Happy 2019!

Like I did last year, I decided to make myself a list of resolutions. I love lists, and I love checking off accomplishments, and I prefer being ambitious and falling short to not trying at all. Let’s see how this year goes!

So in no particular order, my goals in 2019 are to:

1. Write 10 hours per week
2. Buy a house
3. Draft 2 new books
4. Finish editing my second YA contemporary
5. Finish the YA fantasy/dystopia draft 1
6. Finish the YA mystery draft 124,364,565,765
7. Do the literary thing I can’t talk about yet
8. Stay involved in politics but don’t let depressing social media take over my life. Do this by limiting scrolling on my phone. (I installed the Moment app to help track my app time. Does anyone else use this? Is there a better way?)
9. Start an email newsletter for this blog
10. Cultivate my online brand more by posting more to social. This seems to contradict with goal #8, but by “cultivate” I don’t mean “constantly tweet about how terrible the president is” (though that will admittedly be part of it #resist). I want to interact more with writers and readers, be more irreverent, take after some of the writers who do it best. How to quantify this? I’ll aim for an original tweet every day about writing and reading, and an instagram post every week on that #writermomlife.
11. 5 adulting/chore things per week
12. 180 minutes of yoga/strengthening per week (once I’m allowed to work out)
13. 120 minutes cardio per week
14. While on maternity leave, get out of the apartment 3 times per week
15. Something surprising (a museum, a park) every week
16. Maximize commuting time. Do not spend it lamenting my lot in life of having to take the path every day. Discover new music, read, write on the Notes section of my phone, etc.
17. Stay on budget
18. Maintain a community of excellent humans by texting one every day and seeing one every week
19. Host a dinner party!
20. Read 52 books! I did SO BAD with this this year…
21. Meal prep on Sundays
22. Be a great mother. How? Read all the books about it, set myself weekly goals of things to do to enhance my child’s life, listen to the many wise women I am lucky enough to have in my life who have started this journey before me
23. Limit booze to 7 drinks/week or fewer
24. Whiten teeth
25. Get back to pre-pregnancy weight
26. Revamp wardrobe once back to pre-pregnancy weight
27. Keep my apartment clean by cleaning and decluttering every day
28. Frame wedding and travel photos and hang them on the wall
29. Make photo albums of wedding, honeymoon, and years of life
30. Get on a sleeping and feeding schedule with bébé
31. Write (positive) book reviews on Goodreads, Amazon, and Litsy
32. Plan and go on a family trip. Internationally? Maybe?
33. Visit my sister in North Carolina
34. Visit friends and family in Seattle
35. Stick to an anti-inflammatory diet during the week
36. Post to this blog 4 times per month. Get on a content schedule, like writing, reading, writer-mom life or work/life balance and … miscellaneous? What do you go to blogs to read about these days? I know blog readership is declining but I still love them, and this space, and want to remain relevant and useful to people. Open to ideas…
37. Work on posture with that posture harness thing + exercises from my massage therapist
38. Drink 10 glasses of water every day
39. Figure out anti-aging skincare routine
40. Journal for myself once per week
41. Start a journal for my daughter and write in it once a month
42. Find a local therapist who deals with postpartum
43. Be entirely present when spending quality time with my baby
44. Get a new TV console. I’ve wanted one for YEARS
45. Take photos with my DSLR every week
46. Continue charitable donations
47. Continue praying with intention
48. Keep anxiety under control by noticing when I’m entering a spiral and consciously trying to stop it
49. Get new glasses
50. Do a yoga headstand without needing the wall

… I think that’s it for now! I fully expect these to evolve as they did last year (though no pregnancies this year, not yet! I need time to heal + raise the human I already have + figure out if I even want to go through all that again … ) but this seems like a good starting point for now.

Do you have resolutions? Am I being too ambitious? (Probably?) Let me know!

Photo by Dan Whale on Unsplash