Crafting Resolutions: A Maker's Approach to Meaningful Goals in 2024

Choosing flexibility and joy in your creative journey this year

Happy New Year, friends!

Here we are, welcoming in 2024. I hope this new start to the year finds you well and happy and healthy, though real life doesn’t always work like that, so whatever struggles, aches, challenges or difficulties you are currently facing, I wish you peace and comfort as you move through it.

This time of the year feels incredibly special in the desert. (If we aren’t acquanited just yet… I have lived in the Arizona desert, near Phoenix, since 2007). This time of year feels a little magical. Of course, the twinkling holiday lights and decorations help, but there is just something different and special in the air in the final few weeks of December and early January. It is the coldest and darkest time of the year, in stark contrast to the majority of the year which is very bright, sunny, hot, and dry. It feels unusual to spend time in the dark on a morning, wrapped up in a sweater and slippers. The freedom in going for a walk outside at any time of the day feels luxurious. (May through October can be challenging to spend time outside, unless you beat the sun and get out before 5am.) The rabbits, squirrels, and birds, are still out and about but it feels very quiet and serene in winter, without the intense buzz of the cicadas and the pressure of the heat.

These winter weeks are fleeting in the desert. This will be my 18^th winter here, and I have come to truly appreciate this special time. It won’t be long until the sleeping desert wildlife will come roaring back to life, as daylight stretches and pushes each day longer, and brings with it the intense desert heat.

This time of year is typically wrapped in goal setting and resolutions for change. I no longer make resolutions, mostly because I don’t enjoy feeling bound to rules, especially for a whole year! The things I want in June or September might have shifted from what I want today, and rules such as “workout 4 days a week” just feel so restrictive and binding. As soon as I don’t meet or achieve the resolution goal, like skipping a day (or a week) of working out, it feels like a failure that is likely to push me into giving up. I recognize that this is likely some glimpse into my particular psychological makeup and for some people, resolutions with specific goals and milestone work and keep you accountable and on track.

Guiding word for 2024

My personal preference however, is to choose a guiding word for the year, with 2 supporting words. My guiding word for 2024 is Create.

I choose my word by going through some reflection journaling exercises, writing about the year we are wrapping up, and looking ahead to the next year and the things I want to welcome more of in the coming year. Since 2016, I have used

Susannah Conway

’s generous free printable workbook to help guide me in this, though I only complete the sections that speak to me or spark something as I am writing. If there isn’t a spark with any section of the workbook, I just skip that question and move on. This process works well for me and helps me identify around 20 possible words, before I narrow it to the one that intuitively feels like a good match for the coming year.

Create isn’t a new word for me. I had this as my guiding word in 2018, though for very different reasons and intent. Back then, I wanted to really focus on spending time each week, and each day when possible, in making and creating. This could look like any type of craft or art, but my intention was to prioritize time for creativity. This year, my goal is less about the time each day spent on making and creating, and more about building and cultivating more of the things that fill me up. I want to continue to create beautiful hand painted yarn, fiber, and fiber arts tools for my business, Storyteller Stitchery. I want to grow by creating online and in-person courses that make fiber arts more accessible to all, so that anyone wanting to learn to knit as a beginner, or to grow specific skills such as knitting socks, or colorwork, can take a class and learn to do so. I want to create a writing habit to share ideas here on Substack, and create a community of folks connected through the love of fiber arts. I suppose it is mostly a focus on creating habits, routines, practices, of the things that fill me up and bring me joy, and create a community of like-minded people who want more of the same in their lives.

This morning, I finished the book Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away by Annie Duke. It is a fascinating look at some of the psychology and human behaviors behind why we stick with things that don’t serve our wellbeing, joy, and priorities in life. In the final chapter, Annie discusses goals and in particular, the peculiarity that we tie an event or specific achievement to a goal, which then means that we either achieve it, or we fail. She gives the example of setting the goal of running a marathon. Success is measured by whether you show up on the day, complete the entire race and cross the finish line. If you don’t, you may consider that you failed in that goal. It is all or nothing thinking. With this mental framework, consider the person that signs up for a marathon, trains for months leading up to the race, and at mile 16 breaks their leg and is forced to pull out of the race. They failed in the goal of finishing the 26.2 mile marathon, but didn’t they achieve far more in their goal through the months of training compared to the person that spent that time at home on the couch? This is my extremely simple summary of Annie’s words - please read her book for more detail, but I wanted to share it on January 1^st as many of us are setting goals for the coming year, as an important reminder to focus on what is important to you rather than measuring success by a single event or achievement. If your goal this year is to knit your first sweater, for example, consider what success means to you. Is it the finished item that matters most? Does it need to be perfect, with beautiful finishing techniques, and be well fitting? If it is baggy and oversized because you didn’t get gauge but it is perfectly wearable as a cozy oversized sweater, does that matter? What about if you learn new finishing techniques, or a new technique to weave in new balls of yarn as you go, or perhaps it is your first attempt at colorwork? If the finished item isn’t perfect but you learned new skills and techniques that will help make your second sweater better fitting, for example, would you consider that a success? Even though your goal of making your first sweater resulted in an item that is not a perfect example of a hand-knit sweater? If you decided that you would never wear the sweater, would you consider it a failure at the end to rip it out and reuse the yarn to knit something else? Would you recognize the growth and skill development that happened through the making of the first, ugly sweater?

My point is simply, setting goals is important in helping us achieve growth and new things in life, but it is important to recognize the progress you make in pursuit of that goal. Even if you change your mind, switch to a new goal, or fall short of meeting a specific event and deadline for your goal. Be kind to yourself and recognize the progress and things you achieve along the way.

Happy New Year, and I wish you lots of prosperity, creativity, and joy, in the coming year.