When I wrote about my goals for this year of being 30, I made my Decem­ber goal to knit (and fin­ish) a Christ­mas present for a fam­ily mem­ber.  I had a spe­cific pur­pose in pick­ing this.  I’m not too con­cerned about the improve­ment of my knit­ting skills.   If it hap­pens, it hap­pens.  I’m not going to be mak­ing a career out of it any time soon, but I wanted to be dis­ci­plined enough that I would start and fin­ish a project in a rea­son­able amount of time.

Hav­ing read my list of goals, you might guess that I don’t always fin­ish what I start.  I started a quilt for K over four years ago.  I got about 80% of the way done, and I basi­cally stopped.  I’ve picked it up a few times over the years, but I haven’t made any sig­nif­i­cant progress on it since before K’s birth.  I also own mate­r­ial to start a baby quilt for A which I no longer intend to make.  The mate­r­ial is very pastel-y and only enough for a small quilt.  I don’t think that is going to be very prac­ti­cal any more.  I have a blan­ket I started cro­chet­ing when I was preg­nant with A that is about 1/3 done.  I also have sev­eral other craft­ing sup­plies that are wait­ing for me to fin­ish sev­eral dif­fer­ent projects.  In our effort to get the house less clut­tered and get rid of things we didn’t use, I gave away a full rub­ber stamp set with three col­ors of ink ear­lier this year.  That was part of my big plan to make my own Christ­mas cards.  I bought the stamps and ink in 2003.  Never used.  I didn’t even cut the stamps out to put them on the blocks!  Not a great track record.

So, knit­ting.  I had been hear­ing so much about knit­ting from friends that I decided to take a com­mu­nity ed class to learn.  I also decided to stop leav­ing half fin­ished projects all over the house, so I am com­mit­ted to fin­ish­ing this project in time to give it as a gift.  I am doing alright.  I have a decent start, but it’s def­i­nitely not ready to give yet.

How about you?  Are any of you like me? Do you ever start a project get 40–60% of the way into it and decide it’s too hard/boring/expensive/time con­sum­ing to fin­ish?  Do you ever feel guilty about it or are you okay with that decision?

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post talk­ing about turn­ing thirty and feel­ing a lit­tle bit unsure of what that meant.  When I was 25, I felt sim­i­larly.  I was no longer a stu­dent, and I was mov­ing out into the real world.  Now that I’m 30, I am actu­ally moved out of my first house and back into an apart­ment.  We do, how­ever, own both of our vehi­cles out­right and have very lit­tle other debt.  I am now eat­ing as well or bet­ter than any time in the past.  I feel more com­fort­able in my par­ent­ing beliefs and prac­tices than I have any time before.  I think part of the rea­son that I felt like I was going to have issues with being 30 is that it seems like you are no longer “young.”  I’m no longer in my care free 20’s.  I’m now a real adult.  I have real respon­si­bil­i­ties, and I am get­ting older!  Also, I have heard sev­eral peo­ple say, “I want to be done hav­ing kids by the time I turn 30.”  I never wanted that.  But, some­how, as I got closer to 30, I started to feel more pres­sure to hurry up and be done hav­ing kids even if it was going to be a bit past 30.

I had also been look­ing around our apart­ment lately and think­ing about all the things I had either started and not fin­ished or intended to do but had not done.  I decided that one thing that would help me to feel bet­ter about this year was to be able to look back on it and feel good about what I’ve used my time to do.  So, here it is, my list of goals for my 30th year.

My 30th year goals

Decem­ber — Kit­ting — I recently learned to knit.  I took a com­mu­nity edu­ca­tion class.  Orig­i­nally, I’d hoped to learn to knit a sweater by Christ­mas time for either my mom or Jason’s mom.  Unfor­tu­nately, that seems to be too hard and too time con­sum­ing for me right now.  My goal is to make a dif­fer­ent Christ­mas gift.  I’ll (hope­fully) post pic­tures after the hol­i­days are over!

Jan­u­ary — Fin­ish K’s quilt -  When I was preg­nant with K, I started a Noah’s ark quilt.  I got most of it fin­ished dur­ing the sum­mer and fall before he was born.  He was born about 4 weeks early, and after that my progress on the quilt stalled for the next 4 years!

Feb­ru­ary — Going to bed by 10:30 and get­ting up by 6:30 — I would like to take a month to prac­tice get­ting to bed ear­lier and get­ting up about 30 min­utes ear­lier than I need to be up and going.  I’d like to take that time to do a reg­u­lar quiet time and pray for the upcom­ing day.

