Journaling and Goals

I realize I have almost completely fallen off the blogging bandwagon. That is not necessarily because I am tired of blogging or that I have nothing to say, but my computer is seriously on the fritz. I am worried it is dying a slow and painful death. It has a regular tendency to freeze up at the most inopportune times and then I have to manually restart it to get it going again. Hopefully a new computer is in our near future – it is really a necessity for my husband’s business (let alone blogging and email and facebook!)

Regardless, sometimes I am compelled to write something down. I’ve been recording the events of our lives for so long now that I feel like I might miss something important if I don’t record anything at all! I know I’ve said it before, but this really started as a sort of journal for me and apparently after all this time, it still feels that way to me.

I decided if I write a few posts and don’t bother with pictures, I might get them up without much trouble – hopefully. =)

In my last non-book review post, I think I talked about making some goals for 2014. I’ve done a lot of thinking about that. I don’t really like the idea of resolutions too much…. It is so easy to forget about them. Especially if you do too many. There are pros and cons, I guess. If you make a lot of goals, the likelihood that you’ll accomplish a few of them is good. If you only make one or two, it seems (unless they are extremely easy) a little harder to duplicate that “I’ve really accomplished a lot!” sensation.

So I decided that for this year I’m going to focus on only one thing. I am going to attempt to feed my family less processed foods. I’m not going on any crazy lifestyle diets or fads. We’re going to eat normal food, but I just want it to be mostly homemade. This requires me to put a little more thought into what I’m going to make each week – to ACTUALLY make a meal plan and stick to it. It’s not like we eat chicken nuggets, mac and cheese and frozen pizza every night, but I would say we eat it more than we should. Usually it’s just because I don’t have a plan and then think, “oh wait… what can we have for dinner tonight?”

So far I’ve been doing well. I have a monthly calendar that I write down all the nights I’m going to be gone at work or some other event. Those nights I will try to leave a homemade freezer meal or dinner in the crock-pot for my family. Days when I’m usually off, like Monday’s, I’m trying to make a freezer meal. Just one – I’m not going crazy here with a whole day of making meals. I just make at least two – one for dinner that night and one for the freezer. I plan in days for leftovers and then, of course, there are a couple other meals planned in there. Wow… it’s been pretty great.

The only snag in this wonderful plan is my ability to keep it going. That is the hard part for me. I’m great at starting and planning this stuff…not so great on the long-term follow-through. 

Wish me luck!