Week One - 2006

The first week of the New Year comes to an end, and I find myself sipping coffee on this sunny Saturday morning... with my mind buzzing in several different directions.

My morning started out like most mornings do: I started the coffee pot. I ran a sink full of soapy water and did the few dishes from the night before. I sat down and filtered out the junk email that came in overnight, and deleted the spam from my discussion forum. As I went through my morning routine, Ideas came to me... and I jotted those down on my notepad as I continued on.

As I was going through the motions, my mind was like a mental checklist - going over the week behind, the week ahead, things I wanted to get done today, etc. I plan to get my linen closet re-organized today, and also clean off my desk. I am starting a new 'diet challenge' next week, and have been putting some thought into what my plans will be (and I'll give you a link to this as soon as I have it). I also planned to go shopping today and get my son a new winter coat.

And then it just hit me, and I stopped right there and decided to refill my coffee cup and take a break for a few minutes. My mind is just entirely too busy this morning - going at full speed. I'm geared up with new goals, feeling very positive about the New Year we've just stepped into, and basically just full of motivation and drive!

The thought that hit me was this: Is all of this drive and motivation we pump ourselves with at the beginning of a year... a recipe for burn-out and failure? Are we setting ourselves up to fail at our New Years resolutions with too much energy, and not enough direction - or long term planning?

For me, Saturday mornings are nice and quiet - and a perfect time to take a moment to myself to reflect and plan. I decided to make this a weekly habit for the rest of 2006 - to sit down and go over my goals and plans, and map out the week ahead.

I like to break things down into 'bite size chunks', so this will work out nicely for me. Instead of pushing hard and driving myself into insanity, I will just take this year one week at a time. That is not to say that I dont have long term goals - because I do - but that I will approach them with deliberate purpose and realistic timelines.

I will grab a cup of coffee and sit down here and 'blog it' each Saturday morning, for the next 52 weeks. You are welcome to join me, and we can hash out the week behind us and brainstorm for the week ahead.


I still plan to clean off my desk and organize my linen closet today, but I am also going to go over my task lists and goal sheets and do some brainstorming on exactly how I want to proceed from here. As for the shopping, I got smart and logged on to jcpenneys.com and Zack and I were done shopping in five minutes flat. Why drive across town and join the Saturday morning crowd at the mall if you dont have to! :p

So what about you? How did your first week of the New Year go? Did you launch 7 new websites, clean out all of your closets, lose 23 pounds and completely close out your accounting for 2005?

If you didnt, dont sweat it. Just join me here on Saturday mornings and we'll take this year one week at a time ;)