One Little Word & New Year Resolutions

Each January for the past few years, Ali Edwards has encouraged her blog readers to pick a single word that sums up what they want for themselves in the coming year. For 2007 my word was POSSIBILITIES. For 2008, it was REINVENTION. For 2009... uh, I sort of forgot to pick one apparently. I had a two and a half month old so I decided to cut myself some slack on that one. I'm back on the wagon though, and have decided to pick one for this year. I've been thinking about it for the past few weeks, and one repeatedly came to mind over and over again:

Let's face it - I'm good at a whole lot of things without really being good at anything. For all the cookies and organizational projects in the world, I wouldn't be able get an actual paying job doing those things. Maybe I'm a pessimist, maybe I'm a pragmatist. Who can say? The fact of the matter is that my job is to be home and be a wife to my husband and a mother to my child, and I've decided that since that's what I'm doing, I'm going to rock this housewife business as hard as I possibly can. I'm want to be kinda like Martha Stewart, only hopefully with more sleep and less denim shirts. I want to be like June Cleaver, only less repressed.

Picture me, in pearls and an apron, baking cookies while the baby plays in the living room that has been dusted and vacuumed THAT DAY, while listening to Tool and Jay Z (dirty versions, please) on the computer.

Okay, maybe I won't go that far. You get the idea anyway.

Along those lines, what about New Year's Resolutions? Everyone is either posting them on their blogs, or being snots and posting why they think resolutions are so passe/for losers. Here's my take on the subject - other people's resolutions are their business. Basically, we make resolutions because we're trying to fix some sort of flaw in ourselves. I'm not going to go up to someone and be all like, HEY, TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK YOUR FLAWS ARE!!! It's none of my business. If, however, someone chooses to share their resolutions with me, well, that's a different matter entirely. I'm just not going to ask about them.

As for me, I don't make resolutions. I set goals. A resolution is a promise, an ultimatum. You break it, and well, you sure f'ed up, didn't you? A goal, on the other hand, is something that you consciously work toward over time. Sometimes you get sidetracked, sometimes you take a break, and sometimes you have setbacks, but it doesn't matter as long as you get back on your path and start pushing forward again. A goal takes your humanity into account. I like that.

So, for 2010 (whoa that is SO freaking weird to type, it sounds almost sci-fi and crap) here are my goals:

*I want to try and remember to call my child by his ACTUAL name instead of Bubba. It's so embarrassing when people start talking to "Sawyer" and he doesn't respond because he has no idea who "Sawyer" is!

*I want to try to eat less and move more. I will NOT be going on a diet. I decided I love food too much. I also will not be implementing a formal workout plan. Moving will involve cleaning house and taking the baby to the park, among other things.

*I want to quit making excuses and drag my lazy butt out of bed on Sundays to go to church.

*I want to pick one of my many cookbooks each month and make a new-never-tried-it-before recipe each week from it.

*I want to take catechism classes and do my first communion and confirmation.

*I want to eat out/eat processed foods less. We've been doing better about this than we were before, but we could do better.

*I want to get the baby baptized.

*I want to have people over for dinner more often. Maybe a board game after? Is that weird?

*I want to try one new thing (beside the cookbook goal) each month. It could be a new food, a new craft, a new life experience - it doesn't matter, as long as I've never done it before. Then, I have to blog about it.

*And of course, I want to work on incorporating domesticity into my life.

There are other little things too, but these are the ones on which I would really like to focus. Perhaps I'll reevaluate halfway through the year. We'll see how that goes.