Blogging goals

Finish the Sentence Friday is back for the New Year, so it's time to link up with this awesome foursome:

Janine from Janine's Confessions of a Mommyaholic

Kate from Can I Get Another Bottle of Whine

Steph from Mommy, for Real and

Kristi from Finding Ninee

The sentence for the week is: "My blogging goals for this year are ..."

My blogging goals for this year are, or should I say were, numerous, diverse and ever-changing.

Each day for the last few months, I have run through my head what I would like to focus on throughout the coming year. Washing the dishes, I would think about it. Pegging out the clothes, I would think about it. Waiting at the traffic lights, I would think about it. I wanted to organise my thoughts into different projects: projects based on writing, on reading, on cooking, on natural medicine, on travel and on teaching.

I have at least a dozen ideas of blog 'series' I want to write, but I need to accept that there are just not enough hours in a day nor enough days in a week to complete them all - at least not all of them at once.

So this year, rather than setting too many goals and feeling guilty and depleted for 'failing' at them, I have decided to focus on just two projects and to consider anything else that I blog about to be a bonus.

The first of these projects is going to be called 'The Alphabet Weekends'. Our social life as a family last year was virtually non-existent due to a combination of factors. Now that Annalisa is walking and a little more independent, my plan is to spice up our social life by challenging us to go on twenty-six family 'dates' throughout the year - one per fortnight. The first of these dates has to be something that starts with the letter A - like archery or abseiling, the second something that starts with the letter B - like bike riding or bush walking and so on until we've made our way through the whole alphabet. My goal is to take photos of us on our Alphabet Weekends and to share them fortnightly as part of Wordless Wednesday. Not only do I hope that we will have a lot of fun thinking of things will will do on these outings (especially for Q, V, X. Y and Z!) but hopefully it will bring us closer together as a family as well.

My second blogging goal for the year is something that makes me quite nervous to even write about. I'm not sure why it makes me nervous, but I guess it's because it's something quite personal and not something I'm sure would appeal to everyone. I want to write a weekly series called 'Italian Lessons' which would tie in anecdotes and reminiscences from the time I spent living in Italy with genuine language lessons. Over time, I would gradually like to recount the story of that period of my and my son's life through these lessons, using tales of our real-life experiences to enhance the content of the lessons themselves.

I have wanted to do this for a long time, but have never been brave enough because the voices of doubt in my head have at times whispered, and at times shouted: "nobody will be interested". And then I gradually convinced myself that it didn't matter if it didn't appeal to many people, that even if just a handful of people were interested, it would be worth it. But the voices of doubt continued, sometimes shouting, sometimes whispering: "it'll be a waste of time". And they almost had me convinced, until just a few days ago when a voice that was even louder than the voices of doubt said very calmly: "it doesn't matter if not a single person reads it at all. You need to do it for yourself".

And on that same day, I stumbled upon this quote, by Maya Angelou:

"There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside of you". 

So I decided that I would be brave and I will do what I want to do, what I need to do, whether anybody likes it or not.

That's what you can expect from me in 2014. I'm nervous, but I'm pretty excited too :)

How about you? What goals do you have for blogging or for life in general this year? And do you have any suggestions about what we could do for Q, V, X, Y and Z??