2020 feels like a bit of a special year, like an important shift of some kind is going to happen. I can’t really explain the feeling I have about it, I just know that it’s there and that it’s insistent. I try and listen to these kinds of gut feelings – the ones that won’t go away – because I know that they’re there for a reason, that they’re trying to tell me something important. Maybe 2020 feels different because it’s the start of a new decade? Or perhaps it’s because 2019 was so stressful for us in so many ways that it seems only fair that this year is more positive. Who knows?
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I have a lot of things I want to achieve over the next twelve months, so, to help me get unstuck and to start moving forwards again, I decided to set myself some specific goals to achieve. Twenty goals, to be exact. Twenty goals for 2020.
I don’t usually set ‘official’ goals. I tend to start the year with a vague mental list of things I would like to do, though I don’t ever write them down or share them with anyone. I’m well aware that life happens and that unexpected events could lead me to take a different path from the one I had in my head (and that’s ok). I prefer to set an intention for the year, a way in which I want to live my life over the next twelve months. I’m still writing about what this year’s intention is going to be, though you can read all about my 2019 intention here.
But these goals feel more important and significant to me than my usual ones. I feel like I’m at a real crossroads with many things in my life at the moment and I need to figure out my direction. I thought that setting some specific goals to work towards could prove useful, especially as sharing them here will help keep me accountable.
These goals are steps I want to take so that I can continue to grow – in my work, creatively, in my personal life and as a human. They’re going to be a challenge. Some of them feel very scary. And most of them will most definitely be uncomfortable. They’re also going to be fun. And rewarding. And energising. And joyful. Whether I reach them or not I know that I will have done everything in my power to have made it to wherever I end up at the end of the year and that that will be enough.
There are a real mix of goals – some small, some big, some ridiculously ambitious. Some are career-related, some are family-related, some are travel-related, some are creative and some are deeply personal. I can’t wait to see where they take me.
So here they are, my 20 goals for 2020:
1/ Document ‘A Day In The Life’ of us in photographs
I have unintentionally done a ‘day in the life’ before, almost three years ago now. I didn’t plan it out in advance, I just did it on the spur of the moment. It wasn’t even an hour-by-hour documentation, more just odd moments that made up my day. It’s hard to explain what compelled me to do it, I just knew that I needed to.
This year I want to do it properly, even if it’s only once. A photograph every hour, to capture our ordinary, everyday life. It will take a mixture of planning and spontaneity, candid shots and self portraits and, weirdly, I feel slightly nervous about it. What if the vision I have in my head of the images I want to capture doesn’t work out? Ridiculous, I know. So what if it doesn’t? It’s only a photograph. I can always try again, take another shot, choose a different day. It doesn’t matter.
And yet at the same time it does matter, very much. I spend most of my days alone, working from home whilst the husband is out doing his job and the girls are at school. I squeeze laundry and food shopping and cleaning and life admin in around therapy clients and emails and phone calls and sending invoices and marketing and shooting photos and editing images and writing and research.
I find it all too easy to slip into the thought pattern and belief that what I do doesn’t matter. That it isn’t important because no-one actually sees it. No-one sees me. I’m always behind the scenes (my choice, I know that) and if I wasn’t there than the household wouldn’t work, but sometimes I do feel a bit… invisible. Completing this goal and documenting a day in the life of us will be my way of showing that I was there too, that the things I do really do matter.
One of the images from the first ‘Day In The Life’ documentation that I captured back in April 2017. We’re in a new house now so the view is different but the scene – a messy kitchen – remains the same. I take comfort in that somehow.
2/ Make photobooks
I haven’t had any photos printed since 2012. Eight whole years! I regret it. And feel somewhat guilty about it. I have so many photographs that are far to important to stay hidden on my laptop. They need to be seen. Every single one of them tells part of our story and our story deserves to be seen. I am absolutely determined to have tangiable images that we can look back through, that I can pass down to the girls when I’m old and they have families of their own.
There are far too many images to print out individually and put into old-school style photo albums. A photobook seems like it might be the ideal solution. I’m planning one photobook for each year for 2017, 2018 and 2019. A bumper one for the most important captures from all the years leading up to and including 2016. One for our wedding (that will have all of our images in rather than just our favourite ones that are in our official wedding album). Plus dedicated ones for special holidays and travel adventures that we’ve had, such as our trip to Walt Disney World in Florida, our annual visits to Bude in Cornwall, our adventures in Italy, the beautiful week we spent in Jersey and our explorations of Boston and Cape Cod last year.
