A few days ago, I received the January edition of Real Simple magazine, which is devoted to fresh starts for the new year. It made me start to think about New Year's resolutions, which historically have not been something that roused much interest for me. However, for whatever reason in 2010 I set four goals for myself.
I openly admit that a couple of my goals for this year are somewhat embarrassing, but somehow I think that this won't be the last time that I admit to embarrassing things on this blog. My goals for last year included the following:
1. Read the Bible in a year
2. Brush my teeth every night in addition to my morning brushes
3. Stop using Q-tips to clean my ears every day (as this has resulted in a case of tinnitus that the doc says will likely be with me for life)
4. Cook or bake something new at least once a week
I've somehow managed to consistently meet the last three goals throughout this year. (I'm not proud to admit that I didn't make it the entire way through the Bible this year). But, I felt like three out of four was a pretty good success rate, so I decided to come up with some new challenges for 2011. After some deliberation, I finally settled on two:
1. Make sure to have dedicated prayer time with my children every single day
2. Perform at least one deliberate and pre-meditated act of kindness towards my husband each day in an effort to better express how much I love and appreciate him.
Though we are a few weeks away from January 1st, I have decided to start my resolutions now (I mean--why wait, right?) The first goal is pretty straight forward. But, my second one has proven to require a bit more planning. After a false start on Day 1, I've laid some ground rules for myself (subject to future editing as time progresses and the project gets more fully underway):
1. I believe that a marriage cannot succeed unless both parties are engaged in some sort of acts of kindness towards each other almost every day, if not every day. But, my goal is to step this up a notch by planning out in advance at least one idea per day that I can execute that will make my husband's day a little brighter or a little easier in addition to taking advantage of any other opportunities that may simply arise.
2. I don't want my husband to know anything about my goal. Somehow I feel like if he knew to expect something each day, the gestures might begin to feel diminished or insincere at some point. Plus, it seems to me that there's something about the element of surprise which can help turn a small gesture into a more memorable and meaningful one.
3. In order to hold myself accountable for my goal, I have decided to start this blog. My goal is to post an account for every day for at least 365 days. I'm slightly worried about how I will be able to get a post up every day without my husband ever catching me, but without some sort of accountability, I'm afraid that it will become all too easy to allow this project to fade.
My basic plan is that each day I will post a re-counting of my gesture as well as a breakdown of the results (if any).
And that, friends, is it in a nutshell :)
**One final caveat: Because I don't want my husband to know about this project, I will not be using our real names on here. If you read this blog and know our "true identities," please don't spill the beans:)
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