It’s officially February. If you remember the study I cited at the beginning of the year, most of you with New Year’s resolutions have already let them go by the wayside.

How about those of you who picked a theme instead? How is your theme coming along?

I ran out and bought three books on organization. And all of them sit, partially skimmed. If I looked around myself, at home or at work, and said, “OK, organize it” then I wouldn’t know where to start. It would overwhelm me.

You don’t have to do it all at once.

That’s the great thing about a theme – you have all year to work on it. I don’t have to get it all done right now. Every time something is disorganized, my boyfriend likes to say with a smile, “It’s the year of organization!” And I like to say right back, “It’s the YEAR of organization – not the JANUARY of organization.”

The problem with resolutions is that once you’ve missed a few days of working out or had a few too many trips to McDonald’s you feel like you’ve failed and you quit. The theme doesn’t let me quit. It’s all year, baby! If I don’t fold the laundry for two weeks, it’s OK. I’ll get there. It’s only January.

Your theme is probably a huge honkin’ goal. Break it down. Pick a small portion of it and make it the theme for that month.

Here’s how the Year of Organization looks for me:

January: Home Office
February: Kitchen
March: Car
April: Bedroom
May: Outdoors
June: Laundry room
July: Living room
August: Bathrooms
September: Hallways & closets
October: Bedroom closet
November: TBD
December: TBD

Plan to fall behind… a little.

I’m allowing myself leniency and flexibility in the last two months. I know that I’ll find behind, and I also know that I’ll find something I didn’t expect that needs work. This takes a little pressure off of me – I won’t be doubling up on things because I forgot about this or that, and my year isn’t so full that if life gets in the way (as it so often does) I can take a break.

Don’t forget the little things.

Overarching all of this are the intangibles of organization – organizing my time, schedule, finances and expectations. I work on those things every month. I don’t work hard at them. I keep up the work I did last year (the Year of Finances), making a budget and sticking to it every two weeks. I keep a calendar with important dates, etc. That’s not the sort of stuff that can be done in a month, nor can it wait for a particular month to be scheduled for it.

It works!

The interesting thing I’ve found just by organizing my home office in January, is that when my physical space is organized those intangible organization problems are lessened. Rationally I know that if my documents are where I can find them, then things will go faster. But I think it’s interesting that my work schedule feels less cluttered and claustrophobic because my office is not cluttered and claustrophobic.

There just might be something to this organization thing!

Stay tuned for an update on January’s mini-theme, the Home Office. I’ll be posting photos.

Photo credit: Sarah and Mike… Probably via Flickr

Every year after Christmas, people sit down and review the past year. They look ahead and come up with an improbable list of to-do items for the coming year. You’re going to run four times a week, not eat fast food, do a monthly budget you live and die by, put 20 percent of your paycheck into savings, spend more time with family, learn to knit, take a Spanish class, get to work on time, get 8 hours of sleep… essentially, you’re going to become perfect.

And then you don’t do one of them. And they all go down the drain because if you’re not going to be perfect, well then why do a bunch of stuff that’s no fun?

At least, that’s been my experience. Every year, I got swept up in the spirit of self-improvement and made ridiculously long lists of things I was going to do differently, learn or stop doing. I made calendars and schedules and stuck to them for about… oh, maybe three weeks.

Which makes me average it turns out. According to time management firm FranklinCovey, only a third of people will even make it to the end of January.

The end of JANUARY.

The cure is supposedly to make a specific resolution. Perhaps pick just one of the resolutions I listed in the first paragraph and go with that.

But that hasn’t worked for me. I have that Gen Y disease of ambition. Just one of those resolutions feels so… flimsy.

Why you need a theme

Here’s my problem with these specific resolutions: they may not be the right answer. Maybe you find that putting 20 percent of your paycheck into savings isn’t going to work because you can’t stop over-drafting your bank account. Or, you find out your knees can’t handle running. Or, you find it impossible to get 8 hours of sleep. And then you just give up.

What you need is a theme, something that sets the tone for your year, and gives you a banner to work under. In the end, what is your overall goal? Is it to be fit and healthy, to have good finances, to feel rested? Make it the Year of Finances, or the Year of Fitness, or the Year of Relaxation.

For the past three years, I’ve picked a theme for my year. And it’s worked.

2007 was the Year of Survival. I got sober in April (a late start to the year, I know), and basically just learned how to live all over again. This theme was more or less picked for me. I can’t take credit for that one.

2008 was the Year of Relationships, as you can clearly see in my blog (here, here, here and here). Having learned to survive, I went about learning how to survive with others. My relationships with men were all over the board as I tried to figure out what I wanted and who I was. My relationships with family and friends got some work also. I think this was a subconscious theme.

2009 was the Year of Finances. Honestly, this was the first year I set a resolute theme at the beginning of the year with an earnest desire to tackle it. I didn’t know how I was going to do it. I fumbled around with Quicken Online and heard about Mint.com and read I Will Teach You To Be Rich, but what ended up working for me was Dave Ramsey’s Total Money Makeover. I didn’t get on board with it until May. But I didn’t give up on my finances because that theme hung over my head all year. I knew that there was an answer and having a theme, and not a specific resolution, helped me gather the research, feedback and experimentation I needed to find my answer.

How to pick a theme

The more my life becomes calm and healthy, the more the areas that need work seem to stick out. I’m not blessed with the kind of clarity in my life where I can just go, “Oh, I really need to work on my finances! I can see how this contributes to my other problems.” Yeah, I don’t have that.

