Goals For 2020

New Year, new decade! Here's what I'm hoping to accomplish, both personally and professionally, in 2020

I'll be honest; I love reading other people's goals. Usually, it not only gives me things to consider for my own life or business, but it also sheds perspective on why a person is the way he or she is. This New Year's is a big one. It's the start of a whole new decade. I've now been blogging for six years, and it's a totally different animal than when I started. I also am a homeowner and a mom to four boys. Given all that changed this decade, I thought it'd be fun to share my short term goals for the year and some long term visions I have for the future. Here are my goals for 2020, and where I hope to head both personally and professionally into this new decade.

Personal goals for the decade:

- Stay in shape; stay vegetarian 3-4 days a week. I hope to keep working out most days of the week, and hope to keep learning about new ways to incorporate vegetarian dishes into our everyday lives. I know eating vegetarian is key to a better environment; and what meat I do buy, I want to learn how to buy off local farms. It's funny - when I lived in Minnesota, EVERYONE belonged to a meat and veggie farm co-op - here, it's all a new thing. I'm slowly learning about local farm shares, buying local meat, and growing our own veggies (see my goals for gardening above!) I hope to expand that into the future and cut out as much waste and transportation as I can, to help the environment, improve my family's health, and support local business owners.

- Move into a larger home. Man, y'all.. This one might kill me. I LOVE our home. I LOVE it. I walked into it and knew it was home immediately. In fact, I made an offer on it while my husband was traveling (with his permission) because I knew this was where we needed to be. But it's a four bedroom, 2.5 bathroom home. And we have four we have four kids, only out of state family and both my husband and I office from home. Currently, my "office" is in the corner of the play room and his is in a corner of the formal dining room. Everyone shares a bedroom.  All boys plus guests need to share a bathroom. Some days, I seriously can't wait to move into a bigger home. Other days the thought of leaving it makes me nearly burst into tears. It's still fine for now, but as our babies grow... It's going to get very small very quickly. I just wish it was a tad larger, or even just had one more bathroom... First world probs, right?! A larger home is def on the list for the next decade, though, as our boys grow up and become TEENAGERS. They'll be teenagers within a decade! Ahhhhhh!

Personal goals for 2020:

- Learn more about gardening. I suppose this could be a professional goal too, since my gardening posts are some of my most popular, but truly this is a personal passion of mine that I've simply translated into my professional life. As you know, I have a raised garden bed in our backyard that I mostly use for veggies. I do lots of container gardening for flowers too. And this last year was one of my most successful yet! Mostly, I've been learning via trial and error, which was fun... But it's time to start to attempt to limit the errors! My flowers are usually always a success but my veggies are at a 50% success/fail rate. I want to dive deeper into what veggies should be planted when so I have a better yield, what flowers do best in the Texas heat, and share more of that with y'all. We have great landscaping, and we have beautiful potted plants, but I'd really like to learn more about when and what grows best when and where to optimize our garden life - of course, doing it organically and as sustainably as possible. In other words, I won't be dumping a bunch of chemicals and fertilizer (outside of manure) on the plants to make them grow artificially.

Professional goals for the decade:
- Be flexible. Here's the truth: who knows where influencer marketing is headed. I think 2017-2018 really did a number of our credibility. I think it will still exist, I'm just not sure in what form. But I hope to still work for myself, with my flexible schedule. I believe that blogging, in whatever form, will ALWAYS exist, but do I think the dependence on social medial will be the same in the next 10 years? Absolutely not. I think we'll see a return to independent website marketing, like we saw in 2014-15, and perhaps more talented, dedicated bloggers will write for the personal blogs of professional websites, and run their own more "underground" or grassroots web sites. One thing that's clear heading into 2020 is that people are SICK of social media. They still consume it, but they're sick of it, and it's only a matter of time before they stop consuming what they're sick of. Here's to adapting to the next chapter, whatever that is!

- Learn a new skill. I'm not sure what that skill will be, but I'd love to learn a new skill to keep me relevant. This past decade, I learned photography. I had been in marketing communications and a writer since I graduated undergrad, so the writing aspect of blogging was a natural fit. But very quickly, I learned that I'd need to learn how to take GOOD pictures. Then I learned that I needed a DSLR camera, and would need to learn how to use it too, and I'd also need to learn how to size and edit those photos. What will the new skill set be? Dunno! Maybe learn more about HTML. Maybe learn how to work in wordpress and transfer this whole site over to a self-hosted domain. Maybe I'll learn a new trade or craft that I end up selling on my site. I'm not sure yet, but I'd love to learn a new skill to keep me motivated and my mind fresh.

Professional goals for 2020:
- Go to a blog conference. In 2015, I went to two, and learned SO much! It was so fun to network and meet people in person. In 2016, I had a young breastfed baby at home so I couldn't travel or attend, and then in 2017, there weren't any coming to Dallas that I wanted to attend. Now I'm more aware of which conferences would benefit me, and they all involve getting on a plane and traveling to them. And I SO want to go. My goal is to go to one, even if that means airfare and hotel and all the other expenses of a conference. If there's also one coming to Dallas, I want to do two! But definitely hit up one big blogger conference and expand my network this year. It's been far too long since I hung out with people in person!

Are you a goal setter? I remember always being annoyed with year end reviews and goal settings sessions when I worked a 9-5, and find it hilarious that I'm now doing it annually on my own and also reading everyone else's goal posts and statuses on social media. Tis the season for goal setting! Get your mind right and set up your decade for success. I love that I not only write these to make them concrete, I publish them publicly so that I'm held accountable for them. Go set some goals and do little things everyday that drives you to those goals' success.