goals – My Time to Bloom

Soft

I love every word of this. It matches my mood perfectly. I feel reflective, contemplative. I want to ponder the lessons and opportunities presented to me from the past year, but without chastisement, without judging where I think I should be now, and without grand, sweeping vows for the new year.

That’s not to say I don’t have goals for 2026. I certainly do. But this year, something is different. I strive to enter 2026 from a position of peace, with a positive mentality, a focus on love and spirituality and family and simply becoming a better version of me: for me, for my husband, for my stepkids, all my loved ones.

Soft is something I used to actively avoid. I saw it as weak, ineffective. If I was going to do something, then the only way to do it was balls-to-the-wall, full speed ahead, with no room for setbacks or slowing down or flexibility. In hindsight, it shouldn’t be a surprise that that sort of approach has led to a lot of self-doubt, disappointment, frustration, and slipping back into bad habits. It’s not a sustainable mentality.

Usually by this time, I have written down a list of New Year resolutions, and my planner would already be full of next steps, to-do items, tasks to be completed. My need to have everything perfectly organized and planned down to every tiny detail would be in overdrive.

I just feel different this year. I don’t feel like I need to “fix” anything about myself. There are areas I want to improve, sure, but I am done with the attitude that there are things that are wrong that need to be corrected, or that I need to put anything on hold until I achieve a certain goal. I guess I just don’t want to be so hard on myself anymore, simple as that.

So, I am ending 2025 with a softness. Clarity. Peace. Simplicity. Gentle introspection. I want to leave anything that interferes with that where it belongs: far, far behind me.

Pretty Damn Good

I typically skip over quotes like this. I call them rah-rah-girl-power quotes and usually find them annoying, at best. But this one felt personal. This year has been a lot of work, a lot of clean-up, a lot of introspection, and now I am finally reaping the benefits. I look better. I feel better. I am happier.

After facing and conquering some of the emotional hurdles that have held me back since my mom died, I feel so much more gratitude and peace. A lot of people never battle their demons, and they spend the rest of their life paying the price for it. It’s exhausting, but worth it. After climbing that treacherous mountain, well, all of my other goals seems so much more doable now in comparison.

Am I perfect? Hell no. The beauty is, I know that. I accept that. And I am more than okay with that, because I had the honesty and strength to pinpoint, examine, and release the parts of me that had to go, for me to be happier. So, no angel wings here, but I do have a smile, love, a sense of accomplishment, and excitement for my future. I’d say that is doing pretty damn good.

Party for Two

The first time I saw this quote, I saved it to my phone. It’s been there since early this year, long before I made my new start to take better care of myself. There are many reasons I wanted to lose weight and get healthy again, and undeniably, one of the biggest reasons was to make my husband proud of me for doing it.

Thing is, though, he was never disappointed in me to start with. Naturally, he was worried about my health, and he didn’t like the toll that gaining weight had taken on my self-esteem and attitude about myself. He told me he would not tolerate anyone talking bad about me, including me. That meant a lot to me and stayed with me.

My husband has watched me lace up my sneakers, trudge off to workouts I didn’t want to do, ice my knee when my body wasn’t quite ready for all this yet, weigh in each week, smiling some weeks and ready to smash the scale on others. He has been there from the “I think I need to make some changes” stage to the “Hot damn, baby, these jeans fit!” stage, and each stop in between.

And he has never made me feel like I am less than beautiful and sexy to him. Even when I couldn’t stand to look in the mirror at myself, even when pounds kept creeping on, he believed in me, saw something I couldn’t see anymore. I lost faith in myself at some point, but he never did, and because of that, I was able to shakily get back on my feet one more time and whisper, “Let’s try again.”

I am grateful for my husband. Every day, he gives me new reasons to love him even more. Reaching my goal has never been a one-woman show or a solitary celebration. He has been my biggest supporter every step of the way, reminding me of exactly what I am capable of, so this is definitely a much-deserved party for two.

Let’s Take a Break!

Blame it on the most wonderful, beautiful time of year being right around the corner (fall!) Or blame it on me just being in a seriously good mood today. But I simply can’t concentrate at work today, so I am taking a break to do anything but concentrate on work. Take a break with me, you lawless rebel!

I have so much bouncing around in my head. I adore fall and then all the holiday seasons, so I have started checking out some festivals and events for the rest of the year, and jotting them down on my calendar so I don’t overbook us like I have done in the past (sorry, Husband Guy). I want to strike a balance between quiet, cozy time at home but celebrating all the seasons too.

I also have Christmas shopping on my mind. I start very early, over the summer, so a lot of my shopping is finished already, but I don’t have much for my husband yet. I have some ideas scribbled down, though, and I will pay attention to things he looks at while we are shopping or things that he mentions between now and Christmas.

One of the most rewarding personal changes for me this year has been shifting my mindset to stay laser-focused on what really matters to me: my husband, my home, the kids, my peace, our happiness. I have a limited number of days on Earth and don’t want to waste a single moment on anything or anyone that does not add value, peace, or joy to my life. It’s amazing how much more you can get done, and how much happier you can be, when you slam the door on all the rubbish and leave it outside to be miserable on its own.

Well, there are about 140 days left in this year. Sure, the larger part of this year is behind us, but there are 19 weeks and 6 days stretched out ahead of us. What do you intend to do with them?

Starting Now

I can be my own worst enemy at times. After a knee injury and then two very unpleasant rounds of antibiotics sidelined me for about three weeks, I am just now working my way back to any semblance of my routine, and it’s a struggle.

You would think I could muster up some grace for myself, considering the injury and illness were not my fault, and certainly not much fun. Instead, I have allowed my frustration and disappointment to get the best of me. This has pushed my goal deadlines back by several weeks, and my excitement has turned to aggravation, worry that I won’t reach my goals at all, and then heaps and heaps of self-blame and anger.

Yeah, it’s as delightful as it sounds. I tell myself how irrational it is to be mad at myself for something I couldn’t possibly control, but my inner critic is relentless and harsh as hell. The problem is, it’s making it very difficult to get back onto my feet. How do I move forward, when I keep shoving myself back down into the dirt?

Last night, I decided to talk to my husband about it. He is the most honest and straightforward person I know. He doesn’t believe in sugarcoating the truth, and it’s one of the many, many things I love about him. I know that any words of wisdom from him come straight from his heart.

I was glad that I opened up to him. We talked for a good while, and he gave me a healthy dose of tough love mixed with encouragement and compassion, exactly what I needed. He said he didn’t know why I am so tough on myself, but that he wished he could change that, and that he wished he could replace that negative voice in my head with his, telling me how beautiful and strong I am, instead of tearing myself down.

So, starting right now, I am committing to this promise to him, and to myself: that I will stand back up, brush myself off, acknowledge that the setback has slowed me down and delayed the finish line for some of my goals, but that I am absolutely going to move forward again, take good care of myself, and get back to work.

Not tomorrow. Not next week. Now.

For me. For him. For us.