Searching for a Purposeful Life

I have never successfully done New Year’s resolutions. I make goals, sometimes reasonable, sometimes pie-in-the-sky, and we see what sticks. I used to spend New Year’s Day reviewing my journal entries for the year and contemplating what sort of year it had been, what were the ups, what were the downs and what do I want to change. Then I had kids. And now, not only do I not have hours upon contemplative hours on New Year’s Day, (or on any day for that matter) I don’t have all that many journal entries to review, since the greatest stretch of uninterrupted time in my regular day is the 7-10 minutes between when I pull up to my children’s school to pick them up and when they actually come streaming out to the car. And sometimes I choose a 7-10 minute car nap over attempting to compose a single sentence that will somehow catch up my journal from the last time I tried to write.
But, I have been thinking about very contemplative things a lot of late, as major things we had planned for ourselves didn’t happen and major things we didn’t necessarily plan for right now did happen. What is working, what isn’t working and how do we get things to where we want them? And what I most want to do is live on purpose. So much of the life of a mother of young children is reactive, ie.: the baby is finally asleep, so I can sleep, shower, exercise, clean and/or prepare my Gospel Doctrine Lesson (or she’ll wake while I’m trying to decide where to start and it becomes a moot point). But somewhere in all this reaction, I lost plan making and executing skills. Gone are my planner girl days when I could write and prioritize my "action list" and actually check items off on their originally designated day. But I want to infuse something of planning and purposeful living into my current life instead of reacting to everything. We are so busy: with 5 kids of varying developmental ages, with their 3 soccer teams, activity days, piano lessons, play dates, schools and scores of other activities and desires. Add to that one full time grown-up job (my practice, while finally closed as of the year’s end has some floaty aspects that need addressing–like the abysmal filing "system" that is my office), two demanding grown-up callings and all the needs and duties that comprise the granddaddy of all action lists that must be a household of seven people (the laundry alone could kill me . . .)
I guess I’m looking to this blog to provide some built in contemplation and introspection to help me live more purposefully. Wish me luck!