Y’all — I have a lot of goals this season.  Who let me make this many??

Household/Misc

• Chore rhythm: So far, we are doing pretty good, except for one thing — we cannot keep our laundry under control.  Other chores we split pretty well; I take the ones he hates and vice versa.  But both of us hate laundry, and so our room gets taken over by a small mountain of clothes every few weeks until we can’t take it anymore.  It piles up and up and up, and we force ourselves to wash it, and then it sits in the laundry baskets until we wear them again.  It’s a curse.  But we have a plan in place to try to stay on top of it in the future, so hopefully we’ll do better about this in 2018.
• Hair/makeup routine: Christopher got me a new eyeshadow palette for Christmas, and since I discovered that I have hooded eyes, I’ve actually been able to do makeup successfully.  Go, me!  I’ve even started delving into the black hole that is YouTube beauty videos.  Hair I’m still pretty lazy on, so I’m working on that.
• Gratitude journal: I haven’t kept up with this as much as I’d like, but I mentioned that my sister-in-law got me a dedicated gratitude journal with a focus for each month, so I’ll try that going into January.  A few years ago I saw a small trend where people would choose one word for the upcoming year, and try to make that word the focus of their lives all year long.  I think I’m going to try that this year with grateful.

Spiritual/Religious

• Find a church: We visited the church where my parents met and got married in November, and it was our favorite so far, so we’re going to keep going there for now.  We’ve only been there 2 or 3 times so far — the holidays messed up our schedule a bit.  Hopefully we’ll get to go more consistently in January and February to see if we want to try out the small groups.
• Read books/explore spiritual life more: This is the complicated goal.  I have been reading books — the Bible and books about it — and I’ve been talking to my sister a lot.  I think I’m getting closer to truly being a Christian, and I still think that’s what I want, but I’m not quite there yet.  I’ve been trying to pray, because you can’t create a relationship with someone without talking to them, and I’ve been asking for the desire to know God and the ability to hear what he says to me if he decides to say anything.  I think I need to do this more consistently than I have been, though.  I don’t really know how to pray, and I don’t know how to listen either.  Honestly, all this is not really bolstering my shaky belief that God even exists, but since I’ve been actively pursuing God/Christianity/whatever this is, I’ve felt a lot more mentally and emotionally stable.  So that’s one good reason to keep going, and one is really all I need.

Hobbies

• Music: I have not touched my flute in weeks — again.  The church we’re visiting has an orchestra, which is nice, but obviously I can’t just go and join the church orchestra at this moment.  I’m hoping that since the holidays are pretty much over, I can start trying to practice on my off days.  I also keep telling myself I’ll try to find a community band, but that’s pretty low on the priority list.
• Sewing: I’m mad about this one.  I went and got my sewing machine serviced, since it was bunching material up under the foot.  I tested it, and it seemed okay, and I went to try to take something in last night and it bunched the material all up.  I should’ve tried to fix it, but I got frustrated and gave up.  I’ll have to give it another go when I have more patience.  But I’m lamenting my project backlog — it’s been stagnant for about a year and it may have to stay that way for awhile longer.
• Blogging: If you’re reading this, I’m doing pretty good.  The day I wrote and scheduled this post, it was the second scheduled post that week.  Having two posts scheduled at a time hasn’t happened to me in months, so I’m definitely counting it a win.  I’m still trying to find a regular schedule again, but as long as I can post consistently, I’m happy.
• Spanish: Maintenance is key with this goal, and that’s exactly what I’ve been doing.  I read news in Spanish every day, and follow a lot more Spanish blogs, so I’m getting Spanish in.  I’d like to blog more in Spanish, and I’ve thought about searching for beauty videos in Spanish since I’m starting to get into that.  But I’m also satisfied with the way I’ve been going — if I can keep that up, I’m good.

If you made it this far through my many winter goals, thanks for reading!  I always like to know what others are up to, and now that it’s 2018, feel free to share your goals or resolutions in the comments!