Ringing in the New Year

Well here it is, 2012, a whole new year. It's going to be an exciting year, full of all sorts of adventures and not very defined quite yet. After April, our schedule is wide open... and we don't really know where we'll be. At the same time though, it's very invigorating. This year is not the same-old kind of year. It's a year where we will be deciding who we want to be, what our family will look like, we'll be starting "real life" and making all sorts of difficult decisions. I can't wait. And to start the year properly, I actually have made a few goals this year.

I want to write in my journal regularly, weekly being a ballpark goal. I need to keep better records and while this blog has helped to a degree, I want to record all of my impressions, not just the ones suitable for a public.

I also have a secret goal I can't tell you about, but it's a good one. I'll let you know when it's accomplished though.

I want to develop more charity. That means striving to become more Christlike, of course, but the way I hope to accomplish that in a very specific way is that I need to be kinder and more open to people; I need to relearn to make friends, to be more open to situations outside of my life bubble. This will definitely be the challenge of April and beyond, when we leave BYU.

I want to get into better shape. The tangible goal is to get to the gym at least three times a week and run my first 5k this year. (hey, you have to start somewhere. That would be a big deal for me) Oh, and have really awesomely toned arms. That would be nice.

And I want to develop my talents and continue to grow professionally. I'll be interning, working a new job and venturing into all sorts of professional endeavors for the next four months, but after that my goal is to keep those pencils sharp and find ways to stay active in my field.

There it is. In order to get it all off to a good start, here are a few useful tools for each of those goals:

How to pick a mentor - Solid professional advice

List of races in Utah - Anybody want to join me?

Journal writing prompts - These will be really useful for writing more meaningful journal entries, not just "today I ate candy and had a bad hair day." Also, the prompts and tips from the MWP Salon will be great resources.

Looking for a new year's gift to yourself? How about some beautiful writing on Mormon womanhood by Segullah.

And I'll be blogging all about our amazing Christmas break very soon, of course :)