2016 moodboard.

Images, L-R: 1, 2, 3 | 4, 5, 6

This month, the theme for The Circle link-up at In Its Time was to create a moodboard for 2016. As I created my moodboard, I thought about how I want to 2016 to feel and what I want each day to look like. Here are some areas of my life I want to prioritize this year.

calm mornings

I've always been something of a night owl, but lately I've really been looking into how my sleep affects my overall health. My mornings are typically very rushed, and it doesn't help me start the day in a very nice mood. I'd like to be able to wake up earlier and spend some quiet time eating a "real" breakfast and actually enjoying my coffee, reading, doing a devotional, practicing yoga, writing in my journal, or setting goals for the day before I have to greet 30 teenagers!

nurturing my passions

• Teaching - I love, love, love my job. I definitely want to be involved with teaching and/or working with young people for the rest of my life. However, I've gotten a little complacent lately - I've gone from being the new teacher who was constantly reading professional development books, taking classes, and attending conferences to being the veteran who recycles lesson plans and goes home to watch Netflix. To try to rekindle that flame, I've applied to several programs for this spring and summer that should help get me back on track. I really want to be a teacher who is always innovating and trying new things.
• Writing - If someone had told me ten years ago that I wouldn't have published anything significant by the age of thirty, I probably would have gotten very depressed. My writing is another thing I think I've gotten complacent about - I use the busy-ness of my teaching job and personal writing, like blogging and Tumblr, to avoid writing for a purpose. Just like with exercise, if I don't make time to write creatively, it's not going to happen. What am I hiding from?

welcoming change

Change is scary to me, but my One Word for 2016 is horizon and when I look at the image of the girl facing the horizon, I see that she's facing the ocean and its ever-changing waves - one of my favorite places to be and one that I find incredibly calming. Change is a constant in life - in relationships, at work, and with our personal interests. I had to reevaluate some friendships in 2015, and gained a stronger sense of self (a little more about that here). Buying a house and being able to turn it into a place to welcome friends and family any time we want will be a big change. Moving to a new school for a semester will be a big change. I need to face the horizon rather than trying to run from it.

health and wellness

• I'm not exaggerating when I say that yoga has changed my life - I'm calmer, more patient, and more centered, and as a nice side effect my body is leaner. I want to keep practicing yoga regularly (at home in addition to the class I attend) and challenge myself to try more difficult poses.
• I've been working to improve my health and diet for almost four years now, since receiving my PCOS diagnosis, but nothing has been as helpful to me so far as the app that came with my Jawbone UP2 band (read more of my thoughts about the UP2 here) - the combination of tracking sleep, workouts, and food and positive reinforcement really seems to be working. I've tried various boot camps, diets, and cleanses, but none of them have really "stuck." Hopefully I'm on to something now!
• One of the things I'm most looking forward to when we do move out of our current townhouse is being able to have a garden and grow our own vegetables. I grew up in a rural area and sometimes I just need a little dirt therapy.

community

The time has come for me to break through my social anxiety and find a place to pray and worship (I wrote a little more about this here). Ever since reading Rachel Held Evans' book Searching for Sunday last year (my review is here), I've been yearning for the kind of transformative experience she writes about. I don't want to be yet another millennial who left the church and never returned - unlike some people I know who thrive on solitary spiritual paths, I am just no good at staying in the Word on my own. I have been making excuses for far too long, and this needs to be the year I find a church home, even if that means going alone. I miss the sense of belonging and understanding that I had in college with my fellowship, small group, and close-knit church. As I've said before, I know that there's no "perfect" church, but there must be one out there (hopefully not too far away) that I can help make wonderful.

