I mentioned the other day that I wanted to do some reflecting on what my goals would be for the coming year, and, well, it’s the first Monday of the year, so what better time to do so than today?

Instead of making resolutions I can either succeed or fail at, I’ve decided to emulate several of my friends and choose a word that will serve as my focus and guide for the year. Hence, my plan for 2015 is to grow. I really like the idea of growing as a focus because it has so many important entailments: root, cultivate, branch, ripen, blossom, and on and on.

I have four main areas of life where I’d like to grow:

Putting down roots. I want to save money and focus on buying a house in the next year. I also want to cultivate relationships and connections in the community, which is another way of rooting in, I think.

Grow our family. I’d like to stay healthy and active as I work toward this goal, and keep taking whatever appropriate action is right along this path. We’ll see how this will take shape.

Grow as a teacher. I’d like to branch out in a few ways, bringing in new and more diverse material to my courses, and to cultivate some new methods and techniques both in the classroom and out. I have some specifics in mind for this one, but I don’t like to write in too much detail about work here on the blog. It should be really fun, though.

Grow creatively. I’d like to engage more creatively this year, which is something I see being grounded mainly in reading and writing and, to an extent, photography. I’d like to simply do more of these things in order to stay grounded in the practice itself and also to get inspired by what I see others doing. I plan to try to write more (online and probably offline as well) and to pick up my camera more often and see what develops.

Here’s to a great year!