New years resolutions

Tags

life goals, married life, mom life, new year resolution, refocused, relocated

In my post last week I talked about how I want to refocus myself during the start of the next chapter of our lives. Me being the planner addict that I am, I want to set up some reasonable goals to keep myself on track for these things.

1. Quality time with loved ones
2. Inner peace
3. Professional

These are some broad areas of my life that I would like to spend some time focusing on. I listed them in order of what is most important for me.

Quality time with loved ones

The thing that is most important for me is fostering quality time with my family. For the last several years my husband worked 6 days a week, 60 hours a week. I ran the house, worked part time, was a full time student, all while juggling fertility treatments. The hustle in our house was on. Then we set our goals to move our life somewhere new. We did all of that but now I would really like to be able to just sit back and enjoy life. Enjoy the time with my kids doing things that they will remember forever. Like playing on the ground with them, cooking with them, going on walks and playing games at dinner. The little things that will stick out in their heads as what family life looked like. I want to be part of that, I want to be focused on strengthening our bonds. In this goal I am going to try to put the phone down more except for taking the pics to save for my memories.

Inner Peace

I used to feel like a calm, centered, individual. Life changed a lot of that. I’m not the naïve twenty something year old I was pre marriage and pre infertility. Somewhere in the hustle of life I became a tense and anxious person. At times I’m way to defensive and either unfocused or hyper focused and I feel out of balance. Since we moved I have felt drastically more like my old self but I’m still quick to react and have to really focus myself. In those moments that I feel like the calm me I feel better, I feel happier. I want more of that. In this goal I plan to do more things that help me feel calm and focused.

Professional

I’m starting to feel more comfortable in my profession. I am starting to feel more confident in my abilities. I want to continue to learn my grade level and hopefully move towards a more organized and well laid out classroom. I want to focus on organizing my centers and my small group intervention sessions. I am hoping to find my groove with those things to help me really get my students to grow and thrive. I am even considering making a few teacher tools and selling them on a teacher resource site but I will talk more about that later.

I have already been working on several of these things but to make that full focused decision to say it’s okay to not hurry up and rush back into college and instead to focus on life and the important things. We worked so hard to grow our family and to move somewhere that we could be okay with forever in. We have changed our lives and hopefully plan to continue to move forward in a positive direction.

I am excited to see where my husbands change of career takes him. I am excited to watch my kids grow. I am excited to focus on all the relationships that are so meaningful to me. I am excited to not feel the pressure of college or the rush of the city. To feel closer to nature, closer to my children and closer to my husband.

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Reflective and hopeful

Tags

couple goals, family, family goals, life goals, love, refocusing the soul, soul

This year has been a whirlwind when I stop to think about it my head spins. I am so excited about where we are now. I am so happy that we are together in a new place to start a new beginning. IT has been a lot though. SO many things over the 8 years have been a lot but I really feel like this next year is going to be a wonderful year. I can feel it. I can’t explain it but I am really excited and hopeful about the next year.

Early this year we completely uprooted our lives. My husband sold his business and decided to take the plunge into a new career path. He needs the time and ability to focus on it all. We also need a trustworthy person to be at home raising our daughter while I’m at work. Once she reaches kindergarten that will be easier because we will be on the same schedule and she will be at my job site with me. He how ever will hopefully continue to be working from home fulltime.

We found a new house 500 miles away in a rural mountain town and planted new roots. For so many many years we have been working out assess off to reach our dreams. There have been more than a few hiccups along the way. Here we are though. We grew our family through our own struggles of infertility. I completed a 4 year college degree at the same time we faced our struggles. Rob was working hard at his business and we had 2 teenage boys to raise through it all. The last 8 years have been wonderful and difficult all at the same time. Things have been in constant movement forward. Things have been strenuous and joyous. We have grieved and we have loved so deeply all at the same time. It has been a hard road, but so many amazing beautiful memories were made.

Parts of me regret not living more in the moment enjoying my older boys even more before they grew up and left the house. Having Adin graduate and move out this year has been emotionally difficult. Really difficult. I look at everything we have achieved and I am so happy, it was a lot of stressed, planning, pushing, working, and reward. I strongly recommend hard work towards goals.

This year my goals are going to be a little less ambitious. I am not trying to get through a degree or move us in a drastic new life. No, this time my goal is me and my family. This year and maybe next I am going to focus on us. Not pushing us somewhere new but instead embracing us. Enjoying where we are, getting to really see my children for them. Listening and putting energy and love into my relationship with my husband. This year I want to strengthen my soul. I want to strength my relationships with the people that I love so much.

I still plan to go back to college and get my Masters degree. I am starting to change my plans once more and I am thinking of possibly getting a smaller field specific degree. Something to quickly move me up the pay bracket and yet won’t take years and years and a drastic amount of my life and attention away from my children. I want more memories, more of each other. I want to enjoy everything that we have worked so hard for. I want to appreciate all of our sacrifices and honor them by giving now and today my all.

Big conversations = big decisions

Tags

career, healthy marraige, ivf, life after infertility, life goals, married life, mom life, moving the family, relationship goals, relocating

Me and the hubster have been debating for a while about staying for another year, or leaving after this school year is up. Today we were just having a normal conversation when it came up and I told him that maybe we should just start putting in applications come this spring so that we can aim to move over the summer.

It is exciting and terrifying. I am slightly in shock even though we have been talking forever about it. It has been like yeah we can move this year or next no big deal, but now it is like yep lets do the damn thing, lets start looking and making plans. I am excited and terrified about it. Like wow lets do it, but I’m also nervous about it. It is going to be stressful to look for job and a house and hope for financial stability. IDK whether waiting is smarter or not. I worry about the weight of it all but the idea of moving is super exciting. I really hope that we fall in love with somewhere and it’s just move n done kinda thing. I don’t want to have to move around a bunch. I want to move somewhere and be there and happy for the next 30 years, the unknown scares me. Being where we are does not make us happy either. In fact, it is the one big thing we are not happy about is our current location.

IT seems scary though to take that risk and leave. I have been here for 20 years, I moved away twice but each time was only 6 months and then I moved back. I don’t want to move back here again this time. I am also married and stable this time where as the last 2 times I was not. I am just sitting here excitedly spinning about this. I can’t believe we both said yes lets try to do it this year. Both of us with the intentions of moving forward is exciting it means things will definitely happen. Well as long as I can get a job. We are not moving or looking for houses or anything until I have a contract in hand. The nice thing is if we stay in state then I won’t have to worry about getting my state teaching lic. If we move I will need that and contract in hand before we could sell our house and move but the fact that we are going to try is exciting.

So we will see, we may decide we hate location green and location family is small enough that if the hiring pool is too small my wants might not matter. I will need to know by the end of May to keep my contract active. Who knows, there is a lot of time that will go by, a lot of projects that need to get done and a lot of steps to complete before we can move. It is exciting and scary. So much to be done.

Oh boy. Here we go. 3 days into 2022 and we are already lining up for a busy ass year. There is always the COVID policy of no plan is actually set, but otherwise it looks like it is going to be a busy and crazy new year. Hopefully by next school year I will be teaching in different district.

What are your thoughts would you chose a location that matched a picture in your head or would you choose to be near family?