This time last year, I selected the word deliberate as my 2021 theme. Looking back, my thoughts about 2021 aren’t that different from what I want to do in 2022: “I won’t just happen to read more books, or cook new recipes, or have date nights, or not have to work weekends.” My thought a year ago was that I just needed to get organized and alter my priorities and choose my activities more wisely. Honestly, that’s my thought most years.
2021 ended up being a much more difficult year than I expected. We spent the spring balancing teaching from home while parenting with various levels of daycare availability. Brian and I were sent back to classrooms for in-person teaching for the last few weeks of the school year. The summer felt very busy and I struggled to feel like I was able to carve out any time for myself. This fall was overwhelming professionally as I moved to a new classroom and started teaching a course I’d previously only taught remotely. My students were teens who had barely been in a classroom in the previous 18 months. Amongst all that, my son was hospitalized twice with respiratory infections not related to covid. A year ago I might have said that I just needed to try harder, but looking back I know I was doing the best I could in the midst of a difficult situation. I didn’t have the mental or emotional capacity to do anything besides the bare minimum. Everything else fell to the wayside. We made it through 2021, but it wasn’t the year I had hoped overall.
But lately, I’ve been feeling better about my ability to do what I value. I’ve been increasingly missing my old activities and hobbies while simultaneously finding time to do them. Being on winter break likely has something to do with this, but I’ve also gotten ahead in my lesson planning and my children have been able to rely less on my supervision. Every stage of parenting requires realignment of expectations and systems, but I think Brian and I are finding cracking the code on this phase.
Lots of folks (though seemingly less this year?) embrace a “new year, new me” mantra as part of their resolution. I’m hoping 2022 is more “new year, old me”.
I don’t really want to start anything new, I want to resume my old activities. I definitely want to get back to the things that used to be cornerstones in my life but have been pushed aside over the past 2 years for a variety of reasons. These habits are on the verge of not being part of my life anymore, but they’re important to me and I want to get back to them.
Some of the things I want to resume this year:
- posting here more regularly
- making my own bread
- writing menu plans
- reading or listening to the Bible
- reading for pleasure
- working out
I’m not going to put specific quantities on any of these activities. I just want to do more of them in 2022 than I did in 2021. It’s a low bar.
