You’ve had your Christmas dinner, most likely. You’ve gathered with friends or family, maybe both, and opened gifts that awaited under your Christmas tree. You’ve expressed your appreciation to your family for those gifts of time and preparation, or time shopping, choosing that perfect gift. And shown that you appreciated them too.

The holidays will soon be over, and you’re looking ahead to the year 2020, perhaps with the same trepidation as people did in 2000, two decades ago.

You’ve eaten way too much and were on the verge of making a resolution, again, to eat better and exercise more, but wait.

New Year’s resolutions can be so easily broken. With some time and careful consideration, try setting one small achievable goal at a time. One that you can call on for support from your family health practitioner or natural medicine pro to help you follow through. Or a friend or a family member.

While the playgrounds are covered in snow and you have the inclination to stay indoors and keep warm, take some moments, and a pen and paper, and outline what you’d like to see for this new year. Make plans, but not too many. A small step forward is a good start and more likely to be successful than too many announced all at once.

You might ask what I will do for 2020. That’s a good question. Here are two of them, along with results of past related goals.

As a writer, I also have a goal, to keep moving forward with this blog, my newsletter and other writing projects that involve manuscripts on my hard drive. I don’t know just how those will look by the end of this year, but I’m pondering the next step. My writers’ critique group members are my accountability partners, gently encouraging each other to keep going.

A 2019 goal that I did achieve was gathering my poetry, published in a variety of publications and literary journals over a number of years, under one cover, Travelling Light (September 2019). And earlier in the year, a gathering of inspirational articles in Piece by Piece (February 2019) was published by Angel Hope Publishing. Read more about these books (and others) here.

2019 was a good year in so many ways, with many projects brought to completion, one at a time.

I was delighted when, earlier this month, I received a long-distance call of a good sort. Val, who’d moved to PEI, called and we had time to catch up on each other’s lives, after quite a long spell, some of it due to technology failure and loss of contact information.

That’s another goal, to stay connected with dear friends whose life changes have taken them to various places away from the community where we met. Whether it’s by telephone, email or letters doesn’t matter.

My friendships mean as much to me as my family, and I do strive to keep in touch as I can, even if I cannot travel to spend time with them. So thank you, Val, for your call.

friends in PEI

I’ve shared my goals now.

What are yours, big or small, for 2020? Who will call you accountable for them?

Make sure to celebrate even the small goalposts you reach. It helps you keep moving forward.

Happy New Year to you!