I swear I thought I was ahead of the game. Last October, I began planning out what I wanted my 2022 year to be. Setting out some goals, thinking of my new year’s resolutions. I was using my favorite project planning app, I built in some extended periods of rest and introspection to reflect and recharge before beginning the next big project. I was feeling sooo good about the plans.

Then I blew it all up the first week of December. Me and the mister decided to split up.

It was not an easy decision to make. But it is also one we do not regret. And as amicable as the split has been, it has certainly rocked both of our worlds and is not easy. Added to the stress of splitting up, there is a significant housing crisis both for sales and rentals where we live. It has been hard to find a new place for either of us to land. Expensive, much smaller, pet restrictions, high application fees, high-income demands, shady landlords. For now, we have agreed to shift our living situation to roommates until one of us is able to move out. Not ideal, but we are both opening our minds to the new normal.

Self-care became my priority. While I love completing big projects, I decided to shelve what I had planned out in October in favor of focusing on just dreaming of what my new goals and possibilities can be. I did however hang onto one goal that seemed like it would ground me– developing routines.

As I was planning my 2022 before I blew it all up, I knew that success for me in real estate, as well as fiber art, boiled down to consistency. I needed some simple routines that I could accomplish consistently. Little habits that build tiny steps into big results. Little routines that would give me an outline of my day easy enough to adhere to when the days felt like too much. And I fully expected the days to become overwhelming given the circumstance of going through a divorce.

I have been calling it 22 habits in 2022. I picked 22 because that is roughly a new habit every 2 weeks with an opportunity to skip 4 2-week periods if I needed to. I decided the habits would be focused on whatever I needed to incorporate that week. It could be personal, business, creative, home, whatever.

So far, some habits are fully integrated into my day-to-day. Other habits….not so much. I have even had to make a habit of tracking my habits in my spreadsheet tracker. I am surprised at how easy it is to do my bookkeeping yet how hard it is to just walk the trail near my house. I feel like I have kept the balance between work and personal habits. I have not planned all the habits for the year. I felt like that could change as the year progresses, so I left it open. The spreadsheet does give me a chance to write out habits to consider as they come up.

So far this is exactly what I needed this year to honor the self-care I needed and to make sure I keep pushing forward.