I returned to the school building after a little over two weeks away. As normal, there was a great deal that I could have done over winter break but that I chose not to do; thus, there was a great deal waiting for me to still do. Especially at the start of a semester, when we have to rebuild our courses on Canvas since they do not carry from one semester to the next, there is almost enough to work on that it is difficult to know where to even start. I had to step away from my computer several times as I processed my structural plans for the five separate courses that I am teaching, how to deal with this year's strange calendar (including the dropped holidays to "pay" for the snow days), and how to still have in enough flexibility to deal with the unexpected. It's a lot of heavy lifting in the beginning, but I feel that it pays off due to the opportunities that I provide for the students.

While I could always enjoy more time on break, it was nice to be back with my colleagues. It seems that everyone (at least, whom I saw) has come back from break revitalized and eager to start up again. I, for one, am looking forward to seeing my students.

There's a lot coming up on the horizon: 3 DDF tournaments, dances, Janelle's trip to Michigan, my and Connor's trip to Europe. I have a feeling that the rest of this school year--especially these next nine or so weeks--is going to fly by all too quickly. I need to make certain that I take the time to enjoy the moments within each of these events--including their preparation. 

I created my resolution sheet for the year. Rather than make a list of resolutions and lament what I did not accomplish, in 2015 I made a list of goals that I wanted to accomplish and assigned a point value to each one--ideally with more challenging goals receiving more points. I am supposed to reflect at the end of each month and tally these numbers on the sheet that I created. I was so bad at doing this in 2019 that I stopped the practice entirely for a the past several years, but I decided that I wanted to give it a try again.

As forgetting to log the points at the end of the month was part of the reason for this project's downfall in the past, I have made that one of the three new goals that I've added to the list. The other two include exercising for at least 15 minutes on four different days during a week (determined walking counts--anything that logs as "exercise" on my FitBit) and organizing a year's worth of blog postings (which was a failed resolution from last year as I have over three years of catching up to do). These replace my goals of reading scholarly journals for my dissertation and the writing of my dissertation which had been on these sheets from 2016 through 2019.

I know from both research and experience that setting goals is most beneficial if those goals can be tracked and reflected upon at regular intervals. Using those goals in a positive manner (such as through the earning of points) is also more successful in bringing about change than tracking failure (although, I've still kept my weight goal on this--which has led to the use of negative numbers in the past). I'm also intentionally setting a higher goal (200 points) for the year. Part of this is because of the added points that could potentially come from the exercise goal, but part of this is because I want to have the incentive to stretch a bit this year.

I'm feeling rather positive about this at the moment--I certainly would like that positivity to continue throughout the year.

I didn't take the time to come up with a full post. I know that it's rather lame to say the same thing two days in a row, so even though it is true that I was having too much fun today to really compose a worthwhile message, I figure that I should add something else to this. Thus, I will leave you with the blessing from today's first reading for you to take with you into this new year:

May the Lord bless you and keep you!
May the Lord let His face shine upon you, and be gracious to you!
May the Lord look upon you kindly and give you peace!

Amen!

I was having too much fun and forgot to post.