Soft Start

I love dreaming. Planning. Setting goals.

Every Friday, I take stock of what I’ve accomplished that week. Every Friday, I write out my list for what I need and hope to get done in the week to come. The lists are fluid, yes–sometimes things crop up that I’d forgotten or hadn’t known were coming. Sometimes we have sick days. Sometimes my finished list bears no resemblance to my goals list. But still, I love doing it.

Part of it is because by writing it down, I’m no longer caught up in how I feel the week went–instead, I’m looking at the fact. Far too often, one frustration makes us feel like the whole day or week has been a waste, when in fact, the impact to the facts is much smaller than that. Or conversely, sometimes I feel like I’ve gotten a lot done…but my list says otherwise.

When the calendar year turns over, I always take it as an opportunity to reflect on the whole year that has just passed and look ahead to the year to come. I make lists, set out my goals, work on my plans. I know they won’t all happen, but by putting down all my thoughts, I then have something I can refer back to when it comes time to prioritize what to do each day, each week, each month.

My goals for 2025 are…ambitious. But for the first time in the history of my yearly list-making, they’re also delayed.

Radiation therapy started for me on December 26, 2024, and the scheduled end date was January 16, 2025. As I was making all my plans, I kept looking at the calendar and realizing that I couldn’t really start on much until that biggie was out of the way.

I didn’t know how tired I’d be–they warned that by the end, exhaustion could hit hard.
I did know that a lot of my time was going to be spent traveling to and from the hospital 90 minutes away.

Mornings are usually my time for devotional and Bible reading, for morning prayers, and then for creative work. But those first couple weeks of January, I didn’t know what I would be able to do.

So…I kept my plans for the first 16 days of the year pretty minimal. I thought of 2025 as having a “soft opening” or a “soft start.” Time to work out the kinks. Time to plan in more detail so I could hit the ground running in February. Time to focus on a few limited things.

Last year I got my husband planners called the Monk Manual, which focuses not just on what you have to do, but on your attitude, your feelings, your relationships, your gratitude, and your insights. He really enjoyed the process, so this year we both got Monk Manual annual planners, which has calendar pages for the whole year as well as weekly planning sections, room for notes, and so on. I loved sitting down with it in early January and getting it all set up. Putting down the things I know will be on my schedule, and getting to know the weekly sections.

I love that each day, there’s room to write down your priority tasks. At the end of each day, there’s space to write down your gratitude and your insights. There’s space for listing your biggest accomplishments of the week, your meaningful moments, what God has taught you. There’s encouragement to pay attention to the habits you want to build, a change you can make in the week to come, how you’ve tended your relationships, and even what you’re looking forward to.

All of this comes down to what I’ve been working to embrace in the last several years–intentional living. Because it isn’t about what we do, it’s about who we are. And who, through that intentionality, we become.

2025 has started off with a lot of doing…but oddly, the time that doing requires has also given me more time than usual to focus on my being. Car rides are great time to think, to talk things over with my husband (on days he’s driving), to tend the relationship with my dad (on days he takes over). Those unexpected overnight stays in a hotel near the hospital so my treatment isn’t interrupted by snow give some time away from the chores of home where I could focus on spending time with God and working out that intentionality for the weeks to come.

And I’m especially excited because in February, I’ll be doing another soft-start, for a program I’ve had it in my heart to build out for several years, called Writers’ Cross Training. The idea behind this program is just like physical cross-training for athletes–where we keep in mind our primary focus (say, writing books), but strengthen that by working on all aspects of our life, including physical activity, healthy eating, family time, community building, marketing, reading… It’s all about intentionality and balance so that we avoid creative burnout and make ourselves stronger all round. I’ve invited a few people to join me February through May at various points in their writing journey, and with their help, I intend to get this program fitted out so that it works for ANY creative (especially writers) at ANY point in their own writing. I can’t wait to see how it goes! January has been taken up a lot by planning for this, and I’m loving it.

As always, I have to smile at God’s timing for it too. I’ve had the idea for at least two years, maybe more, but lacked the specific ideas for how to implement it. As I was on vacation in December of 2024, though, those specific ideas began to come, and excitement built in my heart, so I reached out with my ideas to those writing friends at various stages. And oh, the quick replies…of how several of them had just (as in JUST when the email came in) been praying about this very thing, and my email brought tears to their eyes and hope to their chest. Which in turn let me know that this really is the right time to get the program put together.

So while 2025 may be a rolling, soft start for me…it’s an exciting one. This is the year I’ll finish cancer treatment. This is the year I’ll launch this new program. This is the year I’ll take my new intentionality to a new level. And I can’t wait to see what God does in the next few months.