funeral flowers

I've gone through many phases and iterations of "New Year's Resolutions". I've been the Super Enthusiastic Resolution Sharer--you know, the one who posts on Facebook about her incredibly lofty, detailed goals on January 1st. I've been the Vague Goal Setter, the "This is the year of my best self!" Whatever that meant at the time. I've totally been the New Year's Resolutions Are Beneath Me person, the one who says annoying things like "If you want to make a change in your life, you don't need to wait for New Year's Day".

The common thread throughout all these versions of my New Year's Resolutions (or lack thereof), aside from being very entertaining to those around me I'm sure, is that I never ended up making much of a change. I would attempt to make a strong start at the beginning of the year, but by February I would already have wavered in my resolve. Or I wouldn't make a resolution on January 1st--or any other day of the year. Positive change is really hard for me to master y'all.

This year I decided to try something different. Instead of one enormous goal for the year, I am making 12 mini-resolutions, each to be carried out over the span of a month. Because who can resist a mini-version of something? Based on the number of purse dogs I see on Instagram, I'd say no one. Hopefully I'll be able to build habits onto one another, but that's not something I'm demanding of myself. I love the idea of creating some huge new habit in my life for an entire year, but if the past 29 years are any evidence, it's unlikely that I currently possess this kind of willpower.

So, here are my 12 Mini-Resolutions, each one to be done for a month. I've split them into 3 categories for no apparent reason since they definitely all bleed into one another.

Creative Goals:
Read 5 Books
Write 4 Times a Week
Create Something Every Day
Take a Class

Health Goals:
Daniel Fast
Work Out 4 Times a Week
No Alcohol
No Meat

Best Life Goals:
No TV
Buy Nothing (with the exception of groceries)
Meditate on Scripture Every Day
Give Something Away Every Day

You'll notice that some of these involve taking something out of my routine, while others involve adding something in. Personally, I have always found adding something to my life is more difficult than cutting something out, but I'll keep you all up to date on how each of these goes! So far, here's what I've done:

January - Read 5 Books
I totally didn't hit my goal. Five books shouldn't be that hard to make happen, especially considering I have a 30 minute train commute every morning and evening. I think I severely overestimated how much reading I could get done on the vacation we took in January and severely underestimated how distracted I am on the train every day, which left me with only 3.5 books read over the course of the month. I'm going to try again on this one, maybe the month I cut out TV since clearly I'll need something to fill my time with.

February - No Alcohol
This is a funny one--when I lived in Florida I rarely drank, maybe once a week. But welcome to NYC where apartments are small so people hang out at bars instead. At one point last year I realized I had enjoyed a social drink every night for a week. I want to cut down on that dramatically this year, so going cold turkey this month was a way to start. It hasn't turned out to be that difficult, I'm sure that's due at least partially to having the flu for a week and then was being in recovery mode for another week. You'll also notice I chose the shortest month for this one. Because #redwine.

The plan for March is No Meat so we'll see how that goes for this farm raised carnivore. I would love to have a community of folks to commiserate with/encourage in our resolutions so please tell me what you've resolved to make happen in 2017 and let me know if you'd like to join me on any of my super adorable mini-resolutions! (See, don't they sound super festive when we call them minis and talk about them like they're puppies? I think so.)

Love, Precious Flowers