Greetings Darlings! I am so excited as I type this! Maybe it’s the combo of coffee and sativa, maybe it’s just my unbridled optimism, but I feel SO GOOD about 2016. I don’t know about you guys, but I could really use a fresh start. A do over. A moment to re-prioritize. It’s what I love about the new year, and birthdays too. A natural progression of time to mark our achievements and setbacks.

I like to assign little themes to the years… something to focus our attentions as the year throws us all that we never anticipated. Sometimes the theme is assigned in hindsight, specifically those years when life takes over and I’m just along for the ride. The point of a theme is having another mental trick to streamline your actions and to focus on the things that matter.

As I said in my end of the year letter,

2012 was my manic year of misery, sex, travel, passion, deep depression, painful revelations and falling madly in love. Man. Glad that one’s over.

In 2013 I took a leap. I divorced and I remarried and I became a stepmother.

2014 was all about rebirth. The new family, the new house, this new life 2.0. It was blending our children into the silly group of rapscallions we have now.

2015 was about normalizing. In an unremarkable year we find ourselves with a very happy and secure family, a re-poured foundation stronger than the first. Life this year was easy.

2016 is my year to focus. 2016 might be your year:

to simplify
to achieve
to organize
of mindfulness

Focus

the clear and sharply defined condition of an image.

We live in this nutty world where we have to have our phones nearby while we brush our teeth. I have a podcast going every time I shower. Car? Listen to music. Home? Work on the computer. Have a few minutes to spare? Grab the iPad. Open apps, close them, check email every time you pick up the phone, always tethered, always available.

This lifestyle began when I was a photographer. Editing images for hours is somewhat tedious and pairs nicely with Netflix marathons. Over time however, I am seeing that I am far less productive and focused when I am “multitasking”. So nowadays I am trying to get away from listening to podcasts while working. Podcasts work well for photography and graphic design work, but other tasks are totally incompatible with any distractions. Writing for one.

Focus is like Mindfulness, only I don’t want to be working on’ being in the moment’ as much as eliminating all distractions from my brain, on demand. So when I’m in Mom Mode, I’m like, Ultra Mom, and when I’m in Work Mode, I’m super productive.

Setting Measurable Goals

The key to actually accomplishing what you want in life is to set measurable goals. Often the goals we choose are far too non-specific that they hardly even count as goals. Goals have to be measurable, otherwise they are just dreams. If you cannot measure it, it doesn’t exist. For me anyway.

“Get Healthy” isn’t a goal, it is too general to measure, and the result is open to interpretation. We need concrete directions to be able to focus intently on a specific desire, so get specific!

I want to write more this year, but I don’t want to constrain myself to a word count, so instead I will focus on writing every day, something easily tracked in a day planner.

Another huge focus this year is my parenting. I truly want to rock the mom thing this year. This is a hard one to measure… I mean, how do you track if you are being a good mother or not? My answer to this is to think of some plans or events that I know bring my daughters and I closer, and to make it a goal to schedule those plans and make sure they happen.

Example: You know that consistent meals at the dinner table is one tiny part of being a good mom. So, a measurable, actionable, goal for 2016 might be, have and track family dinners at the table.

My personal goals in 2016

Write every day
Be a focused mother
- Develop new nighttime routine that fosters personal connection at nighttime between the girls and I.
- Read at night with Tori for longer periods
- Clean Lizzy’s room with her before bedtime every night.
- They brush teeth in the morning on their own, I brush their teeth every night.
The Stoner Mom 366. It’s funny, the last time I had a daily photo project was 2012, another leap year. I remember because my web address had 366 in the name. This is the one goal that I am pretty excited about. I’ve been missing photography. Not the business, but the personal collection of photographs that one amasses when photographing everything, all the time. So in that pursuit, I will be photographing every day, either with my pro cameras or one of my many devices. I will post the weeks images on Fridays. Want to follow along? Use #daily366 and #stonermom366 and document 2016 with a photo a day.