Mapping Out a New Year - 2020

This week’s journal entry:

What are your plans for 2020? This can be a list of things you’d like to accomplish, such as goals or New Year’s resolutions, or it can just be a list of what you hope to happen within the next year.

By Laura Black

            Here we go again - another year come and gone. With 2020, that makes another decade come and gone, which seems so crazy. My first post of 2019 was this same post – Mapping Out a New Year, so that’s what I’m ending with as well.

            With Christmas over and New Year’s days away, I figured now would be a great time to look back at what I wrote for 2019. I have to say; I’m a bit disappointed in myself in not achieving most of my mapped out plans. As I mentioned in the first post of the year, I don’t really believe in New Year’s resolutions, which as I look back at my post, I did create a list of resolutions. I had some pretty good ideas for sure, but as I wrote about more recently, Life Gets in the Way.

Unfortunately, I tend to have too much on my plate at any given time, and I don’t have enough time to focus on what’s really important to me and what I want to achieve; therefore, I believe that’s what my list needs to be about - focus on what’s important to me. From there, I can build a more focused list and a way to achieve it.

Of course, I will write out my list and keep it in my planner. I actually purchased a new planner this year that I’m excited about using. A few years ago, a student had a planner that intrigued me, but I never looked into it further. This year I decided I need more change and focus when it came to planning out my life, so I did look into it, and now I’m excited to try it. It’s a Panda Planner where you can focus on monthly, weekly, and daily plans.

Each section gives you space to reflect and write on the month, the week, and the daily events. It’s meant to help you be more accountable for your planning and accomplishing your goals, which is exactly what I want and need. What I really like about it is in the daily planning, it has a section for you to write down three things you’re grateful for daily. I think that’s important to help stay focused on what’s important, and I hope it works as a daily reminder of what I want to accomplish in the long run.

            Like I mentioned before, I’m disappointed in not achieving all my goals for 2019. In the end, I think the latter on the list are the ones I achieved:

8.    Eat healthier and create a sensible diet plan. I did start to eat healthier, and I lost 10 pounds. I do need to continue to work on this, though. It’s a work in progress.

9.    Practice yoga and get in shape. This did happen to me, and I will definitely continue with this practice. Yoga has become a part of my life, and it will soon be a part of my career plan.

10. Spend time with family and friends. Yes, I did this as much as I could, but I still want to do more. Family and friends are most important to me.

11. Pay more attention to people and less to my phone. I have been working on this one for the past few years, and I think I’m pretty good at doing this.

Those were definitely accomplished, so now it’s time to map out my plans for 2020:

1.    Write in my journal at least once a week but try to write daily. I need to practice what I preach. If I can’t do it myself, how can I encourage others to do it? Therefore, I need to write at least once a week, but I will try for daily. I think my new planner will help with this.

2.    Work on my writing. I’m changing this one because I just want to write more for myself in general. So, if that’s working on my novel ideas or just writing journals, then it’s all good. I want to write and continue to make time for it because it’s important to me.

3.    Work on journaling project. This opens up for not focusing on any one part of it but any part of it. This means from writing in my journal to posting more blogs on journaling to working on other types of journals to show others how to journal. By the end of this decade, I will be teaching others how to journal, so as long as I continue on working toward that goal, it will come together in time.

4.    Pay down debt. I absolutely sucked at this in 2019. I did pay off my car, which was awesome, but I had other plans to pay off more. Unfortunately, I had things come up where this didn’t work out as much as I wanted, but I will buckle down in 2020 to pay down more debt. I just want the stress gone of always worrying about bills.

5.    Become a vegetarian. I have been slowly trying to transition over to this, but I need to make this change. I have major digestive issues and have for most of my life. I have been trying to follow a lot of vegetarian practices over the past few months, and it’s been helping me a lot. I feel better and have fewer issues, so for me, it only makes sense to make this change.

6.    Continue to practice yoga and get in shape. I will be finishing up my certification for yoga instructor this summer, so I will continue this without a problem. Practicing yoga has helped me so much. I feel so much better about myself, and it helps to keep me balanced with my life and anxiety.

7.    Spend time with family and friends. I want to continue to spend time with family and friends whenever I can. In the end, that’s what life should be all about – spending time with the ones you love. We should cherish every second we get with family and friends because we never truly know when we won’t have that time with them anymore.

8.    Be present in the presence of others. This goes back to last year’s number 11 – pay more attention to people and less to my phone. I believe I’m pretty good about paying more attention to people and less to my phone, so that’s why I reworded it; however, it still is the same, I guess. Because I have been making this a focus of mine over the past year, I have become annoyed when people are constantly on their phones instead of being present in their current surroundings. This happens everywhere I go. As I paid more attention to this occurrence, I started to get sad. I’m sad that our world has become more about an object than actual human contact and being present in the moment. I could go on and on about this, but that’s not the point here. All I’m saying is there’s an entire world out there beyond your phone. I plan on enjoying real life as much as I can; therefore, I will be present in the presence of others.  

9.    Try not to get so easily annoyed by little things that really don’t matter in the end. I tend to get myself so worked up by little things that annoy me, and I let them fester in my mind. This will definitely be hard for me because I’m so easily annoyed. Most people would never know it, though. Like I said, I let it fester in my mind and keep it there. It needs to stop because it’s a big part of what causes my anxiety, and in the end, there’s so much more to life than getting worked up over things that annoy me.

10. Try not to let my anxiety get the best of me. My anxiety kicked my ass in 2019, so I definitely need to work on this one. I believe all the other goals above will help with this. There are a series of things that help me with managing my anxiety – journaling, yoga, and using essential oils. Other things that can help with managing my anxiety that are on my list – paying down my debt, spending time with family and friends, and not getting so annoyed by little things that don’t matter. If I stick to all this, then I should be able to keep my anxiety in check.

Well, I think that will do it for 2020. So…what’s your mapped out plan for 2020? Feel free to share.