others
  • Work on actually posting the pictures that I take again, either on my blog or Facebook
  • Start looking for possible writing/editing jobs, either in the area or online
  • Look for ways that I can use my creative gifts to raise money for worthy organizations

5 comments:

  1. Two (or three or four) thumbs up!! :)

    Now I need to work on my list... :P

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  2. we can check up on each other :)

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  3. what a great list.
    it is inspiring.
    thanks for sharing.
    love you

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  4. Thanks for sharing this...it's great!

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