March — Read -  I love to read.  I love to read.  I love to read.  In the midst of every­thing else I have to do or get done, I often feel as though I miss sit­ting down and get­ting lost in a book for hours.  I love dis­cov­er­ing new authors and rush­ing to the library to get the next book in a series or a new book by that author.  Because so many of my goals for this year will take time away from read­ing, I wanted to make sure I take time to focus on some­thing I enjoy so much.

April — Exer­cise –Right now, I exer­cise irreg­u­larly (usu­ally the min­i­mum of 3 times a week) at Curves.  It’s fine, and it’s nice to get a full body work out in just 30 min­utes.  I’m hop­ing to use this month to incor­po­rate more car­dio into the work­out.  Hope­fully it will coin­cide with spring???  Dare I make that wish?    Ide­ally, my goal is to work­out at Curves 3 times a week and do car­dio 2–3 times a week.  If I end up doing the 5k in May, I’ll need to be run­ning that often anyway.

May — Run a 5K — I know!  Those of you who have read this blog for a while know about my strug­gles with asthma, run­ning, cough­ing, and the frus­tra­tion that comes with those things.  I would love to run (yes, run the whole way) a 5k.  If I want to run the Fargo 5k in May, I would attempt the Couch to 5k plan again.  This time, I have a new plan of attack.  Instead of leav­ing myself 1 or 2 extra weeks, I want to start in Jan­u­ary and do each week of the plan twice.  That means if I get sick, I’ll have a buffer.  If I have trou­ble with a week, I’ll have a buffer.  Hope­fully…    Hope­fully, Jason will be run­ning the half marathon again and I’ll be run­ning (yes, run­ning the whole way) the 5k.

June — Doing new things as a fam­ily — Because my boys are young and close in age, I some­times make excuses for not tak­ing them places or try­ing new activ­i­ties with them.  We haven’t gone to the state park that is about 2 hours east of here.  Many of our friends have reported back about how great it is.  We haven’t even gone to the park that is 30 min­utes west of here with them.  We also have not taken a fam­ily vaca­tion nor have we stayed in a hotel room since A was born (not with the boys any­way).  My goal in June is to do 2 new things each week.  One activ­ity I would like to do as a fam­ily and one dur­ing the day when I’m by myself with the boys.

July — Orga­nize clos­ets and stor­age unit –Before we moved, our house was neat, clean, and orga­nized.  We got rid of a LOT of stuff we no longer needed.  Once we moved in here, we put things where they seemed to go.  We put the rest of the stuff in a stor­age unit.  I can see we don’t need much of what we kept.  Dur­ing July, I want to go through clos­ets and cup­boards and get rid of what we no longer need or want.  I also want to spend some time at the stor­age unit orga­niz­ing that and mak­ing sure every­thing in there is some­thing we will want or need at our house when the time comes.

August — Orga­nize pho­tos and make photo books — I am ter­ri­ble at this.  I have done noth­ing since I met Jason.  We have a wed­ding album, but that’s it.  I think my mom put that one together.  We have a drawer of pic­tures and thou­sands of pic­tures on the com­puter.  I want to make photo books for the boys (like the ones at Snap­fish or MyPub­lisher) and put together one for our fam­ily, too.

Sep­tem­ber — Noth­ing — After hav­ing goals for the entire year, I want to relax.  I want to sit out on our deck and read if I want or sleep if I want or do noth­ing if I want.  I want to round out my 30th year by think­ing about how great it was.

As if I didn’t have enough going on, I have a cou­ple other goals I want to make ongo­ing.  I want to do bet­ter at tak­ing pic­tures.  Jason’s sis­ter par­tic­i­pates in a photo project called Project 365 where the goal is to take one pic­ture each day.  I’m not sure I want to com­mit do doing that, but I would like to think of some way to get bet­ter and more con­sis­tent pho­tos of the boys and of us as a fam­ily.  Lastly, as if I hadn’t sched­uled every moment of my life from now through next Sep­tem­ber, I want to con­tinue devel­op­ing my idea for the Inno­va­teND com­pe­ti­tion.  Maybe some day I’ll even be able to share it!

So, a cou­ple days ago, I wrote about being 30 and NOT hav­ing a cri­sis about it.  In one of the com­ments, Rachel said she’d like to see 29 accom­plish­ments that I have had in my first 29 years.  Ask and you shall receive.  Although I write my blog for me, I’m always open to ideas for posts, espe­cially dur­ing NaBloPoMo.

