New Year's resolutions

You thought you were done reading blog posts about resolutions, right?  Wrong!  Here's one more.  I purposely didn't post it until now.  :) 

During the first week of January, it feels like the whole world is talking about resolutions, and a lot of people actually make some.  I did, too.  However, I've decided that mine is too personal to share.  Not personal as in, I don't want you to know what my resolution is because it's private.  Personal like, I want to know at the end of this year that I kept (or didn't keep) my resolution solely because of myself.  [and Heavenly Father]  I don't want reminders or encouragement from family or friends; I don't want to feel pressured to blog about my progress; I don't want to ever be asked about my resolution outside of maybe comments on this post.  I want all of you to pretend, at least while we're talking to each other in real life, like this post doesn't exist.  Because this resolution is more important to me than some, and more possible than many, and I know how happy I will be if I keep it and want to know it was because of my own desire and determination.

That said, I will tell you parts of it.  Goals should be SMART, right?  That is to say, goals should be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound.  If I learned anything from my home teachers growing up, it was how to make goals.  They had us make them one year and then checked up on us every month to see how we were doing.  For some reason it stands out as a traumatic memory in my mind, but it was an extremely effective way for me to learn about goals and I've never forgotten it.  [Shout-out to Brother and Alex D!]  

Anyway, off that tangent.  So, my overarching resolution is more of an ART goal - it's neither specific nor measurable.  To fix that, I have mini goals for each month.  When I've reached them, I will also have reached my overarching goal.  At that point I'll tell you what it was.  My hope is that doing each mini goal for a month will help make it a habit, but even if none of them turn into habits, I'll still be on track.

Well, it's the end of Month One!  My goals this month were to make the bed every day and to keep our bedroom clean (with Joel's help on both), and I'm happy to say we were successful!  We weren't 100%, but we were close enough that I feel good calling it a success.  It is marvelous to come home at the end of a long day and go into a bedroom with a made bed.  Everything looks neater when the bed is made.  It's also wonderful to wake up in a clean room.  And it feels really great to climb into bed knowing that, when there was some stuff on the floor today, you put it away, and if you have to go to the bathroom tonight, you won't step on anything pointy or important.

Here's to Month Two!

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"There's one - the Cruciatus Curse," said Neville in a small but distinct voice.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire