Doldrums

Sigh. It finally hit. The doldrums. No wind in my sails, no snow under my feet. I'm a little bit sad and lonely. Some of this definitely has to do with the weather. We have had a wildly low snow season, and when you organize your life around skiing more, having to work hard to find snow is a bummer. Some of it is the come-down from a very busy December, plus a quiet house since my husband has been traveling for work all month. Some of it is deep sadness over the state of the U.S. Some is a natural response to the hunker-down nature of winter. Combine it all, and I'm a little bit in the doldrums. 

Ok, so I've done the most challenging part for me - recognizing how I feel. Now comes the second hardest part - what's my response? 

Option 1 is to follow my body's cues. I have space and time to be a little slow and lethargic. I know (in my head) that I can trust what my body is telling me. It's ok - nay, it's healthy - to be stationary sometimes, and it's fine to feel a little low. 

Option 2 is to use some grit and some motivation to get myself up and doing things that I know will probably feel good. This requires a little "digging deep" to get the ball rolling. I also want to stay sensitive to how my body and emotions are responding, and if it's just not working, and I would have to really strive to stay moving, it's time to fall back to Option 1.

This is the work of integration. It's listening to my body and emotions, evaluating what I want, and staying sensitive to how I respond as I take my next steps. I've spent a lot of my life simply not listening to these inconvenient emotions - when you have little kids and are working full-time to support your family, it doesn't really matter if you feel a little low, you just have to keep going. I've made it through that chapter of life, and now I get to pause and listen with more gentleness to the voices inside of me. Slowing down runs counter to how I've trained my brain to respond to challenge, and it's a good skill for me to focus on in this season.

Tracking my Foundations

My focus this year is on foundations, and I've been racking my brain trying to figure out how I want to track all of these wonderful activities. A massive checklist was off the table quickly - these are things that are not only good for me, but they're things that I love, so the last thing I wanted was to transform them into a guilt-laden, never-good-enough checklist. But if not a checklist, what? 

My answer: A mosaic. I have long loved the concept of time as a mosaic (from Laura Vanderkam's I Know How She Does It).  The idea is that our days are often heavily slanted one way or another. But if we pull back and look at a week or two, we can start to see our time as a mosaic (a tile of kid time, a tile of exercise, a tile of hobby time, a tile of work time), and we can decide whether or not we like the picture that's forming. This takes the pressure off of creating a perfect day or week and focuses on the bigger picture. 

So, here's my experiment for 2026: a mosaic of these foundational practices that I love and that are good for me. Every day, I'll color in the activities I do. Yep, I even wrote the activity on its corresponding crayon - we are all in. The focus is not on perfect days but on each week and month as a rainbow of the foundational patterns I want in my life.

Will it work? Will it be a fun, colorful celebration of things that I love? No idea. However, I like the experiment, and I'm willing to give it a try, learn from it, and iterate along the way. 

How do you like tracking your goals? What has worked for you in the past? Are you trying any new approaches to motivate yourself in the new year?

Foundational Focus

Every year, I decide on a focus for the new year. It's not a resolution per se, but more of an intention to guide my goals. Last year was all about creating quiet and margin in a year of wild change. This year, I have decided to focus on foundations. 

2026 will be my first year actually living out this chapter. I've been in transition, working towards this for so long - first evaluating what I wanted to create, then working full-time while in school, then completing school and my internship - and now that I'm finally here, I want to establish solid patterns to undergird this life I have worked so hard to create.

Foundations are the microhabits, the small, regular things that pay off in the long term. They might feel good as you do them, but more often you see the payoff in the rear-view mirror, like small contributions to your retirement account that don't do much on their own but accrue over time to make a world of difference.

This is a foundation-setting year for me. What does that look like? For me, it's exercise (outdoor cardio, weights, yoga), regular time with loved ones, daily quiet times, regular journaling, daily time outside, and committing to the disciplines of building a small business. Nothing earth-shaking, just a commitment to the things that I know build strong foundations for the life I want.

What are the simple, foundational habits that you build the rest of your life on? How can you focus more on those for the new year?