Untangling Your Goals

~ by Amanda Smith​
 
The sweet time between Christmas and New Year is when I usually ponder writing goals: What worked the previous year? What didn’t? How far did I come? Where am I heading? And my trusty bullet journal serves both as memoir and roadmap.

In preparing my bullet journal for the new year, I wanted to write the year 2022 for my cover page in a unique way. Last year I had handwritten it using brush pens, which was fine, but I felt that the new year deserved some more flair. So, after playing around a bit, I landed on something I’ve never done before – Zentangle.

Using my inspiration quote for the year, I knew I wanted something botanical, and after using WordArt to set the outline of my numbers and googling some Zentangle designs, I set to work. It took some time to find my rhythm, but I finally figured out the scale of the design and the limits of my chosen font and everything went fine and dandy with that first two and half the zero.

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But all of a sudden, a little flower decided to jump the outline.
“Huh,” I said.
“Why are you squashing me like this?” asked the flower.
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I sat back and stared at that rebel flower, the sharp ends of its petals stubbornly poking outside the soft rounded line. Maybe it had a point. Maybe it didn’t have to be all neatly contained within the oval line of the zero. What if the flowers bloomed outside the lines of the other twos?

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I loosened my design. And I listened to the flowers. And I watched them grow and BLOOM!

And as I worked, I thought about my goals and hopes and dreams for this  year. To reach past limits. To listen to my art.  And to Bloom!

As you think and plan your writing goals for the new year, I want to encourage you to do the same:

• Have outlines, but don’t let them be constraints.
• Start something, even of you don’t know into what it will grow.
• Take time to play and listen to your art.
• And bloom!

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During the month of January, Annie, Kelly, and I will be posting our yearly goals into the 24 Carrot Writing Goals tab. Take a look (you can also see my complete, blooming 2022 zentangle there) and then set your own goals and dreams for this year. And be sure to post them somewhere you will see them often.
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Together, let’s burst out of the constraints this last year or past habits might have placed on us. Let’s become green-thumbed curators of our vibrant, fragrant story-gardens.