We had an absolutely wonderful time visiting our family and friends. After a fun, relaxing vacation, we’re back home and ready to start reaching for some new goals.
As much as I loved seeing everyone, the best part of our trip was the time we spent together. We spent a total of 34 hours in the car together driving. It was plenty of time to talk about our priorities, our goals, and what we hope to achieve in the coming year(s).
I hadn’t realized it, but the regular hustle and bustle of daily life was leaving us very little time to talk to one another, reconnect, and make plans. We’ve only been married 7 months, but we’d already fallen into a routine that didn’t include much time for philosophical heart to hearts.
If you haven’t done it in a while, I really suggest spending some time with your spouse, one on one with no distractions, to talk about your plans, goals, and future together. If you have a date night coming up, spend it in a quiet place talking instead of at a movie or a loud restaurant.
It’s so easy to get caught up in talking about day-to-day life — jobs, kids, bills, etc. Tony and I like to occasionally have conversations like the ones we had in our first months as a couple when we had few responsibilities — long, windy philosophical discussions about our relationship, the future, and other things we don’t get a chance to discuss during the busy work week. These conversations help us look beyond what’s happening in our current daily lives, set new goals, keep us working toward achieving them, and leave us feeling like two teenagers in love with a world of possibilities ahead of us. :)
We talked about our careers, our finances, and our plans for after he graduates in 18 months. It was a lot of fun, and now we’re starting the new year with a renewed sense of purpose and a clear path to achieve our goals.
With just 18 short months until the next chapter of our lives, we’re deciding now where life will take us next. Hopefully there are big changes ahead. Don’t you just love the new year?
That is awesome! I don’t have a SO right now, but my kitty likes to listen to me. :) Glad you had a good time & thanks again for your blog!
I know the feeling! Tim and I are right about the same as you guys (married in May) and we’re home together all the time — I do part-time contract work from home, he’s on unemployment. But we often get distracted in day-to-day stuff and forget the bigger picture.
The thing that helps us is whenever I finish making a payment, I update our progress and tell him the good news. But this also gives me some time to look at how much we have in the bank — so how much we spent that week — and do a general round-up. Then he usually responds and we go from there.
For now, we don’t have a big plan for the next stage, since we don’t know what that will be. He’s working the Dept of Vocational Rehabilitation to figure out what kinds of jobs he can do (ADD & severe eczema). So we don’t know if he’ll need to go to school for a new career, or if he’ll be able to go with what skills he already has.
But we do know that once we get this debt paid off (under $10,000 for the new year, whoo hoo!) we will save for a car and start saving for Tim’s dream job: his own card shop. So I guess that keeps us going.
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Car rides are excellent for long talks! Gotta love em. Glad you had a safe trip back!
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