Goals for 2012

Do you ever feel peer pressure to conform to society's expectations? I'm feeling the pressure...Here it is -- January 2nd of the year of our Lord 2012, and I haven't decided on my New Year's resolutions. Actually, I'm not planning on making "resolutions", but I do want to cement my goals for 2012.

When I worked at Interactive Learning Systems (aka ILS) years ago, one of my responsibilities was to collate literally hundreds of pages in hundreds of notebooks on Career Development. As I collated the material, I read the material. What I remember the clearest is that if you write your goals down, you will be much more successful in achieving them.

If I'm going to make goals for 2012, why wouldn't I want to achieve them? So....this blog has begun (more on why a blog later) with my goals for 2012.

Goal #1: Finances -- last year while working with our budget, I began a process of keeping a weekly budget of our "discretionary" spending on our kitchen white board. Having the weekly total in front of us daily helped me control some of the impulse purchases. A few weeks ago, I reviewed the weeks of 2011. Unfortunately, we didn't achieve keeping under our weekly budget as often as I would have liked. Going into this project, I knew that purchasing supplies for a wedding in 2011 would definitely impact the weekly budgets. Most of the weeks that we didn't achieve our weekly goal, we were less than $100 over the budget, but continually being over the budget, as you may realize, isn't a good idea. So, we are going to work on this goal again. To aid our efforts in achieving this goal, I'm going to display on the wall in our study each week's budget that we were successful in staying within the budget. In addition, any money leftover is going to go toward debt reduction!! And, I'm going to keep a running total on this blog of how we are doing.

Goal #2: Spiritual -- consistency of spending time with my Saviour has always been a struggle for me (a similar story of most Christians). Part of my personal struggle is that "devotional" books, such as "Our Daily Bread," are not sufficient for me. They just don't challenge me nor cause me to mediate on the Word. So, I need to use other tools. I've used different tools over the years: "Reading Through the Bible in a Year", study books, journals, etc. Some work well...some don't work for me at all...some work for a time and then I need a new challenge. Bottom Line -- I need a new plan!!! So, as I sit here and contemplate what I should do for my Bible reading and how I can incorporate it in this blog, I reflect back on what tools I've used in the past that were most effective to my spiritual growth. I'm going to begin the new year reading Paul's epistles -- one chapter each week and then I'll reflect on this blog my thoughts, the impact of the Word, what I learned, what I struggled with, etc.

Goal #3: Personal --  in 2011, I got back on track with my personal goal of obtaining my bachelor's degree. I've decided firmly on a major (no more oscillating back & forth) and took three courses toward achieving this goal. In 2012, I'm going to continue taking courses toward this goal. I'm taking a beginning Journalism class & I've already purchased my books (so there's no going back!). Don't want to waste my money...rather Discover bonus money!!! I have some other personal goals, but I'm not ready to share them on this blog....I'm not ready to be that transparent with the world. (A girl's got to have some secrets, right?) And, I'm not going to write them down either....so much for the Career Development advice of writing down goals!

That's it for today....my next blog material will be on WHY a blog at all!

Happy New Year to any of you who stumble onto this blog!