I’m fairly sure that they’ll probably end up sitting on a bookshelf somewhere in our home eventually, but at least they’ll be much more accessible than if they remain stored digitally. Besides, nothing beats leafing through the pages of a real book – the smell, the feel, the colours, the textures, the words I’ll be able to add in to capture our memories in writing as well as images. Books hold a special kind of magic.
I made a photobook for Sophie for her 18th birthday and she loved it, plus I make a photo calendar for my Mum as part of her Christmas present every year and she’s always happy to receive it. Watching their faces as they flip through the pages makes me realise just how special these things are. They’re time consuming to put together but so very worth it.
I always use a company called Snapfish* for anything photography related. I used to use them to print out my photos back when I was still doing it, and I use them every year for my Mum’s calendar. It’s always fantastic quality so I tried them when I made Sophie’s photobook too and it was beautiful. I’ll definitely be using Snapfish* to help me create my photobooks.
Sophie looking through the photobook I made for her as an 18th birthday gift
3/ Launch my photography business
I have loved photography for most of my life. I’ve tried so many times to explain how it feels and I just can’t, not in words. It’s such a deeply rooted part of my heart and soul, part of who I am. It feels intimate and personal and my words get tangled when I attempt to describe how important it is to me.
I’ve longed to set up my own photography business for the last six or seven years and that desire has only got stronger and stronger the more I dive into the various communities of female photographers that I’m still discovering – ClickinMoms*, Hello Storyteller*, Unraveled Academy and My Four Hens to name just a few. Interestingly they’re all US based and I’ve felt such an intense pull to the States for years now, I want to explore every inch of it. I swear I was born on the wrong continent.
Anyway, fear is the thing that I have been letting get in the way, allowing it to hold me back from taking the plunge. Fear that I’m not ready. Fear that I’m not good enough yet. Fear that no one will ever pay me to take photos of their families. Fear that I don’t know enough about the technical side of things. Fear that everyone else is better than me. Fear that I simply can’t do it. Fear that I won’t be able to do justice to telling all the stories I’ll see unfold before me.
So I’ve been waiting. Waiting for that magic moment where I’ll suddenly feel ready, where I’ll feel confident, where I’ll have taken enough online classes to know all of the things I ‘need’ to know in order to set up in business, where someone will give me permission to do it, where I will finally believe that I am good enough.
It’s so silly. I’ve come to the realisation (well, I’ve probably known it all along and have chosen to ignore it until now) that I will never, ever be ‘ready’. Because no-one ever is. You can only go so far to the edge of the precipice before you just have to take the leap and jump into the unknown, trusting that you have everything you need to be able to fly. This year, 2020, is as good a time as any to take that leap.
So watch this space: Moments In Between Photography will launch later this year.
4/ Have a family photoshoot
This is becoming increasingly important to me. I want it to become something we do annually. We had our first photoshoot with the awesome Steve Gerrard in the summer of 2017 – just the girls and I – and I loved how he saw my girls, how he saw us. Then last year all five of us had a family shoot with my beautiful, big-hearted, endlessly inspiring friend Amy Murgatroyd whilst we were in Boston in the USA, where she lives. Every single image means something special to me and I’m so pleased we were all in the frame.
One of my favourite shots from our photoshoot with Steve Gerrard Photography in 2017
This year I want one with Sophie too. We have so few photographs of all six of us together and the ones we do have are only phone selfies. Selfies where you’re all squashed in the frame together absolutely have their place of course and actually they’re some of my favourite ever photos of us all but it’s not quite the same as having them done professionally. Sophie is 18 now and likely to be heading off to uni in September – this upcoming milestone has made me realise that we actually have precious few years left with them all at home. After all, Ella is only five years younger than her.
In America an annual photoshoot is a given – pretty much everyone books a photographer to capture them every single year because of their tradition of sending Christmas cards with photos of their family on. I think it’s a lovely tradition actually and I kind of wish we’d adopt it here in England. How heart-warming would it be to have a shelf or wall full of cards showing the smiling faces of family and friends that you love at Christmas time? So much better and far more personal than the generic Santa or Rudolph cards we buy from shops here that just end up in the recycling bin at the start of January.
I have no idea who we’ll book for our photoshoot yet (though I have some ideas). As long as it happens, that’s all that matters.
And this one is one of my favourites from our photoshoot with Amy Murgatroyd in Boston in 2019
5/ Tick some more things off my ’40 Things Before I’m 40′ list
To be fair, this is going to be remaining permanently on my list of goals for the next few years! I have no idea how many items on my ‘40 Things Before I’m 40‘ list that I’ll work my way through this year but as long as I tick a few more off I’ll be happy. I still have quite a lot to go that I haven’t done yet so I need to get a move on with them if I’m going to complete the list by the time I’m forty – I only have three and a half years left. Although if I don’t manage to do them all by the time the milestone birthday arrives I suppose it means I can roll them over to a ‘Fifty Things Before I’m Fifty’ list instead!
