Welcome 2010!

Happy New Year everyone! Here is my list of tentative, possibly achievable goals for 2010.

1. Research school options for child related careers and/or invest a ton of time, money and energy into daycare. I truly love kids and no matter what the pay scale, I know that it is something that I will be happy doing with my life. When you work with kids, you know that what you doing is really making a difference in our world - you are helping to create the next generation! And the smile of child has to be one of the purest things that life has to offer. I really want to try and find the right path for me into helping kids in the best way that I can.

2. Keep my Jeep clean. I know that this one is almost certainly headed for the 2010 Fail list BUT...I think it important that I give it a try. I feel like less of an adult when I open the back hatch and pop cans fall out. I am thirty years old, I should be able to put all my groceries in the back without having to juggle five coats, a set of golf clubs, seven books, about 23 different types of windshield scrapers, empty large, McDonald's Diet Coke (caffeine free!) cups, and a partridge in a pear tree. In 2009 I did manage to keep the front two seats and, for the most part, the back seat clean. I even consistently had a trash can...however it was too small to fit more than one of the aforementioned Diet Coke cups. If I can master the cargo portion of the vehicle I may be able to call myself an adult by this time next year. I am thinking of creating a laundry basket sorting system back there....

3. Ignore Brad for at least 75% of the year. This is a pretty attainable goal. I think I ignored him for a good 50% of this year, so I am just building on my previous good work. This sounds heartless, but here's the deal. Brad has crossed a very dirty, morally blurry line....and I am 95% sure that he is never coming back across again. Now, because I am Pollyanna I am going to leave that 5% loophole open in the hopes that he will realize what he is doing to himself....and that is also why I am going to give myself a 25% leeway to be there if he truly needs me. That is just the girl that I am. But for my own sanity, and because I hate to see him the way he is now....75% of this year will be Brad-free.

4. Use my elliptical machine. Notice that this goal is very flexible, very loosely worded. I don't like to set rules that I know I am going to break. My elliptical machine and I go through spurts where we are friends and when we are bitter enemies and when we are hooks to dry sweaters on.....actually that last part is just me. So the goal is purely.....get on the machine. Make it worth the money that I spent on it. Be healthy so that I can one day play tag with my grand kids. Provided that I have kids of course. This part is also important because Jen and I want to be polka-dancing, drinking Busias together when we are old. Thus I need prodigy to call me Busia. But that is a goal for a whole other year.

5. Blog daily and update my status twice daily so that everyone knows everything about my life. Ok - that one is purely a joke. Don't rush to delete me from your friends.


6. Be patient. I am so impatient sometimes for what tomorrow may bring that I am afraid I am going to miss all the stupendousness (spellcheck insists that this isn't a word. I respectfully disagree) that is today. I think that a lot of this is from being single. It is easy to feel like life is going to pass you by if you don't pair up and procreate - and being divorced just ups that pressure more because now I have to fall in love and marry twice while all my smarter friends are only having to do it once in the same time period. But I need to have faith that God has a plan for me. And it will all happen when it is supposed to, with or without my impatience. I might as well enjoy the ride.

With that said, this is my mantra for 2010, brought to you by the book of Jeremiah:

"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.....you will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart."

When I am impatient and trying too hard to make a future appear now, on my time table....this is what brings me back to earth. Faith that God has a plan for me. That He has put things in my path that have purpose...for me, or for others...and that if I keep the hope that He has given me, all will unfold exactly as it should, exactly when it should. All I need to do is keep the faith.