2021 Goals
We use this phrase a lot around here:
In winter, we prioritize resting and hibernating, and planning for the following year. It’s a great time to reflect on the past year, and plan for adjustments or improvements for where we are on our goals. We brainstorm goals for the next year, and put pen to paper to map out options. I love doing this. I love when My Love and I sit on the couch in the back room and plan on the chalkboard, and talk about the year ahead. It’s a great date night. In doing this, we know our goals and where our energy will be focused for the following year. When our priorities are synched, we have a solid baseline for when things change, because no plan survives first contact.
I love making lists. It’s how I focus, and how I make sure my time is spent in alignment with our goals and priorities. It’s the same reason why I love budgets. Schedules and budgets are choices you make, based on your priorities, to make your time and money work for you.
2020
Last year, we outlined a year that focused on building out our homestead. We knew with it being our first year on the homestead, that we’d be spending more on our household than normal. We ordered seeds to start a market garden, contacted a small local farmers market to apply for a stand, and began prepping 6,000 sq feet of garden for our own food and a small market garden.
And then, COVID hit. We scrapped the market garden idea and just grew an 1,800 sq ft garden (bigger than our house!) and focused on improving our fighting position instead of worrying about side hustles. It was a great year of trial and error for us, and I’m very excited for next year’s garden.
But that side hustle itch didn’t go away just because of COVID. Near the end of 2020, I started looking into how to build up a cottage kitchen industry. I love to bake. The office loves when I bake. So I decided to try and figure out all of the ins and outs of a home-based business. When I write up the article on how that went, I’ll link it here.
2021
For next year, we want to continue building out our homestead, look for ways to relocate our homestead, but also improve our health and wealth.
Some of my main goals for the year
Among others! :)
With all of this winter season reflection, I have big goals for next year. Big goals motivate me to keep growing. For example, I wanted to try and make an extra $1,000 in side hustle/selling off stuff we don’t use this year, but I accidentally wrote down $10,000. I didn’t get to either goal, so I decided to roll this one over into the new year and see what happens.
I’ve been dealing with gut issues for ages. Realizing you are lactose intolerant in middle school made pizza parties and ice cream socials… not fun. I’ve tried all sorts of things, and the only time I feel really great is on a strict elimination diet. Which isn’t very fun. I’m going to have some testing done so that I have more data about my gut health. No more guessing games!
I’d like to find a FIRE mentor. I’m part of an amazing FIRE posse of ladies pursuing FIRE, and it’s been amazing for me to have peers as a sounding board. I’ve learned a ton from these power house women, and I’m hungry to learn more. Ideally, I’ll find a woman who is further along her FIRE journey who would be willing take me under her wing, to highlight other opportunities I haven’t considered, and murder board our own campFIRE plans. There’s a lot of wisdom in experience, and I’m all about finding pitfalls on paper long before we arrive at them in real life!
This year, I’d like to be more organized. (Remember those lists?) It’s a lot easier to organize things when you have less to organize! The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up is a great read! A good purge will help ease the clutter in my brain, and having everything in its place always helps make cleaning a breeze.
I used to write up a little annotated bibliography for each book I read. I’d like to pick that back up again. It’s more of a reflection about what resonated with me, but I think that’d be a great habit to bring back. I just picked 21 books because of the year, no other reason!
The last two goals are the stretchiest of the stretch goals. To advertise a secret goal isn’t really fair, I know. Singing "I got a secret” is annoying. But I’m so excited about this goal, I’m parking a placeholder for it here. I’ll share later when I’m more comfortable with the status of this doozy. It’s a big undertaking, and I don’t want to mismanage my own expectations, let alone dismay anyone else if it takes longer than I want it to!
Building passive income sounds so wonderful, doesn’t it? Sort of like world peace. Sounds great. But how the heck do you actually get there? I’ve had to re-wire my brain for this one. Maybe its the Midwest work ethic, or just how we’re socially conditioned to exchange our effort for income, but I’ve been scratching my head on this one for a while. To make a living, you roll up your sleeves and get to work, right? “Letting” my money work for me is one thing in mutual funds or ETFs, but “investing” in a riskier venture is accompanied with lots of teeth-sucking sounds and inaction. Not this year. I want to try something, just for the experience and momentum it will build for the next adventure.
We have lots of other little goals too: grow our rabbitry, raise meat birds, get up the gumption to use the pressure canner, workout three times a week, throw away as little food as possible (looking to you, chickens and garden worms!), more journaling, family walks, and meditation.
Why not shoot for the stars?
It at least gets us off the couch!
2021 might be a doozy of a year. It might be better than 2020, it might not. Either way, we’re going to put on our work boots, get after it, and make some progress where we can. If we fall short of achieving all of our goals, that’s okay by me. At least we’ll have made progress and achieved some goals!
Do you have big plans for 2021? Do you make little goals as waypoints to achieve larger goals, too?