#5FandomFriday - January 15th - 5 Ways I Am Going To Take Chances In 2016 

5 Fandom Friday is a weekly prompt challenge hosted by The Nerdy Girlie and Super Space Chick. This week's #5FandomFriday topic is 5 Ways I Am Going to Take Chances in 2015, and I've enjoyed reading the other girls' responses to this prompt so far. I was finally able to come up with my own list after lots of thought! I decided to focus on ways to take chances in different areas of my life.

work 

2016 is going to be a year of big changes at work! 8th grade English will be going from being a semester course to a year-long course (with the same 84 minute class periods) in order to better prepare our students for our very difficult state standardized test and their high school courses. I'm excited about having twice as much time with students - more than I've ever had before - because I'll be able to give them time for independent reading and we won't have to move on to new skills until they're ready. On the other hand, I'm very nervous about the change because it means I'll most likely be spending one semester on our other middle school campus, where I don't know very many people and which has a reputation for being very straight-laced. I've suggested an idea for a pilot program that would blend a high-level English class with one of our elective courses and several of the other English teachers really like it - we'll see what the rest of the faculty thinks when we meet this week.

wellness

I've been starting to really invest in my own health over the past few years, although I will be the first one to admit I'm bad at remembering to take care of me. I'm going to face my social anxiety by going to the gym more often for cardio, and I'm also considering signing up for a Couch to 5K program our local Parks and Rec department is offering - I have never liked running, so I would like to actually learn how to run properly.

faith

I would love to find a church community to participate in, but I've used my anxiety as an excuse to spend Sunday mornings at home. I think I am going to just put myself out there and see which of my friends, family members and co-workers will invite me to their churches. I know that I got unbelievably lucky when I lived in Charlottesville and found the perfect church for me via Google. I also know that I might not necessarily find a church that meets all my "perfect church" expectations (simple facility, won't make me work in the nursery, doesn't think women belong in the kitchen, doesn't see depression as a lack of faith, diverse and inclusive), but that I might have to work to "be the change" within that community.

family

Where are you, dream house?

Mr. Q and I will hopefully be buying a house in 2016! The idea of moving out of our townhouse gives me very mixed emotions - on the one hand, I'm totally psyched to get out of this temporary arrangement. On the other hand, I really do love our cozy townhouse; it's perfect for us right now and I've gotten very spoiled living so close to work. Moving on to the next phase of grown-up life is scary.

hobbies

I'd like to be able to stop referring to writing as a hobby and begin to truly pursue it as a career. I'm not very good at sticking to a writing schedule or being self-disciplined, and sometimes I worry that blog writing is actually taking me away from creative writing - you may see me taking a break from the blog for a while this year as I try to get more serious about my passion. My writing is kind of all over the place, but almost all of my stories have a fantasy element. I used to write poetry regularly and would like to get back into that as well. I don't know the first thing about submitting writing to magazines and such, so it's time to learn! My goal is to finish my portfolio and apply to the MFA program at Hollins College - even if I don't become a successful professional author, I think an MFA in creative writing will help me to be a better teacher of writing and a better mentor to new teachers.

if i could...

If I could*...

... Read only one literary genre, it would be YA fantasy.

... Live anywhere, it would be in a small city where I could walk to work, the library, and shops but still have room for a garden.

... Be anything, I would be a published YA author.

... Play any instrument, it would be the fiddle. 

... Drink only one thing besides water, it would be sweet tea.

... Meet any celebrity, it would be Dave Grohl.

... Relive one day, it would be the day my parents and I spent on Tybee Island in Georgia.

... Watch only one show forever, it would be That 70's Show, my all time favorite.

... Eat only one kind of food for the rest of my life, it would be pasta... but like a magical pasta that wouldn't make me gain weight!

... Only wear one outfit, it would be yoga pants and a sweatshirt. Sorry, work.

... Hug anyone right now, it would be my bestie in Seattle, the Lucy to my Ethel.


*Post idea shamelessly ripped off from Micah, Holly, Erin, and Katie.

showing compassion.

Around my last birthday, I set a personal goal to be more compassionate, and COMPASSION is my guiding word for 2013.  What I've realized recently is that "more compassionate" was really my euphemistic way of saying "less selfish."  I think I have to admit to myself that I'm a self-centered person before the process of projecting my energy outward can really gain any leverage.  And let me tell you, I've realized that self-centeredness and introversion are a truly dangerous combination.

