Things we’ll do this month: December 2020

Wow, it’s been a long time since I wrote one of these posts. And, I mean, honestly? As if it was going to happen in a year when nothing else did. But, it’s December now and I am super excited about that. No, it isn’t just a counting down to the end of 2020 thing – who has time for wishing life away?? – I’m genuinely looking forward to new twists on old celebrations and can’t wait to get them underway. I feel like everyone is way better set up to fully embrace the holidays this year and it’s going to make for a more joyful experience all around. I also have two advent calendars (one chocolate, one tea) and I’m ready to crack them open.

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Before I get into my plans for the month, you may have noticed that I got a new look around here. I’m really excited to share that I worked with White Shirt Design & Development to put a fresh spin on this old space. I’d been thinking about doing this for years and when the local (to me) business came on my radar, I had this moment of “what better time than now?” and I actually acted on it. It’s no secret that I’ve always loved to keep this blog space, but I’ve been struggling to feed my motivation. This might just be the nudge I’ve been longing for.

Martin jumped right in and quickly came back with this vision of making the content easier to navigate. There’s a lot of it here and he felt that the way it was set up wasn’t helping readers find what they might want to see. Voilà, the final result. I am in love with the simplicity of it.

I’m not going to pretend it wasn’t a learning experience. In fact, it was pretty humbling. There was important technical information I had managed to avoid for nearly twenty years of blogging and I learned that I have a LOT of work to do in my archives. But, we took this step and I’m super happy about that.

What do you think?

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I started out creating Things We’ll Do This Month posts in August 2016 and they’ve been hit and miss ever since. I was looking for a reminder to embrace all the enjoyable opportunities that a new month brings and give the illusion of slowing time down by inserting things we wanted to do among the things that we had to.

Goal setting is fun. It’s great motivation to sit down and hash out the things we want to do and fantasize about the roads that will take us there. When we talk about goals, we talk about money and career and real estate and competition, but we rarely talk about good, old-fashioned leisure. What I’ve found is that having some fun and light-hearted goals is a nice way to interrupt the monotony and drudgery of obligation. Month to month, I will publish a list of things I would like to do during the month ahead. Of course, this list doesn’t take the place of all of my standard goals related to health, wellness, money and spirituality, but I reserve the right to, in some cases, blur the lines.

Here are the things we’ll do this month:

• Create my 21 for 2021 list. I don’t think I ever even got around to sharing my 20 for 2020 list – I haven’t even seen it since March, but I’m deeply invested in creating a new one for 2021.
• Develop my personal Happiness Project. I have always wanted to do this and this year has given me the time, space and clarity to actually start some planning towards it.
• Pick a word for 2021. Have I mentioned how much I love a new start to a new year?
• Holiday movie nights. I guess you could say that it’s become a tradition.
• Driver around looking at Christmas lights. Peppermint latte in hand, no less.
• Get a haircut. One might think this was a simple task, but one might also be surprised.
• Wrap gifts joyfully. I’ve recognized that my favourite part of Christmas is when just the first signs of it start appearing. By the time all the planning and shopping and wrapping has been completed, I’m kind of bored of it so wrapping is never as much fun as I imagine it could be. That’s changing this year as I plan to tackle it a little at a time. Instead of forcing myself to do it all on December 23rd and grumbling through the final 75%, I’m going to tackle it nightly and quit whenever the tedium sets in.
• Make birthday plans. My last few birthdays have, by my own failure, been spent basically running errands. I’m not going to let that happen again.
• Weekly walk or hike. It’s my favourite time of year to be outside and sometimes I need a reminder to take advantage.
• Get an eye exam and glasses. This isn’t even a joke. Nor is it a drill. This has been on my to do list since the beginning of 2019 and y’all know I haven’t spent my annual benefits this year.
• Adopt a cat? That’s a big question mark.

What are the things you’ll do this month?