Tuesday, January 22, 2019

Personal Goals 2019

I've written about our Family Fun List, so now it is time to write about the other list I write on New Year's Eve (or soon thereafter): My personal goals list.

First, though, a look back at how I did on my 2018 goals:

1. Establish a new exercise routine. Eh, I sort of did this. I established a pretty regular routine of rollerblading every Friday and taking a ~20 minute walk every other weekday. I had intended to also have a gym day in my routine. I did that for awhile, but failed to make it stick. It just didn't work with our after school pick up schedule.

2. Start our backyard upgrade. Not really. I got one quote for the design process. I need a second quote, and the second company I'd picked never answered my emails. Bah.

3. Organize the kitchen. Total fail. Except Petunia wanted to make some money before our vacation and cleaned our spice shelf and a couple other pantry shelves. We still have too much stuff crammed into too little space, though.

4. Read a short story every week. Done! You can see most of the stories I read in this thread:



Twitter doesn't always show the whole thread, so here's from May to when I stopped posting. I think between the two, if you click on the posts at the "ends" you'll get to see all of the stories I read:





5. Do what I can to help in the 2018 elections. Done! I wrote a boatload of postcards to registered Democrats urging them to get out to vote in various elections, from local and state contests up to the midterms. I feel good about that.

6. Try at least one new recipe every month. Well... I didn't keep this to the letter, but I kept it in spirit. We tried some new recipes, just not one every month.

I also had a quasi-goal to lose weight. I met that goal. I dropped ~8 pounds from my high at the end of 2017, and I've been stable at the new weight.

One lesson I took from last year's goals is that I can use social media to help make me stick to my goals. I was most successful with my short story every week and my postcards, and those were two things I made a point to post about on social media.

So, here are my goals for 2019:

1. Improve that exercise routine. I want to keep up the rollerblading and walking, and add in some after work exercise on Mondays (the day that I have the most time in our after school schedule). I'd also like to add in some yoga. I see how to add in the Monday exercise, but haven't figured out how to add in the yoga yet.

2. Write more. I've set myself a goal of at least one Adjusted Latitudes post per month and also one other non-links post per month, which could be here, on my real name blog, on the Annorlunda news feed, or somewhere else. My stretch goal is one non-links post somewhere every week. I feel better when I write more.

3. Get a design for the backyard upgrade and get the first step done. Seriously, it is embarrassing this is taking me so long. I am lucky to live in a place where I can enjoy my backyard most of the year. I should make it enjoyable!

4. Stay active in politics. I don't mean that I want to get involved in the 2020 primary or anything like that. I plan to keep pushing for the issues I think are most fundamental to improving our civic health: voting rights and fair districts. Given the way the parties are behaving right now, this probably means I'll write a bunch more postcards to registered Democrats urging them to get out to vote in obscure state elections.

5. Take the time to notice more. This one was added well after New Year's Day. It came about because of the reaction to listening to Krista Tippet's conversation with Maira Kalman, which I described in last week's links post. I was jealous of the time and space Kalman made in her life for noticing things, and decided to try to make a little more time and space in my life to notice the beauty I come across. I'll be taking pictures of the things I notice (when I can - this week, one of the things I noticed was how green the hills were as I drove to work, and I couldn't safely take a picture of that). I'll post my favorite picture every week on my new Instagram account. This will be a bit like the Zenbits I used to post here, but Pumpkin is now actively asking for Instagram. All of her friends have it... so I need to figure out the rules for her, and to do that I need to be a bit more active there. I may also link that Instagram account to my real name Twitter account and cross post. Email me or leave a comment linked to an email address if you want me to email you my handle for either Instagram or my real name Twitter.

I am also going to set a one month challenge in February: I'll be tracking calories for that month. I hope to have the same success I had with calorie tracking last year. I did it for two months and ended up losing 8 pounds. I'd love to lose another 5! But mostly I like how calorie tracking for a little while resets my snacking behavior to something healthier.

And that's it. Do you have any goals for 2018? I'd love to read about them in the comments.

2 comments:

  1. A suggestion for the yoga - I found a yoga instructor on youtube (Yoga with Adrienne) who posts sets of lessons ie 30 days of yoga. It's better than individual videos because they gradually increase in complexity, and i can do them whenever i fit them in - which for me, is often but not always first thing in the morning.

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