Goals, Plans and Gratitude | Looking Ahead to 2021

If you haven’t noticed, we took a little break from blogging. We didn’t intend to take a break. It just sort of happened. Between work, life and prioritizing our health, we hadn’t thought about our blog since our last post.

Since we started our blog nearly three and a half years ago, I would write a post each year recapping the year and talking about our goals and resolutions. 

This year, I planned to write a post summarizing the important events that happened to us in 2020. And then, I wanted to write a separate post breaking down our plans and goals for 2021. 

But as I sat down and started to summarize our year, I realized though so many good things happened in 2020, the year was not a good one for so many. It just didn’t seem right to talk about.

And as I wrote and rewrote a blog post about our ‘goals’ for 2021, I realized I needed to take the time to really and truly think about what I wanted to accomplish in the new year and ensure the goals I set were achievable. This pandemic is very much still a thing. I didn’t want to list all my goals again for another year, explain why they were important to me and how I planned to achieve them, and then feel disappointed when I may not achieve them.

But I still wanted to write a transitional piece that would close out 2020 yet serve as a starting point for the new year. I realized that what I needed was to simply say thank you.

Thank you for continuing to follow us along on this crazy journey. Thank you for all of your kind messages, emails, letters and words of encouragement when we shared our struggles with Duke’s behavior. Thank you for not tuning us out when we take little breaks from social media. Thank you for always showing Navy, Duke and our family love and support even when we are not active online or we may not always respond.

While I would love to promise you that we will start this new year being more active online and share more creative content, I don’t want to promise that, and I can’t promise that. In short, Zach and I are still trying to plan a wedding, grinding at work, prioritizing us and spending quality time with our two dogs. 

Before I close this post, and now that I’ve taken the time to reflect on what I wanted in 2021, I did want to highlight a few of our goals. So, of course, it took me until the last day of January to finally post this… Better late than never, right? 😉

PUSH MYSELF TO BE MORE CREATIVE IN 2021

I am not sure what being more creative means, but I know that I would like to try to have a little more fun behind the camera or the phone when creating content for Duke and Navy. I’ve been experimenting with Instagram Reels more, and well, I have a lot to learn!

PRIORITIZE DUKE AND NAVY’S HEALTH

I am lucky to have two healthy dogs. I would like to think that I do a pretty good job putting the dogs’ health first. But I want to do a better job and set them up for success and health down the road. We’ve given the dogs supplements and vitamins here and there, but I want to be more consistent with that. We are also sticking with our plan to transition Duke (very slowly) to a raw diet like Navy.

GET OUTDOORS AND EXPLORE MORE

The pandemic has turned me into a homebody – or maybe I’ve always been one… Regardless, in 2020 I feel like we barely left our neighborhood, let alone our home. I recently upgraded to an AllTrails Pro subscription, and I have 101 (literally) hikes saved that I want to do.

PLAN A DOG-FRIENDLY ROAD TRIP

I really want to plan a road trip. It’s as simple as that. I’ve been talking about wanting to do this for a few years now, but I never make the time. Plus, Navy and Duke get a little antsy in the car. About 30 minutes or so into any trip, Navy will start to whine and cry and want to curl up on our laps. We almost always let her. If you have any tips to encourage Navy to stop being so clingy, please let us know!

TAKE A TRAINING CLASS TOGETHER

Before we entered 2020, Duke was on track to start taking training to become a therapy dog. After a bad interaction with another dog, we focused on rehabbing the reactivity/fear Duke developed. I’m not sure I know what I want to do yet, but I think it would be enjoyable and rewarding to take a class with the dogs.

What are your plans for 2021? Do you have any goals? If so, let us know what they are in the comments below!