6/ Visit somewhere in the UK that we’ve never been to before
I love to travel, both home and abroad. It’s tempting to ignore our mediocre-weather little homeland in favour of warmer, sunnier destinations but actually, there are so many beautiful places here in the UK that we’re still yet to explore. It seems daft to ignore what’s within a few hours drive from our doorstep. Our happy place in the UK is Cornwall, but we also loved Dorset, Somerset and the New Forest when we’ve visited them in the past.
We do already have some travel plans already arranged that will cover this goal and I couldn’t be more excited about where we’re heading. I’ve already started planning where to go, what to see and things we can do and we’re not going until May! There is still room left in the diary for other little mini-adventures as well if the opportunity arises.
Two places that I would really love to go are: 1/ the Isle of Wight. I visited a couple of times with my Mum as a little girl and loved it there, but the husband and girls have never been. I’d love to show them how special it is and revisit all the places that I have such fond childhood memories of. And 2/ The Lake District. I’ve heard so many good things about how stunning it is and I’m desperate to visit. One day!
Exploring the New Forest with friends for the first time a few years ago
7/ Get started on house projects
Having moved into our new home just two weeks before the Christmas chaos ensued, we’ve managed to unpack some boxes but that’s about it. The house is perfectly live-able as it is now, but as much as it already feels like home, it’s not ‘us’. I’ve been itching to paint everything white since day one! This goal for 2020 is to simply get started on making it our own. Our priorities are to paint the walls, to buy some new sofas (our old ones are eleven years old and have taken the full brunt of three babies/toddlers/tweens), to decorate each of the girls’ bedrooms properly (because I promised them we would) and to sort out my office space.
8/ Put art and photos on the walls
At our old house, we had very little in the way of art or photographs on the walls. Even though we lived there for over a decade, it never really felt like ‘home’. Not to me at least. I didn’t want to put anything up because I didn’t want to be there for as long as we were. It just didn’t feel right, almost as if we were making something permanant that I only wanted to be temporary. I know that probably sounds strange and I guess it was in a way but it was a very strong feeling that I couldn’t ignore and so the walls stayed mostly bare.
However, I already have a small collection of prints that I want to hang on the walls in our new home and I’m planning to get some photos printed and framed too. I want to surround ourselves with happy memories and meaningful moments, to create an environment that we all love, a place that feels like home. It’s just a case of figuring out where we want to put them.
A few of the prints I want to have on display in our new home
9/ Work with more brands
In the (almost) four years it’s been since I set up this blog, we’ve had the opportunity to work with some really lovely, interesting and fun brands. None of it has been paid work and that didn’t matter in the slightest – I loved doing it for the experiences we’ve had as a family, the chance to build and expand my portfolio of work and to showcase companies, products and places that we genuinely love. Warwick Castle, Sandybrook Lodges in the Peak District, Sunshine Festival and Lucky Gecko subscription boxes are just a few examples of who we’ve worked with so far.
This year I’d love to work with more brands and to start actually earning from paid campaigns. I have a long list of companies I’d love to work with. We have a couple of travel opportunities coming up this year which I’m absolutely thrilled about as that’s my main area of interest. Now all I need to do is to start knowing my worth and begin getting paid for the work I do!
Luxury glamping at Warwick Castle
Enjoying the on-site crazy golf course at Sandybrook Lodges in the Peak District
10/ Get in the frame
I am far more comfortable behind the camera than in front of it. I think that might be true of all photographers actually. However, it’s becoming more and more important to me to show that I was there too, both when we’re travelling and in the more ordinary moments at home. I’m rarely in any photos, simply because I’m always the one taking them. It doesn’t even occur to my husband to take a photo to document something – he doesn’t understand my burning obsession with capturing every single moment. And that’s fine – we’re two completely different people after all.
My goal for this year is to get in the frame more often – with my girls, with my husband and all of us together as a family. Just once a month, I’m going to make sure that I’m in a photo. The few that I do have always end up being amongst my favourite from the year (and ever, actually).
I’d like to try taking some more self portraits too. It feels weirdly self-indulgent and vain, even uncomfortable, to say that out loud – I guess that’s how I know it’s something I need to do. I’ve attempted a couple in the past and have been pleased with (and even a tiny bit proud of) the results, though I rarely share them anywhere. I love seeing the intimate and inspiring work of other artists as I scroll through my instagram feed and I’d love to have a go myself – I guess it’s an opportunity to be creative and to express myself, my thoughts, my feelings, in a different way rather than solely through words like I’m used to doing.
