Goals for a New Year

Woohoo, 2015!  I am super excited to start a new year. This will be the first complete year since 2007 that I am not in school, and boy do I have plans.  Personally, I’m more of a goal person than a resolution person.  I feel goals are things to work towards and can be more sustainable, while resolutions are a sudden change and much harder to maintain.  When I first sat down to write this list I just kept adding all the little things I wanted to accomplish this year. Then I realized that I could make more general goals, and then break those goals down into smaller, short-term pieces. Plus, I can set little goals each month to work towards accomplishing the bigger, year goals. I have chosen some goals which I hope will make me a better, stronger person.  Here are the six goals I would like to accomplish in 2015:

1.       Become more self-sustaining/make things myself instead of buying them
2.       Run a 10K
3.       Run 480 miles in 2015
4.       Make this blog better
5.       Take good care of myself
6.       Start my own freelance grant writing business

Steps I will take in January to work towards these goals:

Goal 1: Learn one Crochet stitch. I have been knitting for a few years now, and would like to add to my fiber arts skills by learning to crochet.  Also, I will plan my Christmas gift projects in January in order to work on them all year long. 

Goal 2: I want to be able to run 6.2 miles or 10K before the end of this year.  Therefore, I will need to add on to my current running distant.  I run my longest distant during my weekend run, which currently is 3.6 miles.  In January I will increase that to 3.8 miles.  I know this is a very small increase, but after the disaster that was last year, I’m going to build up a little bit at a time.

Goal 3: If I run 40 miles per month, I will reach 480 miles by the end of the year. So, the step for this goal will hopefully stay the same each month.

Goal 4: I got a new camera for Christmas, and have started experimenting with it.  As part of that I want to learn how to use the photo editing software that came with it.  Also, I will start writing a brainstorming list of blog post topics.  Finally, I will write one post per week.

Goal 5: Try some new strength training workouts.  Clearly define my eating “guidelines.”  (More to come on this later.) Do not drink until January 30^th (my birthday).  I actually started this the day after Christmas, and it has been going well so far. 

Goal 6: This one is scary, but also very exciting. Work on my resume.  Work on improving my writing and editing skills.  Research how to start my own business.

To start the year off right, a new batch of ketchup!