I used to love setting goals and making resolutions. I am Type A and was always super ambitious, always reaching for the next thing. I’m also a planner, and like to be in control. I used to put a lot of my worth on my accomplishments. I felt like I was never busy enough, doing enough, accomplishing enough. But what’s that saying about “the best laid plans…”? Well, the last ten years of adulting have certainly humbled me. I have been thrown curve ball after curve ball and learned that the path to what I wanted was often harder and more crooked and less clear than I had thought, and sometimes, what I thought I wanted wasn’t really what I wanted. As I’ve become a mom, and especially in the last year of living through a global pandemic, I’ve been pushed off the hamster wheel, forced to change my ambitions and frankly, last year, I stopped making goals. Getting through the day often felt like enough. So this year, the debate was do I make 2021 goals?
This year, I’ve really come to realize that there’s more to life than accomplishing and achieving. I have little humans depending on me, whose time as littles is fleeting. Savoring my time with them and being there for them has become paramount. They are the most important thing in my life. Now the things I want are really for them — the backyard that they can play in and the home they can make memories in, the vacation that will offer them experiences they’ll always cherish and that will make their world richer and bigger, the professional growth that will enable me to be home for them when I need to while being able to provide them with the life and opportunities I want them to have, and that will also offer them a role model for hard work and perseverance that I hope helps them as they embark on their own dreams. These days my goals are so intertwined with those of my family’s that they’re not as much goals as a vision for a life I want to build for all of us.
While I love nothing more than the start of a new year and the fresh start it offers, I debated even setting 2021 goals or resolutions this year. The pandemic rages on, and it’s hard to predict where we’ll be in a month much less a year. Twenty-twenty has certainly taught us how fast our whole world can be upended. I’ve also been in a rut since the holidays tbh. I have been feeling uninspired and exhausted. I feel like we’ve all been on an adrenaline high since the pandemic started, just trying to protect ourselves and adjust and adapt. Now, there’s certainly hope for an end in sight, but the months of doing it all and worrying and stressing and changing and adapting have caught up with me. So many of us feel like we need a break, that this is unsustainable, and yet, we have no choice but to keep going. That’s hard. And the news, state of our country, and constant doom scrolling I’ve been doing has not helped.
I know I’m not alone in this fatigue and utter exhaustion. I don’t have the motivation or even energy to make 2021 goals, and part of me thinks, what’s the point? I also want to give myself grace — I’m surviving during a global pandemic. I’m doing the best I can working full time from home and taking care of two little kids, with patchwork childcare. As moms, we don’t give ourselves enough credit for all we do. And that is a lot. More than enough. At the same time, I am a firm believer that if you want something, you can make it happen, but you need to put it out in the universe and work for it. If they can do it or have it, so can you, but it requires hard work and intention. So I’m forcing myself to still set 2021 goals for this year, but as I mentioned, they’re less concrete accomplishments I want to achieve and more about steps to building the life I want for myself and my family.
I actually had a much longer blog post in which I shared all those 2021 goals, but because they’re more personal and more about a vision for a life I want for my family, I’ve decided to hold back. I think part of it is I’m not ready to share and some feel too personal right now, and part of it is that they’re hard to put into words, or full explain to someone else. I also find when I know I’m blogging about something I haven’t discussed, sometimes I feel the need to justify and explain. I don’t want to put myself in a position to do that. I want to be better at cutting out the noise this year, and just focusing on what I want and need and what’s best for me and my family and not worrying so much about what other people are doing or thinking or how they’re judging me. I think if this year has shown anything, it’s that we’re each on our own path, doing the best we can and trying to do the best for ourselves and our family. In the world of Instagram and social media, it can be hard not to judge ourselves and compare our lives and decisions, and this year, I especially felt that.
In any event, I’m curious if you’ve rethought resolutions and goals this year — or if you even bothered to at all. Has the pandemic changed how you want to live your life and what you want from life? It certainly has for me. It’s hard to commit to big changes but I do see this time as an opportunity to make those. The world has been upended so it’s the perfect time to jump off the hamster wheels of our lives if it’s not going in the direction and way you want or if something in your heart is tugging you somewhere else. I often feel my heart tugging me in a different direction, and I often don’t listen to it. I let the voice in my head that tells me I just always want something different or I’m bored take over. But I honestly learned this year, that I should tune into it more. There’s nothing more with wanting change, with moving toward a pull that’s big and different, or that’s different than from what you thought you wanted or from who you’ve been. It may be hard of others to understand. They may even try to talk you out of it, but deep down you know yourself, what you want and what’s best. You just need to listen to your heart and trust yourself.
Happy (belated) new year to you all. Thank you for being here on this journey with me and for processing life alongside me. I promise to continue with shopping finds, but sometimes I like to use this platform to talk about life and it always makes me feel better to know I’m not alone in my feelings.
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