A selfie with my girls (taken December 2019)
11/ Capture more memories on video
Photographs freeze a moment in time and save it forever more. You can revisit it as often as you like and be instantly transported back to the precise millisecond that the shutter was pressed, to remember the thoughts, the feelings, the atmosphere, the event. It’s like time travel and I think that’s pretty magical.
What I’ve been realising over the last 12 months or so is just how powerful video is too. Video captures more than just a single moment in time – it captures a sequence of moments that tell the same story a photograph does in a completely different way. There are more layers to it – you don’t just get the visual aspect. Video captures the sound of your kid’s giggles, the way they say “vallilla” instead of vanilla, the tone of their voice, the ever changing expressions that flit across their faces during a conversation.
I love creating vlogs of our travels and improving my video making skills is definitely something I want to work on. I want to get better at capturing the right kinds of shots knowing what will have the most impact and tell our story in the best way to complement what I’m trying to say. And I want to get better at editing everything together and choosing the music that fits best in order to create beautiful videos of our memories.
To get better at anything you have to do it more often, so my goal is to capture more of our memories on video, not just our standalone travel adventures. I might do a little mini project taking video clips of the six week summer holidays, to put together into a video at the end – I think that would be a good place to start. The ultimate aim (eventually) will be to start collecting more everyday moments where we’re just hanging out at home or going about our daily routine to turn into.
Our most recent travel vlog (Cape Cod, May 2019):
12/ Visit somewhere outside the UK that we’ve never been to before
An incurable, never-ending feeling of intense wanderlust is always with me. Whenever we travel anywhere I’m always guilty of starting to plan our next adventure before we’ve even got home from the current one – usually whilst we’re still on the aeroplane or in the car! I have permanently itchy feet and would happily travel full time. In a different life I would 100% take the girls out of school and explore the world with them indefinitely.
This goal of visiting somewhere outside of the UK that we’ve never been to before will always be on my list – there are SO many places I want to go to and whilst I don’t think we’ll ever get to visit all of them we can certainly have fun trying.
13/ Have more date days/nights
Three children, irregular/long work shifts and no babysitter mean that the husband and I rarely get time together outside of the house just the two of us. It definitely has an impact on our marriage and relationship. We’ve always loved watching movies at the cinema, heading out for dinner, going to gigs (comedy and music), spending time at the bowling alley and playing pool and I really want to make more of an effort to do all of these things this year. Just one evening or daytime (whilst the girls are at school) a month would be amazing.
We’ve been together for over fifteen years and married for more than five, and it feels that sometimes we’ve slipped into the safe and comfortable habits which mean that the magic of it all has disappeared a bit. You know the ones… sitting on opposite ends of the sofa every night; only talking about practical things like who needs to pick which child up from what after school club, when the kettle next needs to be descaled and how much the energy bill is this month; and rarely holding hands on the odd occasion when we are out together.
Marriage is a daily practice of noticing, supporting, loving and making the effort to keep the spark going that first drew you together. I think working towards this goal will really make a positive difference and help us reconnect with the couple we used to be (and still are underneath it all).
Neil and I, hoping to spend more time together this year
14/ Try a new recipe every month
I’m going through a stage of being incredibly bored with all of the meals I cook regularly. We don’t have a set routine of pasta on a Tuesday, chicken on Wednesday and sausages on Saturday etc, but it does tend to be the same old cycle of about ten different meals (with occasional variations) on rotation.
I have several recipe books and an entire folder full of recipes ripped out of magazines that I want to try out. This year I’m determined to change things up a bit and I think the goal of trying one new recipe every month is do-able. It’ll be good to add some new meals into our repertoire and get our taste-buds tingling with some new flavours. Maybe it’ll even encourage our girls (who eat separately from us earlier on in the evening) to try some new things too.
15/ Practice better self care
I am the first person to admit that I regularly put myself at the bottom of the list. I always make sure everyone else’s needs/wants are met before examining my own. I really want to practice better care for myself this year because I’m starting to feel the effects and it doesn’t feel good. I don’t really bother to dress up much and most of my clothes are ancient, I don’t paint my nails, I haven’t had my hair cut for at least 18 months, I sacrifice sleep and am permanently exhausted from only getting 5-6 hours per night at most, I stopped going to yoga, I don’t drink enough water… the list goes on.
A few things I do well are that I take a multivitamin every single morning, I get outside for a walk in the fresh air once a day and I eat a pretty well-balanced, nutritionally good range of foods – lots of fresh fruit and veg and healthy meals (with some chocolate thrown in too), so that’s something I want to carry on with of course.
