Resolutions, What Are They Good For?

As we kick off a new year called 2024, like many of you, I am thinking about New Year’s resolutions and hoping for a great year ahead. However, right now, I am struggling to put my resolutions onto paper. I have enough on my plate just dealing with inflation, war, an election year, poor consumer sentiment, life, work, family, my health and getting by.

In years past, I vowed to stop drinking soda, exercise more and not eat red meat among other forgettable resolutions. With the exception of a few of those resolutions, most resolutions have faded to black and have become nothing more than failures or just short-term changes. Who needs that nonsense? The thing is, we don’t need any more failures, headaches or stresses in our lives. We have that area covered well at this point after what we have endured the last 4 or so years and also with the way things are looking in the near future.

In light of the latter, I am forgetting the resolutions this year. Instead, my focus is going to change. The first thing I want to focus on is life after 51 and being healthy. I absolutely can’t believe that I am now 51. I have so many great memories from my past, but I just can’t believe that I am on the other side of this big milestone. Where did the time go?

As I continue to age, I realize more and more that I am no longer a spring chicken. Last year, I struggled with back issues that I have finally gotten under control thanks to exercise, yoga, a chiropractor and some PT. This year, I am going to make an effort to eat healthier in general especially because December is always a bad eating month between holiday parties, my birthday, preparing for winter coldness and the general end-of-the-year stress. A few small changes go a long way for me and I know exactly what I need to do.

The second focus this year relates to the Jaftex business. As I have probably mentioned before, I am hopeful that we can continue to simplify our business and streamline things even further. This past year we sold part of Jaftex to our employees through an ESOP (more on that in a future blog). With that, we made the first step to simplify the business by making Jaftex one big company rather than having so many different units. With this first step, we can now make various other changes to improve and simplify the business. This is a work in progress and I hope to have more to report as the year progresses.

I am going to try to take 2024 one day at a time while being very careful, cautious and thoughtful. I need to do me and you need to do you because we just never know when our time on this earth will be up. We need to make our own decisions and choose our own paths. Every decision matters. Every decision counts.

As such, I will continue to work as hard as I can to supply quilters around the world with the most beautiful fabrics. I will continue to focus on selling fabric, servicing my customers and helping to drive consumers to quilt shops to help my customers thrive. I will also try to keep making fabric fun and funny. Those tasks will keep me focused too in the New Year. And again, who needs resolutions when we have all this to think about?

The rule books are out the window and this is my plan. What’s yours?

Be safe folks and have an amazing 2024!