January 1

Hello there, 2012.

And hello there, Thirty Days.

The planning for a January Thirty Days is a bit intense.  There's a lot of pressure due to that whole "new year, new you" vibe going on, resolutions flying about all over the place.  Got to pick a good one, a life-changer.  Not to mention, you'd better stick to it.  My track record for the end of 2011 was a bit shabby...

But, new year, new me, new chance at the blog.  So here goes.

I am going to ask Thirty Days to multi-task a bit this year.  In addition to a monthly, small-steps challenge for myself, I am also going to revisit my month of gratitude, on a daily basis.  Five minutes, timed, to focus on resolution three and be grateful.  As I've been reflecting this weekend it seems to me that gratitude may be the linchpin on which the other resolutions hang.  If I focus on what I am grateful for, it will help me to be present in my life.  The more present I am, the more mindful I'll be, moving forward.  And the reflective quality of it all may very well help me to breathe a bit and work on the most challenging one of all-- patience...

Also, gratitude makes for a better blog.

As I came up with a list of wonderful ideas for 30 day challenges, I was struck by how many of them just wouldn't make for very good reading....

"Yep, I did it, drank a total of 66 ounces of water today..."
"I am happy to report that I ate 4 servings of vegetables..."

Nice to know but really, are you all going to tune in daily for that??  I think not.

So, a dose of daily gratitude, to soothe the soul and inspire us all, to make the days of 2012 as memorable as they can be.

With no further ado, then, here is the challenge I have set for myself for this month:

I will take positive action, every day, towards getting my financial house in order.  I am leaving this a bit open-ended for myself-- I hope you don't mind-- to allow for some creativity and also a better chance for success.   These positive actions may include but are not limited to:  Finding something I need on sale, using a coupon, choosing the cheaper option, conserving/reusing/reducing instead of buying, actually putting money in a savings account, not buying random stupid stuff when I am tempted to, etc.

The boring part of the blog will be a daily recap of my attempts to save as well as an estimated dollar amount saved over the course of the day.

Why did I choose this challenge, you may wonder?  I happened across a blog the other day, Family on Bikes, which details the way in which an ordinary suburban family of four left their normal lives for 3 years (3 YEARS!) to travel by bicycle from the top of North America to the bottom of South America.  Unreal.  A lot of things hit me as I explored their website (chief among these being-- wow, I would so totally rather be bicycling through South America rather than going to work on Wednesday....) but one of them was this piece of advice:

Dreams take a long time to achieve, with untold small steps unfolding to get from here to there, and what we are doing today may seem unrelated to where we want to be.  But all along the way one needs to ask oneself, Are my decisions and actions today aligned with my dream? 

Nat and I could probably go into business as professional dreamers, we've got so many of them.  And we spend a lot of time talking about our dreams, though we never seem to settle on just one, or take any action towards any of them.  At least not directly.  One of the commonalities to our dreams is that they all seem to require a certain amount of capital.  And so we can say to ourselves, Well, we can't afford that right now/it'll be a LOONG time til we can afford that/ Yeah, when we win the lottery, and we set the dream off to the side and step back into our routine.  And nothing changes.

Are my actions today aligned with my dreams?  Not so much this Christmas season, that's for sure.

Saving $1.50 at Starbucks by having a regular coffee instead of a latte-- that's a little thing.  And (sadly) it's not going to allow me to start building a lake house and working part-time tomorrow.   But, by our quick calculations, it should add up to about $200 a year.  I know, I know-- that's still not going to buy a lake house.  But  the thinking here is, these small steps will pile up, accumulate like so much lake effect snow, and someday when all the choices and paths and opportunities align and we find ourselves in a position to do it, to act on our dreams and make something real, we'll be all lined up and ready to go.

Official report for January 1:

Chose regular coffee at Starbucks--savings: $1.50
Submitted appropriate paper work to Sprint, to set up employer discount on monthly bill-- savings:  none yet but we're working on it!
Chose to buy CD-rom drive rather than DVD burner drive for my drive-less laptop (when am I burning DVDs in my daily life?)-- savings: $20

Total saved: $21.50


Today I am grateful for:

The leisure to have a do-nothing day, to fritter the day with quiet organization and playing with Legos and walking around at the mall.
My little impish children and their giggles and sweet faces.
The brilliance of my husband and the existence of a lovely, unused dresser in our spare room (these two things have come together to make the perfect storage system for our Christmas wrapping insanity and I can't begin to tell you the happiness I feel when I look at my new ribbon drawer.)
The warmth of our home on this dreary wet day.
The magic of Skype that brings our loved ones 2,000 miles across the country and into our kitchen for a chat while we prepare dinner.
The luxury of a two-parent household, the way everything is easier when we are both home.
A quiet drive through Lakeview while children nap.
Our new doormat.
The blessing and blank slate of a new year, full of untapped potential and memories waiting to be made.

What small step are you going to take this month?  This year?  Are your actions  today aligned with your dreams?