New Year, So What

I generally stick to a MWF post schedule - generally - but I haven't posted in almost a week. Each time I've sat here, determined to write something to share with y'all, I get nothing. And it's my fault.

You see, everybody else out there is posting their resolutions goals for the new year (and calling them goals, eschewing the outmoded notion of 'new year's resolutions' for some strange reason). And while that's all well and good for them, I'm not there yet. I don't really know what my concrete goals are. Which makes me feel like I have nothing to say, this first week of January.

But I do know what I want, in a vague and unattainable but easily shaped and mapped out way. And it's not confined to a calendar year. The start date isn't January 1 and the cutoff isn't December 31. I'm talking an overhaul on my (our) modus operandi.  I want less so that I can have more. This is something I worked toward last year as we prepared to move, and have continued to do as I unpack all of our belongings and decide what stays and what goes.


What does that mean? Here are some of my thoughts.

I want less stuff, to have more space to live. Lower spending to have higher savings and maybe a house toward the end of the year. Less time wasted (hello, Google Reader) to give way to more time spent on things that matter (like reading, and drumming up some freelance work, and knitting, and walking the dogs an hour or so each day). Less time being 'busy' at home, where I am alone and isolated, and more time being OUT, doing things, seeing people, making friends.

Less pee in the carpet, so the smell is less bad, so that I can invite [more] people over. Rory, I'm looking at you.

I think my overall approach to this new year - this new life in Colorado, really - is to simply. Take a look around, boil everything down to the essentials, and free up the time, the space, the resources and the brain power, to do the things that really matter to us. We have so much stuff, so much going on, so many to-dos. How much of it actually matters? And what is it preventing us from having, or doing, or spending time on?

People. Eli and Rory. Giving. Becoming more self-reliant. Getting outdoors. Traveling around this new state of ours. For me, having high-quality yarn is big. As is learning how to grow things. And spending a lot of quiet time, learning who I am and letting Ashley come through, rather than studying up on how I 'should' be or look or do or decorate. (Brian might add sub-zero sleeping bags and trips to the lake and these things called Yak Tracks.)

I really want to get rid of the white noise in our lives, so to speak. Make more room for people, not stuff, as my sister-in-law aptly put it. That's what I want this year.

What about you?