1. I stayed with a host fam­ily in Japan for 6 weeks when I was 17.
2. I climbed part of Mt. Fuji.  I rode the sub­way and train by myself in Tokyo.
3. I ate things I didn’t even know were meant to be eaten!
4. I com­pleted a dou­ble major (ele­men­tary and mid­dle level edu­ca­tion) with 2 areas of con­cen­tra­tion (math and social sci­ences) in 4.5 years.
5. I earned a 4.0 in grad school.
6. I fin­ished grad school in 14 months while teach­ing full time.
7. I mar­ried a fine man at the age of 22.
8. I have two beau­ti­ful children.
9. I (at one point) spoke Span­ish well enough to earn 8 col­lege cred­its on the place­ment test.
10. I have had two nat­ural (drug-free) labors.
11. I have been breast­feed­ing for 4 years, 1 week, and 3 days.
12. I have vis­ited 26 states.
13. I only let in one goal in my one (and only)appearance as start­ing goalie for a col­lege broom ball team.
14. I took piano lessons and played reg­u­larly for 9 years.
15. I played the flute for 7 years.
16. I read To Kill a Mock­ing­bird in high school and thought it was bor­ing.  I reread it when I was 24 and really enjoyed it.
17. I joined a book club.
18. I became a La Leche League Leader (although none of my posts on this site should be con­strued as advice or asso­ci­ated with La Leche League’s stance on an issue unless I state otherwise).
19. I attended BlogHer ’09 and trav­eled by myself for the very first time at the age of 29.
20. I ran (and walked) my first 5K in 2009.
21. I gave up meat and most meat based prod­ucts. (in process)
22. I worked at a camp in the Bound­ary Waters Canoe Area in north­ern Min­nesota for two sum­mers where I learned to hike and canoe.  For other rea­sons, those were two of the hard­est times of my life.
23. I learned to drive a man­ual trans­mis­sion car and pre­fer it over auto­matic in most situations.
24. I went from cook­ing only spaghetti with meat sauce (from a jar) and tacos to cook­ing a dif­fer­ent (and usu­ally yummy) meal every night of the week.
25. I took over the shov­el­ing duties in our fam­ily and shov­eled 95% of the time last win­ter (the snowiest Decem­ber EVER).
26. In one year, I attended the fol­low­ing con­certs:  Trans-Siberian Orches­tra, Green Day, Brit­tney Spears.  I hope to attend Toby­Mac before that year is up.
27. I spon­sor a child through Com­pas­sion Inter­na­tional.
28. I started a blog (this one) for fam­ily and friends and real­ized most of the peo­ple who read it don’t know me or my family.
29. I came up with a great idea for the Inno­va­teND com­pe­ti­tion.  We’ll see where it goes in the next cou­ple years.

I’m 30.  Know­ing that I had my big birth­day com­ing up, I spent a bit of time think­ing about it over the sum­mer.  What does 30 mean?  How do I feel about it?  Have I accom­plished what I’d hoped to accom­plish by 30?  Was I going to have a cri­sis about being 30?  How was I going to define my entrance into my 30’s?

When I turned 25, I had just grad­u­ated with my master’s degree in spe­cial edu­ca­tion.  I had a bit of a cri­sis over it.  For the first time in a very long time, I wasn’t going to be a stu­dent.  I didn’t have classes. I wasn’t going to be graded.   I didn’t have teach­ers.  In order to com­bat my feel­ings of angst, I decided to take a lead­er­ship class at my church.  I guess I replaced one type of school with another.  I was also a teacher, I guess I had found my com­fort zone. 

This sum­mer as I approached 30, I thought of clos­ing down this blog and start­ing up a now-that-I’m-30 blog.  I fig­ured I would set some goals for myself, report sev­eral times a week, and dis­tract myself until I was 31.  Then, instead of hav­ing a cri­sis, I would do those things I had long put off or found an excuse not to do.  Instead of doing that, I just didn’t.  I found things to busy myself, and I finally made a tan­gi­ble goal for myself by elim­i­nat­ing sugar from my diet from now until Thanksgiving.

Just when I was feel­ing jus­ti­fied in my com­pla­cency, I got an email.  A fab­u­lous friend of mine had com­mented on my sugar post.  This is a friend who was in my wed­ding (and I was in hers 22 weeks preg­nant with K), a friend who I think about quite often, a friend I admire greatly, and a friend I had not talked to in over a year.   I was so excited to read a com­ment from her.  I was even more excited to see she had a blog.  It struck me as a lit­tle funny that her blog is thirty things she wants to accom­plish before she’s thirty.  Hmmm…  Maybe I’m not feel­ing so great about my com­pla­cency all of a sudden.

So, Friends, I bet you can guess what will be com­ing in the next few days and weeks.  A list.  I am not nearly as ambi­tious as my friend, so I will not be cre­at­ing the blog “30 Things I Did While 30.”  I am think­ing I will be set­ting monthly goals for myself.  So far, I have this:   Octo­ber– Pro­cras­ti­nate (check)  Novem­ber– Elim­i­nate sugar and refined car­bo­hy­drates from diet (in progress).  I will keep you updated as the list con­tin­ues to grow.