Welcome, 2017

Well, sugarplums, 2016 has come to an end, and I’m not terribly sad to see it gone. It feels like every celebrity has passed away, and the only one still standing is now our President-Elect.

I do need to acknowledge that on a personal level, the year was good to us. Walter celebrated his first birthday in the Spring, and I think I am finally at a point where I’m *sort of* convinced I can *maybe* be a decent parent and raise him right. (Honestly, though, who knows?) I was fortunate enough to take the first steps into a new (teaching) career, and Andy continues to kill it in his role at work and with his marathon running. Plus, my brother moved to Austin in early Fall, and it’s been lovely to see him more often.

And now it’s the beginning of a new year, so this is the requisite blog post where I tell the four of you reading this what my goals and resolutions are; then, I make a really bold statement about blogging much more this year than I ever have. (Soon it will be June and time for my subsequent blog post. It’s nice to have traditions, isn’t it?)

On Monday, I opened up an extra notebook I had laying around and jotted down a few goals for myself in 2017. Nothing crazy, and all fell in the realm of taking better care of myself, my family, and my home – and doing so moderately, over time, with small steps focused on a bigger outcome. But then something funny happened. Without much thought, I began writing this Bridget-Jones's-Diary-type log of what I had done that day to address each of my goals. Instead of writing what I weighed in the morning and what I ate that day and how many “units” of alcohol I drank (Oh Bridget, you silly so-‘n-so!), my diary listed what type of exercise I completed, or what clutter I had removed from my house. I did the same thing the next day. And the next. And today, as well. We’ll see how long I can keep this up, but I admit there is something so gratifying about seeing these bits of progress in print, and I feel oddly accountable to myself to have something to record at the end of the day.

Until next time!

xoxo, Jenn