Do you do a word of the year? Goals? Intentions? Historically I’ve enjoyed goals. It’s nice having something to shoot for, even if I fall short on some. I tend to get really jazzed up on new year energy, gutting all my cabinets and geeking out over deep cleans of closets and drawers. Though for some reason this year, I don’t feel as hyper-focused on specific SMART goals or home organization.

It’s certainly not because my house is perfectly organized. In fact, one of my personal goals this year is to sell a lot of items we don’t use anymore because I don’t think it’s my lack of storage systems, but rather my excess of stuff causing the issue.

I’m wondering if my shift of focus is because there are a lot of up in the air “plans” this year, which feels like being in a holding pattern while full of anticipation. Whatever the reason, a lot of my personal goals are more fluid this year as I am leaving plenty of margin for flexibility. I kept giving it another day with my reflection and planning to see if inspiration to go all out would arise, but alas, my energy going into 2023 feels calm and expectant. So I’m embracing it.

Last week David and I had our annual State of the Family date night. You know how much we love that! We combed through our current financial standing, investments, net worth, income streams, plans for the year, and more. We talked about professional goals, personal goals, marital goals, family goals, and travel goals. Though some things we’ll figure out as we go, it helped build the positive energy for the year to come.

Blog Goals

• Continue journal style posting as a majority of posts
• Incorporate 3-4 topical posts a month and create content on the same topic to share across social media platforms (IG, FB, & Tiktok)
• 50 minutes each week of Amazon Lives
• Revamp monthly newsletter
• Get comfortable using the real camera again and take better photos
• Stay consistent with sharing cooking dinner on IG every night, a new thing I started last year that seems to be well received (even in workout clothes and amature methods and all!)
• Serve more, help more, share more

Personal Goals

• New homeschool structure (more on that in another post)
• Continue with daily morning sniffaris with Finley
• More reading aloud with the kids
• Less alcohol
• Sell stuff weekly on FB marketplace or give it away
• Catch up on family albums
• Continue to prioritize my family’s health through exercise, outside time, sleep, mental and emotional balance, connection, and cooking. It can feel like a full time job, but it’s a place I’ll happily spend my time, as it’s where all my passion lies, pouring into my family’s wellbeing.

2023 Travel

Travel is a big focus of ours this year. I turn 40 and the kids are 11 and 8. I jokingly say I can feel my mid-life crisis creeping in, but in all sincerity, I do feel more hellbent on making some of our bigger dreams happen. A lot of them center around traveling together. We have three trips on the books for 2023 so far:

• Skiing in Jackson Hold (collaboration)
• Returning to the BVIs on a sailing charter with The Moorings (collaboration)
• A week in Maine and visiting Acadia (with my family)

I’m seriously GIDDY about all three of them and want to put some thought into how to not only sharing our personal experience, but also how to best formulate content that would be helpful in sharing the how-tos, lessons learned, detailed looks, and top recommendations from our travels.

I think 2023 will be a year of hard work, challenges, risks, and pay offs. I’m very much looking forward to taking it on and sharing it with you.

What hopes, dreams, goals, aspirations do you have for 2023?