How We’re Entering the New Year Together!

Every year, I get the week between Christmas and New Year’s off from work. Leading up to this break, I make a list of all of the areas of my house and my life that have been neglected and need a little extra attention. I want to clean out the cupboards and do a deep-clean of the pantry and go through everything in the filing cabinet and get my hair cut and my eyebrows threaded and purge all.the.things. It’s usually an ambitious list, but it allows me to enter into a new year feeling refreshed. But one of the things I love most about the transition in this season are the ways in which we are given permission to speak out our goals, hopes and dreams for the upcoming year.

I’m a goal-setter by nature. I make lists and chat my progress almost daily. And while there are loads of messages telling us to reign it in and slow down, this time of year makes me feel known and understood, because others are creating space to do what I do all the time. I feel like this time of year gives me permission to be myself. I love hearing people share about what they feel led to focus on and the habits they hope to adopt in the new year. I love reading about the lessons learned the mile markers that took place over the past year and decade. It’s like candy to my soul, to absorb and learn from what others have to share.

But maybe that isn’t your story. Maybe the idea of planning out 2020 feels overwhelming and hearing about the stories of how others are embarking into a new year only makes you feel more overwhelmed. The hope is that you don’t feel that here, but rather are given another way that you (and your family) can approach a new year with a firm foundation of where you’ve been and where you’re hoping to go.

This weekend, Dillon and I are doing our first ever “State of the Union” retreat weekend. I named it myself. Can you tell? We decided a few months back to take this weekend “off” from our normal rhythms to reflect, retreat, renew, and refocus. It’s like marital house-keeping. Over the past few weeks, we’ve created a short list of questions and topics that we want to work through during our time together. Below is a breakdown of what we’ll be doing this weekend.

Questions:

  • What was something you/we did in 2019 that felt obedient?

  • What is one thing you/we need to say “yes” to?

  • When did you/we feel overextended last year?

  • What is one thing you/we need to say “no” to?

  • What do you/we need throughout the week to feel refreshed and known?

  • What does the “good life” look like for the Siders? What is our definition of “enough”?

  • What is something creative you/we would like to try in the new year?

  • What is one BIG dream you/we have for 2020?

  • How are we doing as parents, both individually and as a team? What are we doing really well and what is something we could do better?

Prior to our retreat, we created this list of questions (in no particular order). We each have had the list for a few days to think through and during our retreat, we want to answer these questions both individually, but also in regards to our family. I think it’s important to make sure that we create space for our own opinions and feedback outside of how our family operates.

Schedule:

  • Breakfast

  • Question Review

  • Financial Meeting/Quarterly Planning

  • Lunch

  • Kinfolk Planning

  • Alone Time (Read, Nap, Take a Bath, Go on a Walk)

  • Shopping!!

  • Dinner/Fun Activity

Here’s a loosely-structured breakdown of how our day will go. We’ll start by having breakfast and then take space to talk through our questions. After we do that, we’ll look through our budgets from the past year and make any adjustments as needed. It’s important for us to pay down our debt quickly, so we’re always looking for ways to make sure we keep that as a priority. We’ll also plan for the quarter. Instead of doing a full year of goals/priorities, we’re going to try and just plan for 3 months at a time. This will also include planning out some work/technology boundaries and time “off”. The reason we do this after our question review (which needs a catchier name) is because we want to make sure our finances and how we spend our time is based off of what we learned in the past year and where we’d like to see change. After lunch, we’ll talk through Kinfolk and plan some client projects, social media, blog posts, etc. Following that, we’ll take a break. As two introverts, we find that we give each other our best when we take time to be alone. This is important after a long day of deep thinking. Before dinner, we’re going to take some of our Christmas gift cards/returns and do a little shopping for ourselves. We chose not to exchange Christmas gifts this year, so this is a way we can honor each other and also spend time together. After that, one of us will choose the surprise dinner location and the other will plan the surprise activity!

Guidelines:

  • No texting/social media (phones will remain on in a separate space for emergencies only)

  • No chores or housework - Leave the dirty dishes in the sink!

Recommended Resources:

The reality is that no one person creates anything without some type of influence or inspiration from another, myself included. A lot of the questions and what we aim to discuss is based off of ideas from others, and a few those books/podcasts/people are listed below.

My hope is that whether you love all of this and it fires you right up or if you just find one piece that fits what you need, you at least feel the excitement of doing something. That something might be taking a step back in an area or could mean being braver in another. No one except you and God and your significant other (if applicable) can answer these questions and the best part? There isn’t a right or wrong answer. There is such freedom knowing that we can take the space, whether it’s a whole weekend or an hour after dinner, to determine what our next day, week, month, and year will include or, what it won’t include. We choose to make it a priority, months ago, to create this time together. If your schedule is already too busy, block-off a weekend in March to retreat. The date doesn’t matter as much as just making sure you are creating space to do the deep work.

Good Luck! We’re rooting for you!

- Ashley

Ashley Sider