Happy New Year: Intentions

I feel like the turkey we didn’t eat for Thanksgiving gobbled up the month of December. My hands have been full, literally with Livi.

We’ve made our way into the New Year very intentionally. We are not goal or resolution setters, although Nathaniel did make a resolution this year and does have work goals(which I call deadlines). So maybe I should say that I don’t set goals and make resolutions. But I am setting intentions.

I spent a great deal of time writing reflectively about 2022 and then searching those reflections to create intentions for 2023.

One thing I did was record the best parts of 2022. Livi is obviously at the top of that list. But we did so many wonderful things. We had great camping and day adventures. We fished a lot despite never catching one. Raised a greenhouse and kept it productive and beautiful the entire year. I preserved some garden goods and sold some too. I rode Porter all the way to 37 weeks and returned to it as soon as it felt right. I put myself out there and made new friends and mom connections. We stayed cool in our house and kept our pastures incredibly green for the dry and hot year it was. I survived a 4-season pregnancy with a toddler, haha. Nathaniel’s diligence and skill got Big Rock Woodcraft the most incredible job. We tracked all our income. Met some of the best Hipcampers. Had a successful calving season and dialed in a chicken pen called Fort Cluck.

It was a challenging year but a brilliant year. The work we did in 2022 has us really excited to keep going into 2023. So let’s look forward to the new year before us!

Intentions as a family

We want to camp and adventure, even fish, despite having zero success. Clancy wants to go to a zoo for the first time. Getting out will be important, but we want to openly appreciate our home and ranch this year. Explore our wild side of the ranch, and take in the views. Do work together as a family on the ranch. Let Clancy spend more time at the shop ‘working’ with Nathaniel to foster that future potential family business relationship. Grow, harvest, cook, eat, and preserve together. We want to do what we do together and appreciate it.

Intentions as responsible adults

Nathaniel and I are cracking down on our finances. In 2022 we set out to track our income, which is tricky with our multi-enterprise situation, but we did it successfully! Nathaniel did a great job of tracking business expenses too. That really gave us the confidence to go a step further and track our personal and ranch expenses.

The spreadsheets are done, the receipts are piling up, and soon we will start to see a really clear picture of where our money is going. This is really an attempt to be intentional and minimal. What hidden subscriptions are we paying for? Where can we spend less? What do our eggs and beef actually cost us to raise?

Before we buy anything, we have to really ask ourselves if it will make our lives more efficient and happier and how we will store it or dispose of it in the end. Then we must remind ourselves that we spent X amount of money in 2022 and haven’t had it before, so basically, don’t buy it! Haha

We both glaze over at health insurance, finances, taxes, and basically anything that has to do with being an adult, so this is a really big thing for us to spearhead.

As for me

It really comes down to focusing, honoring, and nurturing certain parts of myself this year. I am at a really difficult time in my life. For starters, my life is very much not my life in this chapter of living. Clancy and Livia need care and supervision 24/7. It is consuming in beautiful and difficult ways.

I do choose to raise my kids. I have to remind myself of this often because I was in school and deep in healing from autoimmune disease before having Clancy, so there was no job that I chose not to return to after having him. I was already home doing the ranch and school. So now I am home doing the ranch and parenting.

It is the harder thing to do, probably the hardest thing I will ever do, but I do want to be the one to raise them. Let me rephrase that so I am honestly representing myself: I want to be the person who wants to raise her kids. Being a parent has taught me that I don’t really like parenting; it is incredibly stressful to be responsible for caring for and fostering early human development all. the. time. When I zoom out and look at the big picture, I want to be with my kids every single day, so I am doing it. Even if I struggle with the emotional throes and decision-making in handling the thousands of situations constantly being sprung on me by tiny humans in need of constant care, comfort, guidance, yet room to grow.

This, and working with my acupuncturist, has inspired me to adopt a word to live for and by this year. My word is Surrender.

I hold myself to high expectations and ideals of how to live and care for land, animals, and my children. I need to chill the F out and go with the flow. Find my sense of humor again and not take everything so seriously. Surrender from the weight, the pressure, that I have placed upon myself and just enjoy myself, my husband, my kids, my animals, and nature. I want to embrace being before doing.

But then, I want to do. Self-care is self-achievement, for me.

So here is what I want to DO with my year.

I want to push the limits in my greenhouse and try for early harvesting of our favorites, refining what we grow so it feels like our garden is really feeding us. Converting the Bird’s Nest to a seed starting grow op(my first time starting the majority of my own seeds) and space to store what we grow and buy in bulk is a necessary transition we are making.

I want to ride my horse(s) as much as I can and get out on trails again. Fear and anxiety burden me in the saddle since becoming a mother. Working through that and finding joy and freedom with my horses, especially loping without fear, is a big thing I want to feel this year.

Maintaining my new mom connections and friends, and feeling/finding/creating a greater sense of community around myself is an exciting priority. I also feel the desire to give back in some capacity on a community level and I am hoping that this year yields clarity to that yearning.

I constantly find myself feeling lustful to do or be apart of something more organized than motherhood and homemaking. Different parts of me pull me in different directions. Finding my way back to working the ranch more would really make me happy. Working more closely with Nathaniel and his business might too. But the one resolution or goal, if I will allow myself to declare, is that I do not set out to start or do anything with financial gain in mind. AKA, no starting my own ‘business’. If I can’t do it with my kids, then I can’t do it. It is not worth the time, money, or effort. My prior plots(crochet dishcloths, nutritional therapy, sourdough starter, sewn goods) have taught me that I just need to settle in and dial in what we already have going—Be the irreplaceable asset to my husband and Big Rock Woodcraft, Hipcamp(which I love), the ranch, my newsletter and blog, and best of all, our family.

I often have the feeling of “Daylight’s burning!” That I have to do all the things NOW or I never will get the chance. But I have to embrace and trust in tomorrow. That I have an entire life of tomorrows and I will get to do the big things that I aspire to do. You will too.

I said we don’t make goals, but I lied. We do have a huge goal for this year—catch a damn fish!

2023. It is here, and we are doing it.