Quotes by TT

We are living in a time that encourages self-centeredness.  We don't just have names and identities but e-mail addresses, Facebook pages, Twitter and Instagram feeds, Tumblrs and blogs.  We are encouraged to "brand" ourselves and market that brand.

On the last day of December I attended a surprise baby shower for a college friend, J.  J and I were members of the same religious fellowship in college, as was the party hostess.  J's husband B was also a member of our fellowship.  Most of the other party guests were girlfriends and wives of J's husband's roommates.  I'd had nerf gun fights and snowfall fights and food fights and long, deep talks about God with those boys while God was preparing these girls to be their wives; I should have run in and wrapped them all in a great big hug and thanked them for loving my friends.  Instead, my judgmental instinct was to think, "I've known J longer than they have, who do they think they are?"

Home Made Simple

On that afternoon I saw such compassion.  My friend Z creating a beautiful party for J and giving us all a job so that we could all feel like it was "our" party for her.  My grad school roommate M admitting to me that she was uncomfortable around those strange girls - her admission was a gift to me that instantly let me know she was as grateful for my presence as I was for hers, and at that moment we were more open to finding out who those girls were.

M is a wonder of compassion.  With just little details remembered from stories told five years ago or Facebook or friends' stories, she was able to strike up conversations with those girls and make everyone more comfortable, whereas my instinct would have been to cling to my one friend and hide in a corner.  I want to be the kind of person who remembers those details.  Who reaches out.  Who is not afraid.

To close J's shower, we laid hands on her to pray aloud for her, B, and their baby girl.  I heard such words of kindness and there was no doubt in my mind that each woman who spoke to God on behalf of J was filled with compassion, at least in that moment.

37 Days

With the compassion I saw on that last day of December in mind, here are three ways I want to put compassion into action this month:

- Send at least three pieces of snail mail to friends I haven't been able to visit or speak to for a while.

- Choose a special student to focus my energy on each week (I started doing this during my student teaching,  as a way to remind myself to reach out to students I might otherwise overlook, but haven't done it as much lately).

- Remember important details from conversations I have with friends, family members, and coworkers (even if this means writing them down because I struggle with short-term memory).

LINKING UP WITH LAYLA & KEVIN!

sunday social.

1. Do you plan to change any of your eating habits in the new year?
Yes!  I have decided to combine the low glycemic index diet my new doctor has put me on with calorie counting for a while.  Simply going low-GI has not been working to help me take off extra weight.  I have been using the Fooducate app on my phone to help me count calories and find healthier options for some items - the P.E. teacher I eat lunch with on Thursdays recommended it to me!

2. Any workout tips to get us back in shape after the Holidays?
Working out won't become a habit until you make it enjoyable, whether that means your routine includes Just Dance and Michael Jackson experience on the Wii (my favorite!), you join a class with a friend (one of my plans for 2013!) or you watch Pitch Perfect while riding the stationary bike.

3. Favorite thing you did over the Holidays?
I always love visiting my aunt and uncle on Christmas day with my mom and Mr. Q.  We drive through National Forest land to get there and it's such a beautiful, pastoral drive that always makes my heart feel peaceful.  On the drive back, there's a great view of the lights of Roanoke from the top of a mountain as we turn a corner.  And in between, I get to hear great stories from my favorite uncle and his wife.

4. What is something you hope that you accomplish in 2013 that you did not in 2012?
To finish a piece of creative writing - even if it's just a short story.

Inspiration for Breeze's wedding from Style Me Pretty

5. Name 3 things happening this year you are excited about and why?
- Seeing Miranda Lambert in concert for the first time in January - she is my country-girl idol.
- J's baby will be arriving in February!
- My best friend Breeze is getting married!!!

Are you making any changes to your eating and fitness habits for 2013?  What are you looking forward to this year?