Happy New Year!

I had a lot of plans last month to finish out the decade strong, and do all the things I’ve been meaning to do, and I didn’t do any of it. It was starting to feel like the Friday before a holiday weekend, and I just didn’t want the craziness.

I love New Year’s resolutions, and even if I am hit or miss on keeping my actual resolutions, I like the time of reflection, and thinking about who I want to be, and what I want my life to be like in the upcoming year. I love feeling like I have the power to change my life, even in small ways.

This year is particularly exciting for me, as I explore some new avenues in my business. I’ve always found goal setting for my business to be somewhat challenging - you can do so much in a year, but also so much can change in a year, and sometimes your goals can depend on factors beyond your control. To use a silly example, I could make a goal to get 10,000 followers on Instagram, but even if I do everything ‘right’, I can’t actually make people follow me, or buy my products, or hire me.

I have some pretty big goals for myself over the next year or so, so big that they can feel kind of overwhelming. So instead of setting resolutions for the whole year, I’m taking it a quarter at a time. Each quarter I’ll re-evaluate what I’ve been doing, what I want to do next, and how it is taking me closer to my goals.

I’m also going to start being a lot more discerning about what I say yes to. I feel like I spend a lot of my time being frustrated because I’m working on something that doesn’t align with my goals or values, and then the next opportunity comes along that’s not quite the right fit, and I say yes because I feel too guilty to say no, or want the money, or whatever. Just because I can do it, doesn’t mean I should do it.

I thought I would share some of my quarterly business goals here, and then check in at the end of the quarter and let you know how I did. If you would like to share your goals with me, I’d love to read about them!

Finish the business courses I’ve started.

I have several courses that I’ve purchased and not had the time to start, and a couple that I never wrapped up. I should probably stop buying online courses, but first I want to finish the ones I have.

Create 100 paintings.

I would like to get better at painting, and create a bit more of a library, and the only way to do those things is to paint.

Revamp my website.

I never announced it, but my blog has a shiny new look, and I’d like the rest of my website to match!

Sketch out my content calendar for the year, and create Q1 content.

Research and create a list of future clients I’d like to work with.

I think that’s enough to start with! This is kind of a meta goal, but I’d also like to stop setting unrealistic goals for myself - I am always frustrated because I can’t get everything I’d like to get done finished in a day… but that’s probably because I always think I can do 100 things in less than 8 hours.

I think I’ll be talking about this on Instagram as well, and I’d love to have you share your goals with me over there as well. Thanks so much for reading along, and I hope we all have a wonderful start to this new chapter.