I used to really pride myself on being fairly ‘low-maintenance’ and for the most part I think I am (practically speaking anyway, maybe not emotionally – ha!) but I’m wondering if that’s maybe slipped a bit too far into the realms of just not caring any more because I feel like I’m not important enough to look after myself? That’s not the message I want to give out to my daughters, who watch my every move. I just want to look after myself a bit more so that I can be the happy Mum and wife that I want to be – and I know that it needs to come from me.
16/ Go back to doing yoga
As I mentioned in #15 above, I stopped going to my regular weekly yoga class. I’m not entirely sure why. After the fire in our kitchen I was so busy dealing with all the contractors who were in our house for weeks on end that I literally couldn’t go because I had to stay at home while they were there, and then I never re-started once all the renovation work was done.
It has been almost a year now and I miss it. I miss moving my body, I miss having that hour that was completely my own, my mind feels scattered all the time and I can feel that I’ve lost flexibility and that my core muscles aren’t as strong as they used to be.
I am determined to get back into it this year as it makes such a huge positive difference to my mental wellbeing when I do go. Since moving house we’ve been on a tighter budget and so I can’t actually afford to go to my usual class any more. I think I might try some online classes instead – I’ve heard of some free videos (Yoga with Adriene) that people seem to be very positive about so I might give those a try at home. At one point I was considering training to be a yoga teacher -whilst I’m not sure that’s for me any more, it would be good to get back to the point of feeling like I could do that if I wanted to.
I’m determined to get back on my yoga mat this year
17/ Apply for ClickPro
This is a big one. Since becoming involved with the ClickinMoms community*, I’ve been determined to apply for the coveted ClickPro title. The application process is tough – I have to put together a 150 image portfolio of my very best work, showcasing my vision and skills as a photographer. That portfolio then gets assessed and evaluated rigorously by experts in the field and points are awarded for seven different areas of technical and creative ability. I’m fully expecting to be turned down the first time I apply (many people do) and I’ll use the feedback I get to apply again and again and again, as many times as I need to, until I’m accepted and am awarded ClickPro status. If I only achieve one thing off this list of goals this year, this is the one I want most.
One of the images I’m considering including in my portfolio for my ClickPro application
18/ Run a therapy training course
I have been saying for years that I will run a therapy training course to teach colleagues in the therapy community I’m a part of all about my particular speciality. I know that it’s something people want to know more about, I know the demand for such a training course absolutely exists and I know that it’s something that I have valuable and in-depth knowledge of that I can share. But something (fear – I really hate standing up in front of people to talk even though I know full well that I’m perfectly capable of doing it) has stopped me from doing it and I’ve put it off and procrastinated and made excuses time and time and time again.
This year, that changes. I will be running the course later on in 2020 – I’ve promised myself that I will and by writing it here I have to keep myself accountable and stick to my word. Now all I need to do is set the dates and write the course!
19/ Start shooting RAW
If I’m going to launch my photography business and do this properly, I need to start shooting in RAW rather than JPEG. It’ll give me so much more creative control in my editing and the image quality will be better. It feels like a big thing to do (and again, I’ve been putting it off for a long time out of fear) but really it doesn’t need to be that big a deal – it’s just different from what I’m used to, that’s all.
20/ Play around with my film camera
About 18 months ago I was very kindly gifted by a friend an absolutely beautiful film camera, complete with lenses and all the related paraphenalia. I was so stunned at his thoughtfulness and generosity that I cried when he gave it to me. Since that day it has sat in it’s camera bag untouched, because I’m too scared to use it!
I used to shoot film a very long time ago, before I ever owned a digital SLR, so I know that I know how to use it. I’ve just forgotten. I need to do some research into how to use this particular camera properly and then just take it out and play with it. I know so much more about shooting in manual now than I did before – it’s going to be interesting to see what I can create.
My film camera and a few of the lenses I was so very kindly given by a friend. There was even more kit than this. I’m excited to start playing with it!
So there they are: my 20 goals for 2020. It’s been interesting writing them all out and then diving deeper into each of them to understand a bit more about why each of these things is so important to me and something that I want to achieve. I noticed a common theme/pattern amidst many of them, which is that I’ve written a lot about fear and being scared and how I’ve let that stop me doing these things up until now. Well, that ends now – I’m no longer going to let fear prevent me from doing the things I want to do and moving forwards with my life.
It’s not going to be easy to complete all of these but I’m going to do my very best. I’ll revisit them all at the end of the year and see how many of them I achieved.
Do you have anything you’re working towards achieving in 2020?
