I am not a new year’s resolution maker…not because I don’t believe in them, but because I usually fail at keeping resolutions.  I am, however, a master goal-setter.  Somehow in my feeble little brain, setting goals seems more positive, and more attainable, than making and keeping resolutions.  I realize that that is probably not rational thinking, but it works for me so I’m going with it.

I achieved many of my 2019 goals, but I’m not sure that happened in the best way.  Sometimes the feelings of success that often accompany reaching a goal are diminished when you discover that you have not been fully present throughout the entire process.  As 2019 came to an end, I found myself reflecting on this.  I realized that I need to be more conscious of the journey.  As a teacher, I am far more concerned about my students understand process than I am about them producing a product.  My professional self understands the importance of this way of approaching things.  I don’t know why my personal self doesn’t get it.

One of my favorite young reader books is The View from Saturday, the 1997 Newberry Award winner by E. L. Konigsburg.  The target uudience for this book is children ages 8-12; however, it speaks loudly to adults as well.  One of its sub-plots involves a child and his grandmother addressing envelopes using a fountain pen, an unfamiliar skill to most modern-day sixth graders.  The grandmother takes time to show the boy how to properly fill the pen’s ink chamber and blot off the extra ink.  In his excitement to get going on the addressing of envelopes, the goal, the child innocently asks when they will get started.  The grandmother explains to him that they have started, that proper preparation is the beginning.  With many of the things I did in 2019, I was like that child.  I wanted to get right to writing with the metaphorical fountain pen without first going through the foundational steps of doing so.

As I was surfing the Internet looking for gifts a few weeks before Christmas…without a list because I skipped that important first step…I stumbled upon the shirt I am wearing in the above photo.  I wasn’t supposed to be buying things for myself, but I had to have it.  In that moment, I wasn’t sure why I was drawn to it so strongly.  That has come to me over the past few days as the holiday excitement has subsided and I have had quiet moments to think.

The idea of making things – poetry, music, photos, knitted things, rambling non-fiction – comes fairly easily for me.  It was fairly clear to me that to create more seeable and touchable things was not the intended message on my impulse buy shirt.  As I dug deeply into my thoughts, I realized that that CREATE is urging me to create something not seen as a destination or as a tangible goal.  It’s message is that I need to create intentional time and space for the things that truly feed my soul.  Not just time and space to get them done, but time and space to be fully present from inception to completion in all that I undertake.  I like the fact that the word CREATE is on the back of the shirt.  It reminds me that sometimes you have to look behind you, to where you have been or to places that are more difficult to see, before you can move forward.

The major stumbling block to this goal is that my days feel like they are already jam-packed.  This means that to give more time to those things that truly make my heart happy, something or somethings are going to have to go.  On this first day of the new year, I have no idea what those things might be or how I ultimately will meet my 2020 goal.  The only thing about which I am certain right now is that I have to try.  I will keep my sights on that process and trust that the goal will be all that it should be.

So, here we go!

Welcome 2020…the year where I will run up the stairs one at a time rather than skipping every other one!