Whew! What a whirlwind of a year. First, I am going to start this off, not with a new years resolution, but with an intentional plan. I looked back over the last few years December and January posts and saw a bit of a trend in what I was writing. Busy…always busy. Unfortunately, as I sit here writing, I realize I haven’t written many posts, with 8 sitting in the drafts folder that I never got to, because…as you guessed it, I have been very busy. And I hate that.

I don’t glorify the thought of being busy. In fact, I would like to slow down more, spend more time going slow and enjoying the moments. There is however some moments of this as I look back on 2024. Adding a pool to the back yard helped slow down some moments. It gave Kurt and I some really great time together, enjoying the back yard we have built, but also time to sit and read and not have plans or to-do lists. I looked at my StoryGraph chart and you can certainly see that there was a large spike in reading during the pool months. Kurt even read a few books.

Having a temporary sitting area by the pool gave us a view of the garden and the walls we have built. It was wonderful to be able to enjoy the view of that from the seating area or while staving off the heat of summer in the pool. I do have to say that a pool surrounded by a garden is a beautiful site and atmosphere. I’m looking forward to the permanent seating area we are going to build in the spring, with large, comfortable outdoor couches and chairs for relaxing on. There will be a bit of work to get there, but it will absolutely be worth it once it is complete.

What I did miss out on though was the fall garden. I enjoyed it and many of the fruits and vegetables we ate throughout the main growing season (June – October), however for the main harvests this year, I feel like I missed out on the enjoyment of it. Sure, it is a lot of work, but we are always so proud of how much we manage to grow, what we are able to share with friends and family, and watching the garden change throughout the year.

Due to taking on too much work this fall, I feel like I rushed through the harvests and managed the bare minimum with some of the food we produced. I didn’t even get our comparisons finished this year. I missed the October post which shows all the final numbers for that month and the overall numbers for the years. There are often reflections and plans for the next year. I only just finished tracking all the harvest photos & weights at the end of November. And that was just to get the numbers into our spreadsheet, never mind reflecting!

I will likely share that post along with planning posts in the new year.

I also missed out on time with Kurt and Basil, as well as my family and friends. I fell into a routine of needing to go to my home office after dinners to finish instructional work. I missed doing more drives to look at the fall leaves, or renting a cabin in the woods for a crisp fall weekend. Kurt got into gold panning, and on a day when we traveled a few hours away to explore a gold pan reserve, I sat in the car with my laptop and wrote lectures while he enjoyed the time spent by the river. Granted, I had a great view from the car, but looking back I would have rather been down at the river, looking for rocks, walking Basil or getting Kurt to teach me about gold panning. There are so many things I wanted to do this fall and somehow I went from September to December with so very little time for those things.

I didn’t get as much time in the shop this fall either. I managed some time, but only enough to get some craft fair items ready for the season. And even those, I was only able to focus on a few key things, which ended up working out. Regardless, I missed getting to experiment with new projects and truly enjoy my time creating in the shop.

So this is my plan, make more time for the hobbies and things I love doing. I’m not saying that I am going to drop most things to make more time, but I am going to be much more selective about what I take on so that I have more time for the things I miss.

So how is this “plan” not a resolution? Great question. Resolutions are things we say we are going to do but rarely follow through for the full year. I have a large list of resolutions that never fully panned out for a full year. This plan will differ from a resolution as I will hold myself accountable for making time for the fun stuff. The things that I want to do rather than letting the things I have to do get out of hand from taking on too much.

Some ways I will follow through with this is to be more firm with myself in what I am willing to do. I know I am not willing to take on as much this coming year as I did in 2024. This will result in me doing something that often makes me uncomfortable, which is saying no. I’m not going to be throwing “no’s” out there all the time, but like I said, I am going to be more selective and really think new projects or opportunities through to make sure I am being realistic with the time it will take away from all the things I want to do.

The first step in my plan? Cross country skiing. Yep, I love it and in the past few years, we have hardly done it! Part of it was when we got Berkley, we couldn’t take a puppy. But we had no excuse last year, we just didn’t go much and I ended up taking on more work. So far, I have already been 8 times! Moving into the new year, we have decided to fall back into our old habit of meeting up with my parents every Wednesday after work to head for a ski. Its great to make plans like that because then we can’t back out of going without the chance of teasing and ridicule! Hahaha. We are also going to go at least once every weekend.

I truly hope this stays as a plan and doesn’t become a resolution I don’t follow through on.