Happy New Year!!
We’re taking one more break from the Children Home Rules for New Years.
Wow.
What a year last year was. I remember January and February of 2020 fondly. Not so much those following months.
As we’ve been challenged in how we live and adapt from month to month, one thing has been abundantly clear: we have an amazing ability to adjust.
If you had asked me about the norm that exists now, back when this had first started I would have told you that:
We’ll only be wearing masks for a short time
Hopefully this will run its course in a few short months
I was definitely off the mark, but none of us could've predicted back in March what our way of life would look like now.
It’s been a roller coaster for me and my family as well. I went from working for W. Kim Palatine full time until the end of March and from there embarked on an adventure to open up the third location of W. Kim in Mount Prospect and that was predictably unpredictable.
If we had gone by our own timeline of when we expected things to progress, we would have had the lease signed and the Mount Prospect location opened in mid to late April.
As we learned (again and again), even the best laid plans don’t go quite according to what we had envisioned. We ended up opening four months later, in August. In hindsight, this was a very good thing
We were blessed in many ways this year as well. We gained greater patience and understanding, not just of the process to start a new location, but of other people as well. When uncertainty becomes the norm, we don’t always cope or react in the way we normally would. Being able to have that patience and understanding has helped us navigate even better throughout these times.
Thankfully, we’ve also stayed healthy throughout this year (taking the necessary precautions of course, at home and at the school.)
So, what’s next?
While it’s pretty apparent that the way of life we have adapted to isn’t going to go away anytime soon, it doesn’t mean we can’t look forward to the New Year with optimism.
I’ve encouraged my two boys, rather than come up with a single year-long endeavor for a New Year’s resolution, to come up with at least five goals that they have for this year. They don’t have to be big goals and honestly if they achieve them all in the first month, I’m going to count it as a success.
Setting goals and feeling the accomplishment of completion or achievement is something I believe is necessary in everyone's life.
Now comes the tougher part. Share your goals with someone else. Nothing helps me more than when someone asks me about something I’m working on and I want to be able to tell them I”m further along than when they asked last time.
That accountability can help motivate us and make us more productive.
It’s amazing how things change in the course of a year. I’m excited to see what new and exciting changes this New Year will bring.
Happy New Year!
Photo credit: Karolina Grabowska
