Welcome to the new year everyone!

I am feeling rusty as I try to settle down and begin writing after many weeks away from the blog.  The holidays were wonderful fun, but so very busy that it took several weeks to settle down and think about how I want this new year to go.  Rather push for Big Goals (I have fallen for Big Goals in so many years past) I tried to step back and think about which things I was doing that were working and which things I was doing that were not.  As I thought out ways to do more things that work, I tried to keep a firm grasp on the reality of how much I can actually change in a year.  Much inspiration came from this post on Mason-Dixon Knitting, part of their really excellent series on self-care.

First, I would like to focus on eating in, not out.  Last year it was all too easy to eat our sorrows, to get too busy and grab some quick takeout last minute.  This year, I would like to focus on keeping the kitchen a clean workspace (useable clean, not invite-Martha-Stewart-over clean), and to plan and cook practical meals, not the coolest-looking thing I see in Bon Appétit.  Also, eat a vegetable with every meal!  Granted, some nights we may be eating Annie’s boxed mac n’ cheese with peas, but we’ll try.  I am concerned about how much plastic enters the waste stream, so I’d like to buy in glass or make my own pantry staples where possible.  Stock, for instance, is a super-easy one to make, and cuts all those tetra paks out of the equation.  Orange juice is also easy, and for Arizonans, local in winter!

Next, schedule what I want to get done.  Does that sound like overkill? Up until now, my strategy for fittings in blog time has been telling myself “You can blog after the laundry is done.”  Guess when the laundry is done? NEVER I TELL YOU, NEVER!!! *insert hysterical laughter that trails off into tears*

Ahem.

Scheduling it is.

Next, I’d like to use MATHS to set practical knitting goals for the new year.  We all know I hate math and am pretty bad at it.  But I discovered when working with my stash spreadsheet at the end of last year that I can plug in the yardage of my current WIPs, divide that by the number of days left in a given period, and get the number of yards I need to knit each day to finish all the projects.  This is not rocket science, it just took me a while to figure out.  Like 19 years.  But now that I have made the connection, I can make a list of the things I want to knit this year, calculate the yardage, and how much I need to knit each day to get them knitted.  More on this in a future post, after I crunch the numbers.

Last but not least, I would like to be better at accepting that with a baby, sometimes you have to just scrap all your plans for the day and do whatever it takes to make him happy.

What are your goals for the year?  If you’ve had success achieving your goals in the past, I’d love to hear how you keep on track!