Designing my Life

Where do I want to be in a year? Five years? Ten?

For a long time now, I've been putting myself last in line of priority, after... well, mainly, keeping food on the table and supporting my family, actually.

And it shows.

I'm not healthy: My back hurts and I can't deny I'm heavy enough to feel uncomfortable in my own skin. I drive everywhere, and I'm always rushing home to pick up the kids...

While I have lovely, helpful and supportive employers, I work all over Sydney from the Mountains to the Upper North Shore (that's going to get harder when we move, for a start). And it's not really my passion, selling guttering. That's the downside, though I am really grateful for the fact that I can take my laptop along with me, and work on just about anything I please (from programming my Girl Guide Unit, to writing my thesis) as long as I have an internet connection that works.

But it can't last like that forever. I'm not fully following my passions, and I need to be taking this time I have as a means to an end - being truly, positively, myself.

So, here's the "me" wish list for the next twelve months.

These are the changes I want to see in myself and my lifestyle. Heck, at least I can look back here at the end of Financial Year 2014-15, and see if I've got anywhere at all, or if I need to look harder at myself to make the changes.

I'm putting it in the most affirming way possible.

In the next twelve months to 30th June 2015 I will:

• Build a new home which caters to and nourishes all my needs (and that of my family)
• Enjoy my husband and children
• Grow more of our own fruits and vegetables.
• Keep chickens
• Walk more
• Dance
• Sing
• Play more piano and guitar
• Listen to more nurturing music
• Meditate, at least once a week.
• Pick up Yoga, Pilates, Riding. And stick to it.
• Teach for money
• Learn: either by beginning my Masters, or shifting into a field that gives me better life balance. Or both.  
• And get my outdoor qualification for Guides, somehow (so I can camp in the outdoors with my girls).
• Earn good money in my own fields of passion and interest: Design, costume, arts and creativity.
• Raise my energy levels, through all of the above, but also through service to others.

That's a lot to live up to, but I can't tell myself that. I need to be gentler. And I need to realise that a good chunk of the next twelve months will be taken up by the build, and laying the groundwork to make it possible to do all of the other things.

But there it is. Out there in the public domain for all to see.

Are you there with me?

PS: if you like the pic at the top, it came from this blog which is kind of relevant and cool anyway.