I'm entirely too late to the game, but... Happy 2025! It may be June now, but when I originally typed this post, it was late December/early January. I love setting goals for the coming year! The older I've gotten, the less pressure I have felt to accomplish each and every one of my goals, but I like the act of setting intentions that this practice gives me. I find that it helps give me a focus and keeps me working towards the person I want to become. So without further ado, here are the goals that I initially set in the beginning of 2025! I'll mark how each goal is going so far too.
1. Get my nose pierced. This is one thing that I have continuously put off. I would really like it if 2025 would be the last year this goal appears on my list! I haven't accomplished this yet.
2. Get a second tattoo. I found that after getting my first tattoo, the experience wasn't nearly as intense as I thought it would be! And this is coming from someone who has anxiety in medical situations, particularly around needles. It's a very different experience. I have some ideas for what I'd like next, so it's just a matter of making a decision, saving up the money, and scheduling the appointment! I haven't done this yet and I'm not sure if it'll happen this year. I have other savings goals that have come up and that I'd like to prioritize!
3. Decorate for all of our holidays. I would really like this to include putting lights on my house, but I will likely need to emphasize non-light-related decor. I would like decorations to make it to the outside of my house, particularly in the front yard. I've done a little more of this this year!
4. Build a fairy garden. I want to create more points of interest around my yard and I think fairy gardens are so cute. This would be a fun way to get me outside but not create a ton of new responsibility for me at the same time. Maybe it would motivate me to keep my yard in order better. So far, I've gotten as far as putting a lot of things on my Amazon wishlist. This will definitely be a slow growth kind of project! I have just the spot to start this fairy garden.
5. Complete 1/2 started house projects. This is one way my ADHD manifests itself, if I'm being perfectly honest. I'm getting kind of sick of having mini-construction zones scattered about my space and having a garage filled with materials that I have acquired for the purpose of accomplishing these different projects around my house. I have a list of projects I have started but have not yet finished in my Google Keep list and I'd like to finish those projects this year if I possibly can! If I can't finish all of them, I would at least like to finish a majority of them. Finishing updating the electrical in my house is the main task that relies on another person, so I'll be flexible with that project, but I don't necessarily need someone else to help me with everything else on the list. I have what I need to put my back porch in order and I have built a tool storage space in my basement! Progress :)
6. Have regular hobby days each month and keep them sacred. Having crawled my way to winter break this school year and struggling with feeling so drained, I want to make sure I'm making time for hobbies. One way I can make sure that happens is scheduling in that time. I'm resolving to have days I mark on my calendar specifically to sit and do some of my hobbies. I haven't gone as far as to schedule entire days where I'm just focusing on hobbies, but I have definitely been finding ways to bring them to the forefront of my mind each day. Right now this looks like a standing to-do list that appears on each day of my bullet journal. So I'm at least checking in each day about my language practice, whether or not I've made time to read, journal and write my own fan fiction. It's progress :)
7. Take voice lessons and/or find an outlet for singing. My family can probably attest to this, but I have loved singing from a very young age. I was painfully shy about it as a kid if someone commented on my voice but honestly, the older I've gotten and since having a kid, I've become more open to singing in front of other people. So I want to find a way to lean into that discomfort some more and make public singing less scary for myself. I've found a glee club in my neighborhood that has 6-week sessions and I've "discovered" the community education theater that puts on musicals in the summer. Somehow I want to sing with other people and in a public way. It'll be a real challenge for me. I haven't made steps in this area yet, but I also know it's not too late to make steps!
8. Take up piano again. I was one of those weird kids that actually asked to take piano lessons when I was in... I believe high school. The problem is, even though I asked for them, I really hated practicing. I don't necessarily want to sign up for lessons again for fear of the same outcome happening (where I don't practice), but I do want to brush up on what I did learn and maybe even create some kind of regular practice on my own. I have been practicing music on Duolingo, which has been fun and has been good practice reading music again! But ultimately, it's not the same. So I will need to adjust my tactic somewhat.
9. Make writing retreats a regular practice. My cooperating teacher when I was doing my stint of student teaching is an awesome writer and researcher. I really look up to her and one of the things she does is go on writing retreats. Sometimes they're with other people who are also writers and sometimes they're alone, but she always makes a point to get away and just focus on her writing. I want to give this a try and make this something that I do. I already do retreats for scrapbooking, so why not extend this to weekends away to focus on writing? I think it would be good for me as I work to better cultivate this part of myself. I haven't made this a regular practice yet, but I still have half a year to make this happen! Even doing this once would be really nice.
10. Create a teaching portfolio. I have been putting this out into the universe more the longer I've been a teacher: I'm not going to be teaching at my same school forever. At the time of this writing, I have been teaching 9th grade for 8 years (if you include my semester of student teaching) and I've worked at my current school (small community, charter, Title I) for 7 1/2 years. Small communities make it really easy to jump in and work to make a noticeable difference, if you're willing to put in the work, and I pride myself on being as involved as I am in my school community. So I want to pull together the units I have planned as the sole 9th grade language arts teacher and showcase the projects I have brought to my community in the form of a portfolio that can be shared with schools I may approach in the future. That way they can see what I'm all about and show them what I'm like as an educator through the different experiences I've had and cultivated since my initial licensure. I will need to make a post about changing teaching positions at some point this year. I have had to recount a lot of my teaching experience verbally, but I have yet to create a digital space (even adding on to what I created in grad school) where I am sharing student work and things I've created over the years. I definitely want to start this sooner rather than later though. Once summer is over, it'll be harder to make time to do this little project.
11. Visit every small/local coffee shop in my area. I've already made a list and I'm so excited for this :) We moved into our house in 2022 and since then, I really haven't ventured out and around our neighborhood beyond where we get our necessities for the week. So I want to prioritize exploring! I like coffee and coffee shop environments, so why not start here and find my new favorite places? Some progress has been made! But realistically, I would be shocked if I finished this goal in one year.
12. Clock 300+ days on Duolingo (specifically in Spanish). I really fell off the Duolingo train/Spanish practice at the end of last year, but I want to keep learning and growing in this area. I have an opportunity with students who at the moment speak mostly Spanish and are getting used to being educated in English, so they are receiving instruction bilingually. I'm doing really well with this goal! I'll talk about it more in a separate post :)
13. Schedule regular dates with my wife and stick to them! We definitely don't have a routine with this. Dates have been rather far and few between. I think we need to find what works for us. Since the beginning of the year though, she planned and executed a date for us and that was really lovely :)
14. Create a cleaning routine that is manageable on a weekly basis. I have found a tool that makes tracking this easier, but a routine remains elusive so far.
