2015{cultivate}

Oh, hey 2015! The beginning of a new year always brings with it new resolutions and promises for #newyearnewyou. And by the end of  mid January my resolve has crumbled! This year I've decided to focus on one word.  

cultivate:

• to foster the growth of
• to improve by labor, care or study
• further, encourage
• to seek the society of: make friends with

The past few weeks I've made time to sit with myself and really think about what I want to accomplish this year. The word cultivate quickly came to mind. In fact, it popped up so quickly that I dismissed it. But, in trying to come up with not so much a plan for the year but a very loose outline I continued to circle back to this word. It applies to so many of my business and blogging goals as well as a lot of my personal goals.

I want to grow this blog into a space I'm proud of by sharing more honest moments of my life and family. I hope to grow my business by creating opportunity and being unafraid to engage with the creative communities I admire locally and online. I desperately need to develop a home/work/life/marriage/baby routine that is manageable and fosters a healthier more balanced life.


Here's to 2015 and making shit happen!

monthly manifesto {september}

Despite my best attempts to go with the flow, I'm not that person. But, I'm not particularly "Type A". Basically, I operate best when I know what's happening around me. I'm a list maker and a planner at heart so I'm not sure why I try to fight it as much as I do. Maybe because it seems so rigid. Inflexible. Babies require a certain degree of flexibility. I think it's safe to say that it's necessary in order to survive those first few months.

We've started to establish a bit of a routine. And now it's time for me to ease back into real life-accomplish more in the day than showering(which make no mistake about it is a huge victory for new moms!).

There are days when I think, "I should work on..." and I look up and it's two weeks later! Oh, where does the time go. Setting monthly goals will be a big help for me in terms focusing on exactly what I want to do and tracking my progress. I'm hoping that it will also ease some of the anxiety I've been feeling lately.  

So here we go September...

1. Figure out a blog schedule that works for me. I'm really happy to be blogging again but I don't want to stress myself out with feeling like I have to post something, anything. I want this space to feel authentic and not forced. Ideally I'd like to post three times a week. We shall see.
2. Writing|editing|scheduling. I think carving out time to write,edit and schedule posts will be the most helpful in keeping the blog up and running.
3. Unplug! I spend a lot of time on social media and looking at various devices. It's really important to me that we raise Rowan in a way fosters creativity and independent play that comes from actually doing and not simply staring at screens. We need to model that behavior for him sooner rather than later.
4. Read. Read. Read. At least four books this month.
5. I'm not happy with the shape my body is in right now. The only way to remedy it is to clean up my diet and exercise. I'm challenging myself to workout for the first fourteen days of September. Consistently. No rest days. Once I've made it through those two weeks, it's four times a week until the end of the month. No Excuses!
6. Menu planning. I hate the daily what do you want for dinner text messages. Right now we go to the grocery several times per week. It is the worst!! My goal is to plan for the week so that we can go to Findlay Market on Saturday or Sunday and then supplement our list with things we need form the grocery store once a week.
7. We haven't had a night out, just the two of us, since we had the baby. Time to get cleaned up, put on a pair of heels and go out with my husband.
8. I have lots of thoughts bouncing around my head for the business. Some of them more doable than others. This month I really want to flesh some of them out a bit and create a timeline of when I can potentially execute some of these ideas.  

                  

Ok, September, let's do this!