New Ways To Fail - Bring On 2010

So as a departure from my Aim Low motto, I thought it might be interesting to outline a goal setting technique in honor of the impending arrival of 2010.

A few years back CeCe and I were talking about New Years Resolutions, and she told me about an article she had read that broke goal setting down into genres. Neither one of us could remember for certain what all of the different genres were but we did come up with five of them. In the effort of full disclosure, there might be two more genres floating around out there that we can't remember. Since I failed to accomplish any of the goals I set that particular year, I'm going to stick with five because a girl can only handle so much failure.

The five genres are as follows: Health, Financial, Education, Spiritual and Hobby.

I had thought it would be interesting to see what my goals had been for this year, how I had done with them and finally what my goals for 2010 are using the above method of goal setting. As shocking as this will be for you, I did not make any New Year's Resolutions last year. So the goals for 2009 are generalizations that I may adjust at any time to make me sound better or if I should feel I need a self-esteem boost.

Health: I began 2009 pregnant and so my health goal at that time was to eat healthy through the pregnancy and only gain baby weight. I lost that baby seven days into the new year. I never bothered to adjust my health goals and I spent all of 2009 eating for two.
   Goal for 2010: Stop eating for two and track my eating on sparkpeople.com. Get back to the gym. By the end of 2010, I would like to be less fat. Also this is the year I turn thirty which means I'll be going for a colonoscopy. Mama's getting a new pair of shoes. If you are having trouble figuring out what having something shoved up your backside has to do with shoes, click the link.

Financial: We started 2009 better off then 2008 which is saying something since many people were starting to feel the pinch of the free-falling economy. Ideally, we would have liked to be completely debt free by now but we aren't so...
   Goal for 2010: Be debt free. This should be fairly easy since we are wicked close. Although, by the end of the year we will probably have a mortgage so I guess we can scratch that debt free thing. I guess being better disciplined with the budget would be a great start. Maybe I could convince Matt that we should work out a Tommy Boy type scheme where one of us marries a wealthy fat person and inherits all their stuff when they die. We'd be debt free in no time.

Education: I'm pretty sure my educational goal for 2009 was to teach Mallory to read....then again that might have been 2008. Whatever, I'm taking it as an accomplished goal for the past year. Everyone should have at least one right?
   Goal for 2010: I've been meaning to look into whether or not Obama really wants to give me a free college education or just convince me to take more loans. I should do that. I'd really love to finish my degree, most likely in Early Childhood Education. I wonder if they'd give me college credits for homeschooling. Or I could learn how to work html or even what that means. How is it that I run a blog? Oh yeah, I ask everyone I know to help me fix it up. I should really educate myself on this. (Note to reader: I will probably not accomplish any of the educational goals for this year.)

Spiritual: This is the one I feel I suck the worst at. It's probably because it's the one that I feel is the most important which is why even though I fail to accomplish any of my goals, I beat myself up the most about this one. In 2008, I decided to read through the whole Bible in a year. FAIL. In 2009, I decided to have daily devotions. FAIL. I'm curious to know who these women that get up before their kids and do devotions are? What time do your kids get out of bed? If I got up before my kid to read the Bible and pray, when they woke up they would find me out cold with my head in my open Bible. And there might be drool. You should never drool on the Bible. Unless of course it's holy drool.
   Goal for 2010:  Set aside ten minutes of each day to pray alone. This might sound like an easy goal, but I don't even pee or shower alone. My kids have no respect for personal space and even though they are three and five it doesn't seem to phase them to hang out with me while I'm completely naked or to hang around my neck as I try to get a bra on. So I'm going with the small obtainable goal on this one.

Hobby: I have two obvious hobbies: blogging and football (watching, not playing. Although I would just love to run into someone.) I started 2009 wanting to learn about the game play of football. I am smarter in this area now then I was then, but not much. It's really not important so I'm not going to get nit picky about this one. I didn't start blogging until January 11, 2009 so there were no goals set for this one.
   Goals for 2010: Learn how to make my blog more user friendly. Learn how to make changes to my blog without having to beg others for favors or worse, fork over cash for help. I'm wildly intimidated by all things computer related and have trouble understanding simple concepts without being shown how to do something. So if you know how to fix up a blog real pretty like and want to volunteer your time to walk me through the process, let me know. (I don't actually want you to do the work, that would be too easy. I want you to teach me how so I know for next time. I'm so annoying, aren't I?) If you do this, I'll happily tell everyone online that will listen how completely awesome you are. I'm sure all 27 of my twitter followers will totally love you too. Shoot, I just started rambling and I'm not sure if I ever set a goal in the hobby genre. Um, post more pictures of Trent Edwards. This is a noble goal.

These are my goals for 2010. I promise I'll do my best not to forget them before I post this.