Happy New Year! It feels wonderful welcoming in a new year after living through a year of disappointment, turmoil, and unpredictability. While there were aspects of 2020 that I am grateful for, I am happy with moving on from that chapter of my life and currently focusing on the next chapter with the anticipation of new opportunities to learn, grow, and increase my joy factor.
FOCUS is my word for 2021. I’m choosing to focus on my health, my home, my happiness as it relates to my career (focusing on creating a new career I have wanted for many years), and my hobbies. My 21 for 2021 list will FOCUS on these four areas.
Kat’s 21 for 2021 List
- Manage time.
- Maintain a regular fitness regimen.
- Create weekly meal plans.
- Eat more vegetables.
- Try intermittent fasting for one month (Clean & Lean).
- Declutter and organize each room in my house.
- Write a will.
- Try one NO spend month.
- Revisit A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose by Eckhart Tolle.
- Complete The Four Tendencies course (Gretchen Rubin).
- Read Atomic Habits by James Clear.
- Read The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron.
- Create a vision board.
- Take a WordPress Blogging course.
- Take a WordPress Podcasting course.
- Purchase podcasting equipment.
- Complete Write a Bestseller course (Jeff Goins).
- Try 12 new restaurants (one per month).
- Take Becky Higgins Classroom: Photo Tips + Work Flow.
- Scrapbook at least two times per month.
- Learn how to use my Cricut Maker.
During the month of January, I will focus on managing my time. I want to establish a better daily routine, create schedules for decluttering, housekeeping, working on my courses, and self care, as well as continuing to participate in improv and RCIA. Essentially, I want to use my weekly 168 hours more effectively. I also want to try to break down the remaining 20 items on my list into the four quarters of the year to make accomplishing them more manageable. Naturally, several of my items are designed to run throughout the entire course of the year which is also totally fine. I’m excited about all the possibilities this new year has to offer and look forward to the journey through 2021.
Other Plans for 2021:
- On Goodreads, I joined the 2021 Reading Challenge, and my goal is to read 50 books again this year.
- I am participating in Gretchen Rubin’s #Read21for21 challenge. Basically, you read for 21 minutes every day in 2021. While I do read a great deal, I don’t necessarily read for pleasure every day. I’ve also decided to read specific books during my daily 21 minutes to see how many books I read throughout the year just in that daily timeframe. According to Gretchen Rubin, “If you read for 21 minutes per day for 365 days, that’s 7,665 minutes, or almost 128 hours of reading. You can read a lot of books in 128 hours!”
- This year, I also plan to keep a TA-DA list for 2021. Many times I accomplish goals that are not included on my list, and I should be celebrating those accomplishments, too.
- Hopefully, I will be attending my annual scrapbooking convention with my gal pals in June. We didn’t get to attend last year because of the pandemic, so I REALLY hope and pray we can get together this summer.
What do you have planned in 2021, dear reader? Have you made some resolutions or a 21 for 2021 list? If you could choose a one-word theme for this year, what word would you choose? Let me know what your plans are for 2021. Happiness!
“Focus is the key to accomplish what is necessary – easy word to spell, it contains only five letters but it is probably one of the most powerful words there are in order to move forward with confidence and with the expected results.” ~ Bryan Pulsifer
At the beginning of the week, I purchased another table for my scrapbook room. This allowed me to move my Cricut machine to its own table. And, I can still have a friend come over to scrapbook with me. This also led me down the rabbit hole of looking at rugs for my room. The hubster and I spent a couple of hours driving to various stores around Hammond looking at rugs. Unfortunately, they were either, too large, too small, too expensive, or not the right color. Later that evening, while watching a video posted by a member of the group Craft Room Organization with JenniferMaker on Facebook, I noticed her lovely rug on the floor of her crafting space. I inquired as to where she 
purchased it (Wayfair), and my mission to find a rug continued. By Tuesday afternoon, I tagged 41 rugs that had potential. Andrew dropped by and helped me narrow my choices down to eight rugs. I asked the hubster for his opinion and settled on four choices. I would make a decision the following day. I ordered both a rug and a rug pad on Wednesday. The rug pad was delivered Friday, and the actual rug was delivered on Saturday. I am beyond pleased with both items.
Some other highlights during our week off that gave me happiness boosts:
On Tuesday, I ordered a few more scrapbook supplies. I pulled some pictures from Andrew’s trip to Ireland, set up my Scrap’n Easel, assembled a laser die cut, and semi-laid out the page. Now that my room is set up specifically for scrapbooking, I can leave everything out and leisurely work on my pages. After lunch, I met a friend of mine, that I had not seen in a few years, for coffee. It was a nice couple of hours catching up with Angie. Visiting with her made me realize that I want to carve out more time this summer to connect with my friends that I do not get to see on a regular basis. Friendships bring an enormous richness of joy to one’s life; however, they need to be cultivated in order to flourish.
Another tidbit about me, the scrapbooker, is I am as slow as a snail when it comes to scrapbooking. Depending on the project, it takes me some time to think about the layout. If the project has an overwhelming amount of photos, choosing the best ones can slow me down. I act as if I am preparing a layout for a prestigious magazine, and my career depends on the finished product instead of making a memory keepsake for the members of my family. HA! Even though I did not get as many layouts completed as I had hoped, I still had a terrific time with my friends, and I learned some new techniques using supplies (embossing enamel, antique brilliance wax, rust effect paste, and gel pens) to make my scrapbooks more interesting. I have all summer to finish working on this project for Andrew. I will have more time to make decisions about the layouts, the photos, and what I want to say or rather what Andrew wants to say about his recent adventure in Europe.
In addition, my scrapbooking weekend has inspired me to get better organized in my scrapbooking room. Yesterday, I cleared everything not related to scrapbooking out of my room with the exception of a file cabinet. Then, I vacuumed, dusted, and mopped. My goal now is to organize all of my supplies. I bought a new sticker binder, while at the event, to house ALL of my stickers. My old binder can barely zip, and I have stickers in various places. I want them all in one central location divided by category. I also need to reorganize my paper by color/pattern and clear out old page kits of completed layouts. This will allow me to create new page kits with all of the necessary supplies, so the next time I want to attend a crop, I can grab and go. Getting organized will take awhile; however, in the end, the time spent will be well worth it. The organization will create time and space for me to actually scrapbook…hopefully, more than once a year.
I had rough drafts, lesson plans, and graduation tasks to complete. I admit, I was disappointed because of everything that I wanted to do during the break, this was on the top of my list to accomplish. This would have been possible had I been able to take care of the school stuff the week before break. Unfortunately, the week before my break was pretty hectic. You win some, and you lose some. The silver lining is that I now plan to scrapbook Andrew’s trip to Ireland, Wales, and London. Furthermore, I will start organizing the materials next weekend.
The Kat Files 