For the upcoming year, I’m changing up my goal setting a little bit. Rather than creating a list of resolutions or to-dos that I want to accomplish, I organized my thoughts by theme using my word for the year, ADVENTURE.

I am choosing this route for a few reasons, mostly that I don’t know what to expect from this coming year and I’d like the freedom to be flexible with goals as the year goes by. Last year I had a bunch of goals set, but by the end of January had decided to pursue my NTP certification (which was 100% not on the radar on January 1st).

Also, after experiencing getting in my own way in November, I decided that maybe what I don’t need this coming year is a somewhat arbitrary list of to dos, stated here in blogland just because it’s the new year. It should go without saying that the having a health baby, having a happy marriage, and having a somewhat well-adjusted doodle are my priorities for 2015, followed closely by continuing to improve the trifecta of good food, good sleep, and good movement that make me the best version of me (love, love this post from Melissa, which when I read it this week solidified my thoughts on goal setting for the year).

When I have a set of items listed out for me, I feel a strong urge to cross them off and it’s very hard for me to focus on the above. I have a tendency to value myself based on the number of to do list items I’ve accomplished. I’d really like to find ways to work on personal development and set goals without basing my self-worth on how far I’m getting down the list.

So what do I want to focus on in 2015 in addition to my priorities? And without measurable goals, at least for now?

Documenting the adventure(s). This is going to be such a fun year. Hard, but fun. And I want to remember it. I don’t have plans to keep a separate baby book for Martian as I will be using Project Life again to document our family’s year. The focus is on the stories, not the products and not on comparison to other’s pages. Getting our family stories, big and small, and photos out of my head and computer and into an album.

Expanding our culinary adventures. I’ve learned a lot about cooking since I started focusing on real food in 2011. However, I feel like I’m still stuck in a rut lately. I make the same recipes (when I bother to cook) and I haven’t learned anything new in a while. I also mentioned before that we are in a total out-of-the-house food rut. We eat take out from the same three restaurants and dine in at only a handful. A few things that I think will be fun to focus on this year around food are:

• Learning how to best cook various cuts of meat. I bought this cookbook to hopefully help me understand which methods work best for a given cut.
• Making homemade Indian food. My stomach has a very hard time with Indian food (I think because nearly every dish involves dairy in some way) but Greg and I both love it. Cooking it at home will hopefully allow me to swap out dairy and still satisfy our cravings. This will probably involve needing a cookbook as well.
• Eating less take out. Sure, it’s great to have some stand by options, but we’ve been doing a lot of it lately. I’d much rather spend that money on going out to real restaurants and enjoying more of an experience.
• Challenging myself to waste less food. Veggies are my issue and I hate that every week I am doing a fridge clean out and tossing at least something if not a lot of somethings.

Exploring my career adventure options. This is completely up in the air and I’m not at a place to talk about it yet, but I (gratefully) have several options in front of me and we will figure out which are best for our family. At a minimum I will be focusing on the baby for six months and I’m sure a lot of that time will be spent determine what my future holds, and once that is better known there will be goals aplenty. I’m going into this with a very open mind, which I’m quite proud of myself about. Typically I would want to know exactly what the plan looks like; for whatever reason I’m really open to seeing what happens with motherhood and career. I’ll take it.

Simplifying the adventure. In general, I’d really like to simplify a bit. It feels like we accumulated a lot of stuff this year, between style challenges, school, and the baby. We also had very little scheduled downtime. It was a great year, but I’d like to collect less and spend more time just being this year. I think unpaid maternity leave and a newborn will force us to do both! A few other things I’m thinking about are:

• Encouraging no grocery shopping weeks to actually use up what we have versus bringing in more.
• Creating capsule wardrobes from what I already have for each season and not participating in the style me challenges. I learned a ton this year and feel like I have a hold on my own style now, so it might be time to step away and branch out on my own. We’ll see how I feel in spring.
• Buying baby items when we need them. Of course, there are several things we need before baby. For everything else, I have a running mental list of suggestions from friends that I know I can buy should the need arise but that we don’t need to get just to have.
• Being more organized and neat around the house. I categorize this under simplifying because I feel much less overwhelmed when the house is tidy, yet it’s really hard for me to keep it that way. Definitely an area to improve on as we add a third human being to the picture this year.

And, because I can’t not measure at least something, I joined in on the “big things happen one day at a time” movement from Elise. My habit is “move” and the goal is to do some form of movement every day in 2015. It’s not about killing myself to get it done daily, it’s about being intentional about doing it as often as possible. I managed to talk myself out of checking off each day using a key as to what type of activity I did. While the nerd in me would love this data at the end of the year, the realist in me knows that will only make this harder to stick with and take away from the experience.

And now it’s time to bundle up and start the year with my favorite boys and a little movement. Happy and healthy 2015!