It’s never too late to start new!

Actually, I finished sketching up my plans and writing down my goals for 2013 a little while ago. I just needed to go over them again, soak them up and take time and energy to kind of really make them mine before I shared them on the internet.

But now it feels like things are falling in place, and I’ll try and show you what I’ve come up with.
It does feel fitting somehow to do this right after Imbolg which is also traditionally a holiday to meditate about what you want to grow in the time ahead. So here we go:

2013 has one big word/topic/theme, and that is COMMITMENT.

Commitment to goals, to plans, to life. This year I want to learn to jump right into things before inspiration and energy gets swept away by the winds of everyday life. To go on, step by step, and blindly trust my passions before destroying all the love with too much overthinking. I’ve been shy and reserved with a lot of things that I care for deeply, and this year I want to work on standing my ground for things that are important to me. Standing my ground against the world, but most importantly against myself and my eternal inner critique.

I did have some troubles ploughing a path through all the unfinished affairs from last year, dreams that I wasn’t quite sure were really mine, wishes and things that just had to be put in the back of the queue. It’s not always easy deciding what to concentrate your energies on. But if there’s something I’ve learned from last year it’s the power of focus and that I have to work with absolute resoluteness against my habit of drifting from one half-hearted project to the next.

So the first part of the work, the sighting and filtering and prioritising of things gave me a hard time and a heavy heart.

But I rewarded myself with making a big effort to focus all the sketching and scribbling and notebook pages and excel sheets into a pretty book with lots of colors and stickers and things that felt good for my soul.

So this year, I actually have a big and beautiful dream-and-plan-and-crazy-goals-journal.

It feels good to have everything nice and pretty in one place and whenever I feel my focus shift, I take some time to sit down and flick through it to stay on track.

I am also super impatient, but I can now see that in the first few weeks of this year, I have already accomplished quite some things and made steps towards a few of my big goals, and I’m constantly telling myself that I have 11 more months ahead and to be proud of the journey that I’m on.

So, for the list:

Health/Fitness
- Run a marathon: This is really a big big dream that I think I can accomplish this year. Since I’ve been sick for so long I’ve already decided I won’t make the ZüriMarathon in April, but there’s always a marathon to run somewhere, so I’m not worrying about that, at some time in 2013 I will run 42.1k!
- Do 20 consecutive pushups: I can do 10 right now but I want to work on my form as well as push it up (haha!) to double the number
- Do 5 unsupported pullups: Pullups are the coolest badass exercise, at the moment I can’t even do one, but I’ll get there!
- Change diet to 95%vegan: I’ve been easing into and experimenting with veganism for a long time now and I feel that this year I really want to make the commitment and be more strict with myself. I feel like I now have the know-how and experience to be able to live with my two cheat days a month and to only make exceptions when I’m in danger of starving.
- Regular yoga: I stopped doing yoga regularly when I came to Switzerland, there just wasn’t any time to learn and do it by myself. Enter universe: Since this year, my fitness studio offers a yoga lesson every Sunday afternoon and I’m so happy to get at least a weekly fix for a start. Regular is the word here, not more or a lot, so I’m quite happy with one session a week for now.

Life, work, relationships:
- Move to Scotland: Yup, this is gonna happen. Living the long distance thing seemed to work fine once we got used to it, but it’s been almost a year now and we realise just how much energy it takes and how we are growing more and more tired of all the missing and sadness. It’s been a hell of a time for both of us, learning about ourselves and our relationship at the same time, but this summer, we’ll be together again.
- Find a job: This is going to be a hard fight and to be honest, I’m super scared. I don’t know the English school system very well. It’s hard to get the feel of something like that through research on the internet. But I’m in contact with some people and I’m trying to get help wherever I can. Of course I’ll be happy to find anything that’ll pay my bills, but my dream would be to get into outdoor schooling again because I really miss it and it would be so cool to get more experience in nature teaching.
- Find a new home: Both Trev and me don’t really like the place he’s staying at right now, so we’re intending to get out of there asap and find something a bit more suitable. It’s hard to find nice places to rent in Britain and since we would love somewhere a bit out in the green and quiet but Trev works in the city, we’re preparing for a big, hard hunt. Wish us luck…

Money:
- Pay off my debts: My parents supported me when I couldn’t find work in France and even though they didn’t want me to (bless them), I wanted to be able to offer them to pay them back. I actually achieved that goal already. I also owe Trev some money though, it’s the same thing there – he doesn’t feel like I owe him, but I don’t like to think that I lived off his money without paying him back, so I’m trying to organise my finances so that I’ll be able to offer him the money.
- Support myself: Well, at the moment I am, but that’s geared towards finding a job in Glasgow until the end of the year. As I mentioned, I don’t feel comfortable being dependent, so even though we could probably live on Trev’s income for a while, I really don’t want this to happen again.

Art:
- Paint more: I know this is not very specific, so it’s not a good goal. But I have to see what works for me. At the moment I’m trying to paint something every weekend. This is really an area where I need to work on commitment very hard. I really do love painting a lot, but I get discouraged so easily. I’m trying hard to also do the work and not only create when it feels easy.
- Find a publisher for my children’s books: I loved to see the process of creating two books last year and I’m super proud and already have zig ideas for more stories… but there is another part to those projects and that is finding a way to release them into the world. I’ve considered self publishing, but it seems print on demand is just too expensive and I won’t ever have a chance to earn any money from it… So I’m taking the plunge and sending the manuscripts out to various publishers. It would really be a dream come true if I could find somebody who does that part of the job for me so that I could concentrate on creating.

Did you make any plans for this year? Isn’t it exciting? Do share!! <3