The New Year has always felt special, and now, it’s even more special to me. It is the day I became a mother. It’s my little boy’s birthday. Like me, he is a night baby, he was born 8 minutes before my own birth time.
Every mother has their birth story, and still, mine is hard to process. It was a hard, dark time. But here I am, a year ahead and that year behind me. It’s time to start fresh.
Resolution — that word never felt right to me. I love to harness this time because of the collective motivation and momentum to change and shift the way we do things, to start fresh. It’s like you can hop on a jet stream and let it carry you. As an Aries, this is the energy we live for.
My intentions this year feel good and simple and my goal is not to add more (ok I do have a few new additions to my life!), but to decrease and maximize what I already have. Quality over quantity. This is a mix of personal and work related intentions and goals. I don’t really separate the two, because so much of my work life is deeply intertwined with my personal life. Like two vines twisting up and growing together.
It’s a less is more year.
So here’s what I am setting my sights on this year:
Begin and finish one pleasure book a month
Committing to staying accountable with my no-buy year for 2024.
A 25 minute walk 6 times a week (I already do this, and I want to maintain it).
Committing to An Herbalist’s Notebook and providing quality writing, so that I may grow my readership
Prioritizing joy and doing what makes me feel good. If I ignore that dread feeling in my gut that something is not right for me, forcing it to work only makes things worse. It’s ok to quit.
Getting back to my soap making art, sharing one soap each season of the year that is very slowly and intentionally made with local ingredients
Continued prioritization of tending to my health in holistic ways
Starting my prerequisites for Nursing school, fall term
Starting my first in the ground home garden — herbs and vegetables
Incorporating more movement in my life, as inspired by Katy Bowman of Nutritious Movement (Grow Wild is a great book if you’ve got kiddos!)
And that’s it. The newest things for me are gardening and starting school. Everything else is either already on my radar, accessible or challenging my status quo in ways that require less of me (isn’t it wild how that can be hard for us?).
I’m really looking forward to exploring some of these things. School sounds intimidating, my no-buy is increasingly feeling intimidating! And my ADHD brain is always afraid of burnout when I push it too hard.
Let’s add: 11. Practice pacing myself.
Tell me one of your goals or intentions for this year! When we share, we put it out into the energetic webs of the world — and from my experience, things really move and happen when we do that.
Of course, there will be a check-in at the end of the year to see how these things went. I’m so curious about what my future self will do!
I have felt the same desires in my own life. Taking better care of myself by making sure I am okay first would be a high priority on my list of resolutions as selfish as that sounds. I have a tendency to put all of my energy into making sure everyone else is ok, meanwhile running my own self into the ground.
I’m loving your energy, and your courage to do whatever it takes to live a better life🤍 it’s been contagious and I am grateful for your outspokenness and venerability! Love just being able to take a minute to read what’s on your mind. Take care Britton!!
Decreasing and maximizing what I already have really soaked in for me. Thank you for that. My intentions are nurture and nourish both myself and then my partner. You also gave me some great ideas there - I’ve been meaning to read more for pleasure.