2022 is here. Let's make some plans.

I don't know about you but this New Year's feels... Weird? Kind of anticlimactic? My feelings are pretty ambivalent if I'm being honest. We've been stuck on this Hamster Wheel of Uncertainty and Stress for coming up on two years now and New Year's Eve just feels like a reminder that we're. still. spinning. Everyone is tired if you're LUCKY. Sick if you're incredibly not. 2021 started with my 15 year old dog passing and 50% of my family had COVID for Christmas. And that was just January and December. After successfully keeping COVID from breaching our home for 22 months, I felt flat-out defeated. We're FINE, it was so mild, but this is my FAVORITE time of year and it did nothing for my holiday spirit. So here we are, fresh out of yet another quarantine, and I'm looking at 2022 like, "What else can you hit us with?! Seriously, what's left?" And that has me feeling a little blue. 

Now. I'm not one to take those feelings lying down. My family had a proper sick stay and never changed out of our pajamas and watched every Christmas movie ever made. All of them. But with school and work and all that PROMISE OF A NEW YEAR stuff upon us, I'm determined to roll back my blue mood and lay down some plans for this coming year. We're not talking basic resolutions, those are doomed to fail. Instead, I did a little brainstorming and decided that I needed to go big or go home. I needed to rally some teammates and accountability partners. If I'm dreaming big, I want to use this as a little experiment for the future days when there are hopefully way more of us and we're the kind of employers that encourage balance and company happiness in all who work for us.  So I roped the Hullabaloo Crew into a MIND BODY SPIRIT INITIATIVE and through it, we hope to reap the benefits of a little more balance, energy, optimism, community, and JOY. Let us find some more purposeful JOY this year, shall we? That's joy that we make ourselves. Not finding a dollar in your pocket joy, though if I could manifest that for all of us I would, but intentional choices or plans or heck, purchases that might put a smile on our face because we made ourselves a priority for those few minutes. More on that in a bit.

If, by chance, you're looking for any of these things in your life, consider this your personal invitation to join us on this quest. We might be terrible at it, we'll probably drop the ball a few times, but if we feel good just once in any of these three areas each month then I'm calling it a big win. Here's what we have planned:

We've decided to start with the spooky thriller A History of Wild Places that came out in December. Shea Ernshaw is a popular and respected YA author and folks are excited to read her first adult offering.  We'll report back!

BODY: STEP AWAY FROM THE SCREEN AND BREATHE SOME FRESH AIR ALREADY (This title clearly hits the nail on the head.)

Repeat after me: This is not an exercise challenge. We don't need anymore of those. But we do need BREAKS. We need FRESH AIR. We need to CLEAR OUR HEADS. There are days when we sit at our laptops for every hour we have forgetting lunch and water and what color the sky is and that ain't right. So we're committing to three walks a week. Power walk or lazy stroll, it does not matter. One of those will happen while we're on the phone brainstorming/problem solving/dreaming for HBC which can sometimes run up to two hours long so I'm hoping for some serious mileage. I hate most traditional exercise (gasp!) but I love taking long walks and often feel guilty for doing that small thing for myself when I should be doing... everything else for other people or my business. This one actually feels like it might provide a bit of relief for me.

Spirit: For the Love of Yourself, Let's Find Some Heckin' Joy (Wanted to curse. Showed restraint for the internets.)

This one was, not surprisingly, the most challenging goal to define. We're not taking up meditation. (Look I barely got people on board with walking and reading because TIME so asking everyone to find a dim corner and sit quietly, breathing into the present was never going to happen.) It's also hard to find ONE thing that appeals to everyone in a way that will encourage people to do it. So we've decided to compile a monthly list of fun, delicious, hilarious, insightful, cute, stylish, helpful...stuff. Things that if we are inspired to do just one (or all!), we might find a sweet moment of JOY! That we created just for ourselves! That sounds fun! I'm not saying there aren't many, MANY moments of joy all around us every day. Just that I (we?) could use more. And instead of waiting around for those moments to find us, we're going to find them for ourselves. So let's get it to, shall we? Here are some things I've found that will hopefully bring you an extra dose of happy this month:

4. Weird fact: My dad has his PhD in Industrial Psychology (his specialty was personality prediction software and its application to HR) and I spent a lot of my youth taking psychological tests at our kitchen table. All I remember is that I'm an extrovert and anyone who's spent 5 minutes in line with me for anything, anywhere doesn't need doctor-administered exam results to figure that out. Even with all that in my background I might be the only person left on earth that doesn't know her Enneagram type. So I'm putting this here in case you want to learn a little about yourself along with me.

So there we are! Our 2022 Mind Body Spirit goals that hopefully we keep at until...at least March? That seems doable, right?! Here's to the New Year, folks. May it be everything we hope and, at the very least, marginally better than the 2 years that came before it. OPTIMISM AT WORK!

While I'm here, I'd be remiss not to thank you for being a part of our family. We love serving you and your children and the growth we've seen in our community has been a beautiful bright spot during this challenging time. We truly look forward to growing as people and as a business this year and we're so grateful you're along for the ride. Happy New Year, friends. We all deserve a great one.