Twenty Eleven Goals

Happy New Year!  Let’s talk about goals, people…not resolutions. 

(Source)

Resolutions tend to make me feel guilty when I abandon them or they don’t get accomplished…whereas goals, those are something I can definitely work with/towards, and I feel like goals can be ongoing…whereas resolutions tend to make me feel a bit dead in the water.  It might just be semantics, but that mentality works for me, so without further ado, here are my goals for 2011!

For Myself:

*Read 100 books this year.  Lofty goal, yes, but I read all the time.  Hello, the title of this blog.  I think I can do it, as I have never actually tracked how many books I read, but I know it’s a shit-ton.

*Attend church every week unless we’re out of town.  This means even when the hubs is working some overtime on the weekend—it is ok to go to church by myself (I don’t do it that often).  I really want to deepen my faith this year, as sometimes I feel I am behind my “I-Went-To-Catholic-School-My-Entire-Education-Including-College” husband.  When we become parents, I want both of us to be knowledgeable about our faith and I want people to know me and us as a family as practicing Catholics/good Christians.

*Find something to volunteer for and start doing it.  Actually, multiple things.  We plan to get more involved at church (see below), but I also want to find a volunteer organization that really speaks to me.  I’ve been having trouble finding one, to be honest. 

*Run another half marathon.  And stick with the running and maybe run two of them!

*Set up a “30 Before 30” or a “101 in 1001” type list.  I turn 28 in a week and I think two years is a great time to set some awesome long-term ambitions up!

For Our Home:

*Clean out all of our closets, reorganize, and move items to storage.  This is a MUST DO and will be happening in the first month of the year.  Our little space is filled to the brim right now and quite frankly, it’s making me insane.

*Redecorate our entire apartment.  Honestly, it’s not that decorated to begin with, and since we got all these great gifts for the wedding, it’s really put a bug under our asses to get our house up to par for what we feel it should be:  something representative of two successful twenty-something professionals living in the downtown area. 

*Do a cookbook challenge, ala Tina of Carrots ‘N Cake.  Along the same lines, get better at meal planning and plan to cook at home at least three nights per week.

As A Couple:

*Triple our savings and pay down most debt.  Totally feasible, we just have to start doing it.

*Set up a specific date night and try at least one new restaurant a month.  I really want to get this going before we have children, so that a precedent for a night out for just the two of us is set.

*Explore our neighborhood more and really take advantage of our surroundings.  We live in an amazing neighborhood in the city of Milwaukee, and I feel like we don’t utilize the awesome-ness of it enough.  Whether it’s attending events or even just hitting up our awesome local market, we need to start doing it more, as we won’t live down here forever…and then we’ll become those suburbanites who come down here now that we love to hate. (Sorry, but it’s true.  PLEASE figure out where you’re going/parking/what you’re doing AHEAD of time instead of coming down here, and driving like an idiot at 10 mph through the neighborhood.  People LIVE here, you know.)

*Eat dinner at the table more often.  Right now, we eat every meal in front of the TV.  Not so good for establishing family habits, so I really want us to work on turning off the TV and eating together at the table more often.

*Become more active in our church.  There are so few young people who are active in our parish and the hubs and I would really like to be.

I have some blog/writing and fitness related goals, too, but I am hesitant to publish them as I don’t want to put undue pressure on myself by having those types of goals out there.  Needless to say, I think the goals listed here are all attainable and are ones that I actually look forward to accomplishing.  Bring it on, 2011…I know it’s going to be a great year!