my goals for AUTUMN 2022

If you’ve been around this blog for any amount of time you may notice a bit of a change here in the next while.

I’ve always loved the name I chose for this site: Intentional Homeschooling. Because I want to be intentional with our homeschool but lately I’ve been thinking about adding more to this site that doesn’t focus so much on the schooling portion and more about having an intentional home.

So, there will probably be an increase in the posts and they will vary in topics. There will still be a lot of school stuff because homeschooling is a lifestyle we have chosen and love, there will just be other things added in as well!

A few days ago I joined in with the #TrueNorthHomeEd ladies on Instagram (I would love for you to follow me there if you don’t already) and we were talking about habits.

My main thought on that post was a light bulb moment I had a few years ago where I went from the mindset of I’m raising kids to I’m raising future adults.

I know it seems like such a simple switch and maybe this is an obviously thing for a lot of people but for some reason this made a big difference to me.

This made me start thinking about habit formation in myself.

One of the ways I like to create good habits is by setting goals for myself. I set goals three times a year: January, May and September. For some reason my brain just works better with breaking the year up in trimesters. Maybe because May is my birthday and September is the start of the school year.

So, I’ve created a few goals for myself for this fall season and I thought I would share them here. I really like posting them online somewhere because while I love writing in notebooks, I have so many it can be hard to remember what I’ve written in each one, so this give me a place to keep it organized!

These goals span a variety of different areas of my life so let’s dive into them . . .

MY GOALS FOR AUTUMN 2022

1) host reading sprints once a month on my BookTube channel

So, this winter will be three years that I have been sharing about books on YouTube (my channel is Chantel Reads All Day)! It’s been such a fun community and this season we’ve been having some life changes and it finally works out for me to host some live reading sprints and I want to do it monthly till the end of the year and then re-evaluate and see if that’s what I want to continue.

If you enjoy reading for yourself (I read both fiction and non-fiction) I would love for you to join me by subscribing to my channel and jumping in when I have my live reading sprints.

2) launch an autumn book shirt collection

I have been designing and selling book-ish shirts for the last year or so and this year I’m officially going to be launching an autumn/Christmas collection with a bunch of new designs in my Etsy shop.

My personal favorite for sure is the Fox & Sons Books shirt I designed that was so obviously inspired by You’ve Got Mail:

There is also going to be totes, pencil cases, mugs, water bottles and more. If you are a bookish person looking for something to add to your Christmas list or have a bookish person on your list, I would love for you to check it out. Right now my plan is to have the designs available to purchase from October 1st until December 1st.

3) go on some autumn hikes

We definitely live in the heart of the prairies so the term “hike” seems like a bit of a stretch but there are some places I like to go within a two hour drive from here that are my favorite places and of course, the autumn season is the best time to go to each of them.

4) start a habit of posting to my Instagram stories each day

I’ve been using Instagram more this month and have been enjoying sharing different resources and a look into our days and Instagram stories is a great place to do that. Be sure to follow me on Instagram.

One thing I also want to share is a little peek into my daily walks because they have been so beneficial.

5) go to the corn maze

Well, I just got a text from a friend this morning inviting us to go tomorrow, so this one should be easy enough to check off!

6) vision plan with Jared

Like I’ve already been saying, there’s been some big life changes this month (and more to come) and so it seems like a really good time to sit down and talk about our vision plan.

7) officially launch our podcast

We’ve already done this one! Jared and I launched it on Monday and I’m so excited to see where God takes it. It’s called Poured Out and you can either watch it on YouTube or subscribe and listen via podcasting platforms.

On the podcast we chat about life, family, marriage and the love of Jesus through it all.

Here’s a screenshot from one of our unofficial episodes (apparently I’m a major hand talker and Jared is not):

8) write five poems and get into a poetry writing habit

I really enjoy poetry (both reading and writing it) and now that I have a bit more time in life I want to make this a habit. I have a goal to write enough poetry to fill a book within the next few years.

9) start a Sabbath practice

I don’t even know the wording for this goal but we want to be more intentional in taking time for rest and practicing having empty space to listen to God. (We talked about this a bit in this unofficial podcast episode and will probably revisit it in a future episode.)

Okay, there is a look at my goals for the season!

To be honest, I most definitely thought of a goal while writing this list that I wanted to add and now that I got to the end I completely forgot what it was. If it comes back to me I’ll come back and update this list. If it doesn’t come back to me it probably wasn’t that important. Update: I remembered, it’s number 9 on the list now!

Are you a goal setter? How often do you set goals each year?