2010: The Year of Miracles

This week my husband and I are starting a 10 week seminar to continue the work we started in our Landmark Forum. Landmark was pretty amazing for me, simply because it helped me open my eyes about all the non personal things I was taking personally (Okay that's a super-simplification, but all the same, it was great for me.)

The seminar leader told me last fall that he is calling 2010 the year of miracles. I could use some miracles this year! I see amazing things coming our way this year, really. But I definitely have some work to do. So in the spirit of the new year, I've decided to reevaluate the tasks I refuse to compromise on, as well as set a couple new goals to work on.

The last time I reevaluated my tasks, I came up with these three: Listen to my Seed Capital CDs (a set of instructional discs I really needed to listen to), workout on my lunch break and update the wiki my ex-husband and I use to communicate regarding our sons homeschool progress. I had set a standard for myself that I would be bigger than any of my reasons or excuses and do each of those things every single work-day. And my goals served me very well. Until I left eBay in November, I was very good about keeping my commitments. But now that I've finished the CDs (several times) and am no longer at eBay, I think they need a little retooling.

So what am I going to be unreasonable about now? What will I do each day no matter what kind of small reason (read: excuses excuses) comes to mind? Well, my larger goals tend to influence my daily tasks since I like to look at the overall things I want to accomplish, then break them down by what I need to do each day in order to reach my goals.

So what are my big-picture goals? Hm... that's a good question.
I'm in the middle of my clutter-purging project, so it would be great to get the main floor of my house done in the near future. It would also be nice to have all the walls painted. Right now, we have a room here or there done, but completion would be awesome.

I still have my book half done. And of course it's not going to finish itself!

We started a new school curriculum late this year so we will likely finish in mid-July unless I can really steam through all this material with Dante. That includes not missing any available school days, not having any "light" days with fewer lessons, and skipping anything optional or redundant. Dante's language arts skills are a bit below where they could be so he tested into LA4 instead of LA5 (he's in 5th grade this year). But that means, while a lot of it is new to him, several of the lessons are on things he already knows. So we should be able to complete the rest of it in time for his summer break if I can keep us on task all year.

To clean up our house, we broke it down into small sections and assigned one section to be cleaned and organized each day. A shelf, a table, a dresser drawer etc. So Anthony and I are going to do the same for the main floor - split it into manageable portions and do them one day at a time. Sometimes it's hard to just keep up with the regular dishes, laundry, toys etc that need picking up each day, but I'm going to give up all my reasons and excuses and make sure the one assigned extra thing gets done each day. Before March, my house will be ready for painting.

I'm going to write 20 minutes every day, no excuses.

I'm going to be uncompromising on our school lessons each day. If the lesson is scheduled, it will be completed. By mid-June we'll have well over 80% completed and can easily move on to the next levels in the fall He's starting 6th grade math this month already so that's one I don't need to worry about, and Science and History are on track - I just wish there was a way to catch him up in his LA courses... I'll continue to think on that but at least we can ensure that despite our late start last fall, he will be ready for summer break on time!

I also want to join my husband in one of his goals. He exercises with Dante a lot of days but we also do yoga pretty regularly and I think any night he does yoga, I'll join him in that. It's good for me and I love it.

Also, there are a couple of social events my BFF and I have begun to organize pretty regularly and I'd really like to continue with those. So I want to commit to continuing the monthly dinner-party we've been hosting over here, as well as organizing the next of our Mutual Facebook Friends Girls Brunch. It seemed kind of a trivial goal to me at first, but I am naturally a homebody and pushing myself to spend time with my larger social circle is really good for me emotionally.

It really is going to take a small miracle to get my closet cleaned out, but I'm ready for the challenge!

So here's my list:

1. Complete 1 task beyond the usual house-cleaning chores each day.
2. Write 20 minutes on my manuscript each day.
3. Complete each days scheduled lessons in History, Science and Language Arts.
4. Join Anthony for Yoga.
5. Continue to organize a dinner party each month and plan our brunches for January April, July and October.

There are some things that may seem to be missing from my list. For instance: we wanted to move out of this house a while ago but things seem to be moving more slowly than we would like and at this point it feels more reasonable to work at being ready to move (all this house cleaning and painting is really a step in that direction) and just take it when it comes.

It's going to be a good year!!!