New Years Resolutions: 2019

Happy New Year!

2018 has been an incredible year for me.  It's been a year of finding my stride and many adventures.  My overall goal in 2018 was to find balance and while I haven't gotten there 100% (and really, who takes only a year to solve one of their greatest problems?), I still feel good about the progress I made in this area.  In a way, I'm continuing this theme in 2019 but perhaps going a level deeper... I'm not sure that I was the most specific about my intentions last year so I hope this year I'll be able to fix that.

I'll write a separate post reviewing how I did on my 2018 goals, but for this post, I want to share what my goals for this new year are.  Accountability is great for reaching your goals!

Personal

1. Participate in and win National Novel Writing Month.  I can't even count how many times I have attempted NaNoWriMo, but since I'm entering my third year of bullet journaling, I know that this will be the third time I have specifically named this as one of my goals.  For the past two years I have met this goal, so I'm hoping to turn this into a three year streak!

2. Travel 3 or more times this year.  Last year I said I wanted to travel a lot (a total of 5 times!) and this year I'm anticipating things to be a bit busier.  But I still want to make sure I'm getting out there and seeing the world.  I do have at least one trip up my sleeve and I can't wait to share that with you if/when that trip happens!

3. Play a whole song from a musical on piano.  I was fortunate enough to be gifted a keyboard for my birthday this year!  I took lessons when I was younger and honestly, I'm not sure that was a good fit.  My teacher was wonderful, but I hated practicing just because someone told me to.  But lately I've wanted to get back into piano.  So my mom helped me dig out my (and my sister's) old books and I've been slowly plunking my way through them.  I want to continue this progress and maybe learn a song from my piano book for Wicked.  We'll see!

4. Exercise 3 days a week.  I think this is one goal that I (and practically everyone in the world) has resolved to do in the new year, but I do want to find that "thing" that makes me want to get up and move.  I want to lose weight, but more importantly I want to lead a healthier lifestyle.  I have Wii Fit and I want to utilize that more to keep my exercise varied.  I like yoga, but I know that that's not enough to help me reach my goals.  I think that if I can set a low goal like this, if I fall off, it won't feel like I've fallen so far and that I'll be able to start up again easily.  But this goal will also feel more manageable than five days a week when I haven't really been exercising at all.  I'll try and keep you updated on this.  Wish me luck.

Media

5. Read and/or listen to 70 books this year.  I don't know what has gotten into me, but I have been killing it on my reading goals ever since I graduated college.  So I'm kicking things up a notch and am shooting for 70 books from the get-go.  I reached this goal unintentionally in 2018, so I'm looking to repeat this.

6. Read 20 books that are already on my shelves.  Sadly, it seems that all of the most attractive-looking books are the ones that aren't on my shelves, but are instead on the shelves of the library or on Amazon.  I want to read books I already own whether they have been gathering dust on my actual shelves or if they've been taking up unread space on my Kindle.  This will help me clean out my shelves and donate books that I'm never going to read or that I just don't think that I'll read a second time.  

7. Write book posts once a month.  I have really fallen off the wagon on this, despite the fact that this blog was a book blog for the longest time.  I still want to talk about what I'm reading, but I may turn this into more of a highlight reel that I share out at the end of every month rather than talking about each and every book I'm reading.  I keep track of all of my reading on GoodReads whether they're excellent reads or terrible ones, so if you're curious about everything I'm reading, you can go there.  But otherwise I want to talk about the most impactful things I've read in a month and leave it at that.  A big part of this is because books are not the biggest part of my life anymore.  It was in high school when I started this blog.  I didn't really have another identity other than "that kid who likes to read a lot."  But now, I'm traveling more and I want to talk about other things that are going on in my life.  See below...

8. Write more about teaching and life.  Teaching is a huge part of my life right now and I want to make sure that I'm documenting what I'm going through for my own reference, but also, writing is an important way that I process what is going on around me.  I want to get as much out of my teaching life as possible because it is something I am very motivated to do well.  I want to share and talk about it, especially since I'm a young teacher.

Professional

9. Set up website for classroom and teaching.  I sort of started doing this over the summer, but I never finished.  I want to make something that is easy for my students to access and have a place where I can document my time with my students.  It likely won't be a thing for my current group (sadly), but likely in time for my third group of students.  I really look forward to putting this together!

10. Go to 2 professional development opportunities.  I'll have to think about what these opportunities will be, but again, I want to get better at what I do.  What better way to do that than to talk with and meet with other teachers?  

11. Create higher level quizzes and tests.  I have been creating quizzes that are modified for lower-level students this year, but I want to make sure that my upper-level students are being challenged and are being asked to prove themselves this year.  This will likely be another summer task.

12. Pass my GRE and apply to Grad School.  I have known that I want to earn my Masters Degree for a while, it's just been a matter of when.  I learned last year though that in order to have a sustainable career financially speaking, it's practically required that I have a Masters Degree.  I also learned that in order to teach College in the Schools, I need to have a Masters degree and I found a program that is aimed specifically at helping teachers reach this level.  But this program requires that I have a good score on the GRE.  I do not expect to start Grad School this year.  I just don't think that is a realistic goal for me.  But if I do this and I do well, I could possibly start school again in 2020.  Cross your fingers for me.

I feel really good about the possibilities of this year.  There are a number of bright things on the horizon and I think I'm ready to take them on.  I hope that you have a number of great things coming up for you as well!

Thanks for Reading!

--Jude