My 2016 guideposts
There’s something wonderful about our girl’s birthday lining up fairly neatly with a new year – it’s allowing me to think about not only what I want my 2016 to look like, but what I want her first year of life, and our first year as a family of three, to look like. Longtime readers will know that I am not big on setting yearly goals. I love to set monthly goals, and have used a daily goal system in the past. In 2015 I focused on cultivating the fruits of the spirit. Other than that, I tend to work with a longer time horizon, as with my ongoing 60 Before 30 project. But 2016 seemed to call for a year-long structure. And though I didn’t necessarily want to set goals, per se (my long-term goal focus will still be squarely on 60 Before 30!), I loved the idea of having something to measure myself against throughout the next twelve months – a touchstone to refer back to in this year that has the potential to be tumultuous. Because you know, the one thing people love to tell you about kids is that they will change your life in ways you could never imagine. And while I welcome that, I also don’t want to start at zero on January 15. I want to protect and preserve the best parts of the life John and I have built together over the last ten years while welcoming the changes that will inevitably come. So, knowing that this Big Change has the potential to throw us off track and derail the progress we’ve made, I wanted to establish guideposts that I could look to to remind myself of what matters most to us as we integrate our girl into our life over the