2019 – A Depth Year

Happy New Year! All around the blogosphere, people are anxiously setting goals and breaking them down into smaller tasks. I’m going to try something different this year and set goals that are a bit harder to track than a number of books read or a certain number of blog posts a week.

Have you heard of a “depth year“? It’s a year in which a person takes on no new hobbies or crafts and instead focuses on what one already has. I’m tempted to explore this idea more this year (would “taking on” a depth year be antithetical to the purpose of a depth year?). Of course, being me, I don’t think I’ll strictly follow the rules set forth in the linked post. That post says crazy things like, “no new books.” Pish posh! There are some things that I cannot abide!

But if I did a depth year, where would I focus? What would be my goal? What do I really want to accomplish with my life? A steady writing practice? A voracious reading life? A steady stream of finished sewing and/or knitting projects? I just don’t know. Anytime I succeed in one area, I feel like I’m failing in another and the guilt eats away at me. I am only one person and I’m juggling a lot – I remind myself often – but still. I know I feel like I’m not accomplishing anything because my energy is spent is so many different places, which could be avoided if I could focus.

A year of focusing on what I have feels like a continuation of my abundance practice from 2018, which I love. It’s the logical next step. I have another word for 2019 (Pause, which I’ll be sharing more about on Friday) and it’s a perfect companion for a depth year.

Here’s My Tentative Plan:

• Finish the quilting and knitting projects that I have started. No new fabric or yarn until that happens. Exception: I’ve started a project that involves Liberty of London fabric and am part of a club that gets a special shipment each month. That will continue.
• Daily journaling must commence post haste.
• A writing plan must be developed.

I have a whole to-do list created from writing this post. I’ve listed all of the quilting projects I have in various stages of the process (it’s embarrassing). Luckily I think I only have two knitting projects started and one is a scrap blanket that will never officially be “done.” I have a small new diary that I started on Christmas Eve – pictures to come. When I say “small,” I mean SMALL. It’s much smaller than I expected and takes literally six minutes to fill a page. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not – I’ll write more about that soon.

The writing plan is a different beast and I think it will take much more time to develop. I want it to be something that actually works for my life so I don’t want to just throw something together and then give up when it fails. This will be a trial and error thing and involve taking a good, hard look at how I use my time. I’ve tracked my time before and that alone is time consuming. Is that something I can do with three kids and all of the trappings?

Does this mean that consistent time dedicated to writing is really my goal during this depth year? Maybe right now. What about in six months? Will I feel like an utter failure and that I was meant to knit and sew during the gaps? I’m hoping genuine focus will help me.

Perhaps I need to spend 2019 preparing for the depth year and then launch the project in 2020. Obviously, I have no idea what I want to do with the year!