So I sort of feel my way through my life, asking myself what feels bad, where do I feel negative emotion in my day, then trying to trace it back to the source. I felt awful when my bank account over-drafted for the billionth time. And oh, hey! That seems to come up a lot. Maybe I should work on that.

Ask yourself these questions:
- What is causing the most problems in my life?
- What is giving me the most chaos?
- What are the most inconvenient things happening?
- What seems to be happening over and over again even though I try not to?
- Where do I see a spike in negative emotion in my daily life?
- What would give me the most peace if I could find a solution for it?

If you’re having trouble picking between two (or three or four…), pick the one that’s solves the most problems. Last year I was trying to choose between the Year of Finances and the Year of Health & Fitness. When I made a list of the problems each would solve, the Finances Year solved a lot more problems, including some of my health problems (medical care is expensive, yo!).

What happens next…

The amazing thing about having a theme for your year is that it’s about changing your mindset toward a certain area of your life. You’ve decided to change some area of your life that you previously carried an attitude of indifference toward. Lots of things will change.

Take my 2009 Year of Finances for example: not only did I stop over-drafting my bank account (which could’ve been my short-sighted New Year’s Resolution), but I’ve paid off all my credit cards, survived meeting my hefty insurance deductible for health care (thanks to surgery), and stored away almost three months of living expenses in my savings account. And since I decided I needed an alternate stream of income, I started my first business and have a steady stream of clients. Year of Finances indeed!

Of course your theme can fail. The number one reason resolutions fail is because people aren’t committed to them in the first place. If you aren’t committed to your theme, then you won’t move on it.

Move forward with a positive attitude. Remember this is the year you will change your [finances/health/career/love life/insert theme here]!

The great thing is that area of your life will be forever changed, not just temporarily shifted. As I move into my 2010 theme, I don’t stop working on my finances. My attitude toward finances has been changed forever.

Wanna know my theme for 2010? Read the follow-up post here. What’s your theme for 2010?

Photo courtesy of Tojosan via Flickr.

Photo credit: Prosto Photos via Flickr.

For the first time in my life, at 26, I found myself single and with no home to go home to at Christmas. My parents had divorced and moved across the country to different states. My ex-boyfriend and I had split back in April and I was still getting my bearings after 8 months of sobriety. And to add just a little extra something of fun, my birthday is 10 days before Christmas.

Joy.

Christmas is always a rough time of the year for me. In 1998 my family suffered the sudden loss of two beloved family members at Christmas time, one the day after my birthday and the other on Christmas morning. It’s fair to say that we never really “celebrated” Christmas after that. The ornaments, stockings and trimmings never came out of the box in the attic again.

And for the first time in my life, I didn’t have the noise of someone else’s happily unaffected family gatherings to drown out the sadness. Nor did I have the comfort of alcohol to turn to. Not even a warm body to wake up next to on Christmas morning.

Holy crap. I was going to be alone on Christmas morning. For the first time in my life.

I leaned heavily on my mentor, whose advice surprised me. I, like so many other blog titles I’ve been reading this season, merely aspired to survive the holidays. To not feel so lonely. But she turned everything on its head, like she so often does.

“Savor it,” she said. “You may never be here again.”

Coming from someone with a husband of 10 years and two kids, I took her words to heart.

I may never be single again. I may never get to spend a Christmas alone again. I may never have the total command of my holidays to do whatever I wish with them again.

Needless to say, I was a little pissed to be there again the following year, but by then I had figured out how to enjoy my Christmas solo. As a matter of fact, I grew to love spending the holidays alone.

Do your favorite things.
I was surprised to find my local Starbucks open on Christmas Day, so I took full advantage. I rarely get to sit, carefree and unscheduled, in a café with my journal, headphones and latte, without anything else on my mind. Christmas gives us the freedom to do this, if only for one day, obligation-free.

Give yourself the gift of permission to do your favorite activities, free of schedules, obligations, and guilt.

Organize a meet-up.
Guess what? You’re not the only person in your city spending the holidays alone. My first Christmas solo I organized the first annual Sad Bastards Christmas dinner. OK, so it was only me and one other person at a greasy spoon, but it was fun and I made a new friend. I liked it so much that I also organized a Sad Bastards Valentine’s Day tweet-up the following year (there were a lot more attendees at that one). You don’t have to be alone if you don’t want to.

Help someone else.
There are tons of volunteer opportunities on Christmas Day. Even though I’m not alone this year, the boyfriend and I don’t really have anything to do on Christmas Day, no family gatherings or dinners, etc. so we’re going to volunteer feeding the homeless. In these tough economic times, it’s tough not to want to give of your time wherever you can to those who have had worse luck than you.

Cook something yummy.
It just wouldn’t feel like Christmas without something yummy. I’m not saying cook a whole turkey, but something small to make you feel like you’ve celebrated. Food can be a comfort, but it can also be a major downer. There’s just something slightly depressing about gnoshing on a turkey sub for your Christmas dinner.

Do something holiday-ish. Briefly.
I do have extended family in town, and while it’s not the same as spending the whole day with your parents and siblings, it’s still nice to spend an hour or two with them celebrating their Christmas. I keep it in small doses to ensure that I don’t get sad or mopey that I don’t have what they have this year.

Savor.
I’ll never forget my favorite moment of that first Christmas alone. The dreaded Christmas morning had come. I made a pot of coffee and poured a piping hot mug. I sat on my stoop outside, watching the wind blow the leaves off the maple tree, warming my hands on my mug, and savored that moment.

I was alone on Christmas and I might never be there again.