2019….was a HELL of a year.
Well, let me rephrase…it started in hell but has ended in a much better place. We all know this was not my favorite year, by far for various reasons, most of them being professional reasons.
By this point, we’re fully aware at how annoyed and stressed out I was as a result of this for the majority of the year, so let’s not go into 2020 dwelling on it.
You all know I don’t set New Years Resolutions; they’re just not me. I know myself well enough that as soon as I say “I have to do this because it’s a new year” I’m not gonna want to do it anymore. Plus, “resolution” makes it seem like I need to change things and maybe I don’t want to change things.
I do have goals for 2020, though. I know it sounds a lot like a New Years Resolution, but it’s not okay? #dontjudgemywordpreferences
There are things I want to accomplish/do in the next year personally and professionally to better myself and my family. These are in no particular order (I also don’t do “ordered lists”) and in reality, I don’t hold any as more important than another.
1: Make Baby Banks appear.
I haven’t been quiet about the fact that Devon and I are trying to conceive and I am hoping that 2020 is the year that it finally happens. I say “finally” despite the fact that we haven’t been trying for THAT long. But I am starting to get annoyed when I see my period show up every month, so that’s a thing. We are doing everything we need to do to make this happen so we’ll give it a few more months before we start looking for answers. I know I was on the pill for a really (REALLY) long time and having endometriosis; it could take a little while. So, we’re trying to be patient and trust in the process. Hopefully this time next year, we’ve made progress.
2: Continue working on our financial future.
Normally, Devon and I are pretty financially sound; we always have been. But when we moved and I didn’t work for a hot minute at the end of the summer/beginning of the summer, we took a little bit of a hit, which has taken some time to recover from. But while we have recovered, there is still this shift we’ve been doing to reel in our financial habits from when we lived in our apartment to our new house (because houses are always more expensive).
Outside of student loan debt (because #millennials) we both have a little personal debt that we’re currently finishing off and we’re looking into re-working our budgets to accommodate our lifestyle and what we want for the future. I’m hoping to touch on this more throughout 2020 and share what we’re doing, so we’ll see how this all works.
3: Continue losing weight.
I realize this sounds counterproductive to the whole trying to conceive thing, but in reality I still have weight that I want to lose. I’ve started making some headway in that and my clothes are starting to fit a bit better again, which I enjoy. We know I’m not a numbers on the scale kind of person, so that doesn’t actually bother me; I just want to be healthy.
When I went to my doctor a few days ago (because thanks to E. coli and antibiotics I had to have my kidneys checked again) she told me that my blood pressure is finally back to it’s normal range. I’ve been closer to normal in recent months, but I still hadn’t actually reached my norm. Knowing that I have has re-ignited my desire to make my health a priority. As my doctor states, being healthier might make trying to conceive easier, which would make me happy. So, I’m doubling down, as I can, on the self-care and doing things that are good and healthy for me (and eventually Baby Banks).
4: Decorate my home with intention.
I realized as we were moving out of our apartment, I had no idea why most of the place was decorated as it was. It was mostly just done either out of necessity or with intentions of “upgrading” later. It’s likely why I hated half the furniture in that house and why it didn’t come to our new house with us. I’ve been talking about furnishing our house and why we haven’t really done a ton of it yet. I really just want to be intentional with what I put in our house. I don’t want it to be a “well we need this, so let’s at least get something we kind of like and update it later”. Because if our apartment is any indication, “later” doesn’t really happen.
After four months of living here, we finally just bit the bullet and bought a dining set that we actually really like. It’s being built to order, so it’ll be at least a month before it gets here, but that’s okay because we genuinely really like it and think it will be perfect in our space. I would rather have the process of decorating take longer and have us genuinely love what we’ve put in our home than just fill it with things that are “meh” just to say it’s done. At this point, our house might not even be fully decorated by the end of 2020 and that’s okay; it’ll all come together when we need it to.
5: Become re-energized in my career.
We know 2019 took a lot of me professionally speaking; I was on the edge of burnout for the majority of it and as much as I love what I do; by the middle of the year I would have been happy to walk away and never look back and in fact I almost did.
I’m someone who believes most things happen for a reason. There’s a reason I wound up working at my current school: it’s because I wasn’t supposed to leave the education field. I needed to get out of where I was and remember why I went into this profession to begin with and my new school is doing that for me. I actually feel like I’m doing something valuable where I am now. I’m not in the best district, by any stretch of the imagination, but that’s okay I actually love my school and I like that I actually feel like I’m doing something worthwhile there.
So, this year, this school year is my 8th year and I want to work on being better for my school and for the students I work with. I finally have a principal who supports faculty professional development and she’s allowing me to go to ACA in San Diego this spring as well as re-commit to my professional organizations that had to take a back burner as my old school wouldn’t allow me the time commitments needed. Hopefully being able to go back to the level of involvement I had in the state and national levels before will help me continue the momentum I’m building professionally and allow me to grow more as an educator.
I feel like 2019 was a rough year for a lot of people; it definitely was for us, too. It was probably my most stressful year and I want to leave so much of that stress behind for 2020 and focus on having a happy and productive year.