Time, Words, and Getting SMART

The last two weeks of December at work were really slow and quiet.  Maybe a quarter of my coworkers were in the office.  The rest were out celebrating the holidays and leaving whatever  needed to be done, which wasn't much, to the rest of us.  Let's put it this way - it was so quiet that the Hairy Beast came to work with me, twice.  The second time he even had a friend to play with!

 

Now it's the end of January!  How did that happen???

 

Once everyone was back in the office after the holidays, things got crazy busy.  I have a lot of projects going on, my manager was out of the office unexpectedly due to the death of his mother, and I moved offices. 

 

We've been fairly busy at home as well.  Christmas decorations were taken down and put away.  We move out all the living room furniture and shampooed the carpet.  Last Saturday we took advantage of the unseasonably warm sixty degree weather and drove down to Amish county to stock up on a few necessities.  It's been a blur of a month. 

Earlier in the month, many people were coming up with what their "word" for the year was going to be.  I wanted to come up with one that was positive and glorious and profound.  Hope and Change sounded good, but I think they've been a bit overused, no?  If I really thought about what I wanted for this year, one word stuck out - Reduce. 

 

I didn't make New Year's resolutions.  Those always seems to go by the wayside rather quickly.  Instead, I wrote down my goals for the year.  I tried to be "SMART" about them - Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Time-bound.

 

When I looked at my goals for the year - lose weight, eliminate sugar from my diet, clean out the basement and garage and sell or give away what we don't need/use, spend less, shrink debt, exercise more, watch less TV, read more - many seemed to have one thing in common: the need to Reduce something. 

 

It's not a glamorous, sexy word.  It's not profound like I had hoped.  But, it is accurate and something that has been weighing on my mind.  And, it has the potential of having an impact on my life.  At least I'm hoping it will.

 

 

AMDG