Sophomore.

Goals for my tenth-grade year:

1. Get my priorities in order. It's time for me to take a step back and take a long, hard look at what's really important in my life. I've spent way too long focusing on things that either hurt me, disappoint me, or leave me when they get used up. I know the things that are important, now I just need the will to stick with them.

2. Get it done, and get it done right. Whatever I do, whenever I do it. It may be an essay, it may be a volleyball practice. Regardless if it is something I like to do or not, I need to complete it to the best of my ability, every time.

3. Have a better attitude. Basically about everything. I have proven to myself that having a good attitude improves every situation countless times, and yet I still struggle with negativity.

4. Be bolder. My timidness has gotten me almost nowhere, and I'm sick of feeling like I'm never heard. I know it has alot to do with my confidence level, but I want to be known as someone other than "Lainey's sister." I don't want to be an afterthought any more!

5. Make a new friend. I stepped out of my comfort zone and got to know a new girl freshman year, and she is now my best friend!

6. Take personal responsibility. It's up to me and only me to make this year my best yet. I need to quit blaming others for my mistakes and accept that I can't have it all together all the time.

7. Stop trying to mold myself into a way that seems to be what others want. This is such a hard one, because I have struggled for so long with not feeling funny enough or talkative enough, and that makes me feel like I'm not liked enough. But even when I fake it, everyone can tell, and it doesn't make me feel any better. It's time to be myself, and I think I will really find out who my real friends are by doing this. There is one friend in particular that has given me the strength to commit to this, because she has told me more than once that my quiet, reserved, and slightly sarcastic personality is exactly what she loves so much about me. That was just the push I needed, to know that there are people out there who will appreciate me for who I am, not who I pretend to be.

8. Volleyball. I'm not 100 percent sure what my goal for this is, I just know that something needs to change.

9. Get a "body-image booster". Find a new look, a haircut, an outfit, or a makeup trick that bumps up my self-esteem and makes me feel better about myself, if only for a short time. I read this in a magazine, and it said that girls who experiment and find something that makes them like what they see in the mirror have a better day overall. It's definitley worth a try.

10. Live fully, faithfully, and fantastically. I want to do things that are out of my comfort zone and push myself to a level that I've never been to before, in the hopes of having an experience that is memorable beyond belief. I want to take my life from my own hands and place in the Lord's. There is no way that I am going to be able to make it through without His guidance, I've tried and failed too many times. I'm still going to mess up, and I'll probably have to renew my faith again and again and again this year, but each time brings me closer to where I long to be. The thing is, I want to be real with my faith. I want people to see that I'm not perfect and I'm not "changed", but I'm trying. I don't want to be that girl who says the Lord is at work in her life and then does everything to prove it untrue. If I'm struggling with my faith, I'm not going to pretend that I'm not, and that's one of my biggest annoyances. Sorry guys, but you can't "change" from a week of camp!


Will I live up to these goals? Who knows, ask me again at the start of junior year.