goals

Things I want to do in 2021

February 3, 2021 filed under: goals

photo credit: @maplepharaoh via Unsplash

This is my version of new year’s resolutions/goals. I feel it’s particularly hard to set any goals this year with all the unknowns going forward in this pandemic, but since I ended up doing quite well last year (despite the unexpected twist and turns we all experienced), maybe I actually can set goals that are achievable despite a (still pretty) restricted environment.

TRAVEL TO GERMANY.

I know. It’s a lofty goal to set while we’re still smack-dab in the middle of a pandemic, but this is really the one and only thing I want to do this year if I had to pick one. I am putting this on here because I have hope that by the end of 2021, we might hopefully be in a position to travel and see my family again.

STAY HEALTHY

My second biggest goal is to stay healthy. I feel like we’re much more cautious than other people when it comes to Covid-19 and the things we’re willing to do, but honestly, I just don’t want to catch it before we can get vaccinated. I will wear my mask, wash my hands, and social distance as much as we possibly can for the foreseeable future.

COMPLETE A 365 PELOTON STREAK.

Hear me out, this is not as crazy as it sounds. I have not gotten addicted to exercise (maybe just a little) and this doesn’t mean that I will be working out hard every day. The Peloton App has a lot to offer and I’ll be making use of all the different types of classes. Some days it’ll only be some yoga or even meditation, but I am committing to doing something good for my body every day in 2021. (Join me?)

KEEP UP WITH MY PLANNER/JOURNAL.

I did really well last year with my planner (mostly because I made it a habit to record my workouts and my meal-planning in there) and I hope to continue to use my new planner in the same way. Having it on my desk where I work every day has been a great motivator to take a few minutes every day to write in it.

GET RID OF EXCESS STUFF.

I am not sure if I should just plan to do a couple of “purging days” this year or go about this more strategically by giving away/throwing out one item per day (which would remove 365 items from my house this year). I am already behind if that was my approach, so I probably go with a more random approach. I just know that I feel the “clutter” in our (comparatively small) apartment and I wouldn’t mind feeling a little lighter from stuff.

COOK MORE VEGETARIAN DISHES.

We’ve been cutting down on our meat consumption last year already, but I’d like to further work on cooking more vegetarian dishes (especially ones that make Jon feel full/satisfied and not miss meat). One example that has been a great “meat substitute” has been a lentil-based bolognese sauce. I am taking your tried-and-true suggestions (please and thank you).

MAKE AN EFFORT TO SUPPORT SMALL/LOCAL BUSINESSES.

I must admit that Amazon has been a lifesaver during the pandemic. I have a love-hate relationship with Amazon. I know that I shouldn’t support it but you can’t beat the convenience, and so many times when I was out of luck finding certain items locally, Amazon came to the rescue. I know, excuses, right? While I can’t see cutting myself off completely just yet, I vow to do better and try to buy locally or from companies directly more often whenever possible. At least, I am not one of those people who get a gazillion packages each week (I think we averaged 4 items/month last year).

BUY A BED FRAME.

Don’t laugh. We’ve been living without a bed frame for 2+ years. When we bought our Tempurpedic (best bed ever, btw!) many years ago, it came with one of those standard metal bed frames (on wheels) on which I repeatedly bumped my foot. Let’s just say, it was painful. When we moved from our house to our apartment over two years ago, I insisted that we get rid of that metal frame… and we have been living without a bed frame ever since. Jon doesn’t think we need one, but I definitely feel like a bed frame will tie our bedroom together. (This goal is for you, Tanja.)

LIMIT MY SOCIAL MEDIA TIME.

Oh boy, dare I say it. Last year was not good when it comes to spending time on my phone. I felt like it was worse than before with all the doom-scrolling and also trying to keep up with everyone and everything going on in the world. I really do want to try and be more intentional with the time I spend online (and on social media sites especially). I have no idea if I can manage (or what exactly my expectation is here), but I want to be more mindful and I’d think that it would be a least a little bit easier with the news not being all crazy all the freakin’ time. Wish me luck on this one.

READ 30 BOOKS.

Why 30? Why not 30! I ‘only’ managed 22 books last year, so I am just throwing out a random number to motivate me to read more this year, but also to keep the goal realistic. In the end, I only want to just accomplish one thing: enjoy the books that I do get to read this year.

Did you set goals for this year?

Things I wanted to do in 2020

January 11, 2021 filed under: goals, review

photo credit: @anniespratt via Unsplash

I usually don’t post a review of my previous year’s goals, but in light of a very unprecedented year, I was surprised to see that despite the wrench that 2020 threw into the works of everyone’s life, I checked more things off my “want-to-do”-list last year than I thought.

✔ GO SKIING (AND SNOWBOARDING).

That would most definitely not have happened if I hadn’t been able to check this one off my list in January already. So glad I got to go!

~~TRAVEL IN THE SUMMER WITH MY FAMILY~~

Well, that obviously didn’t happen and I was super-bummed about it. We had planned the visit (and subsequent road trip) for months and it’s not like my family comes to visit every year. That trip had been in the making since 2015 and was one of the hardest things to “give up” last year.

✔ IMPROVE MY FITNESS AND BREAK THE 2 HOUR-MARK IN THE HALF MARATHON.

I finally checked this goal off my list last year. Sadly, it wasn’t an “official PR”, because all in-person races were canceled and I ran this HM virtually with a friend, but at least, I could prove to myself that I’d been improving and was capable of accomplishing this. I hope to repeat it on an official course sometime.

✔ RUN AT LEAST 600 MILES THIS YEAR.

I didn’t even have this goal on my “radar” but ended 2020 with 610 running miles under my belt.

~~WORK ON MY ETSY SHOP.~~

That didn’t happen. I had high hopes at the start of last year that I would be motivated and make time for my Etsy shop, but the pandemic pretty much zapped all of my creative energy. Then, the USPS woes started and I felt even less inclined to re-start a shop that was going to rely on the postal service to deliver goods. Maybe I’ll re-open my shop in 2021.

~~READ MORE THAN 27 BOOKS.~~

I did not read 27 books last year. I read 22, which I guess is not too far off, but it feels like I could barely focus on any books in 2020. I am hoping for 2021 to be better.

✔ CONTINUE TO INVEST IN HEALTHY LIVING

I definitely kept my focus on healthy living last year. I made sure to keep up (and expand) my fitness routine, I started taking (some carefully selected) supplements, I focused on hydration, and with all the home-cooking we were doing, tried to improve our meals by adding more vegetarian dishes, swapping in lighter ingredients, and adding (even) more vegetables and fruit into our diet. I also dabbled a bit with intermittent-fasting (more out of curiosity than anything else).

✔ ONE ACT OF KINDNESS EVERY WEEK.

I don’t know for sure if I accomplished this (I did not keep a tally), but I am claiming this as complete. I try to be a nice person on any given day, and even though I have no recollection of purposefully trying at this goal, I do feel that I reached out more (I reconnected with a few people), wrote letters, and tried to be kind and smiled more at strangers. I am pretty sure that I extended more grace and kindness to people last year than not.

✔ BE INTENTIONAL WITH MY TIME.

I definitely gave myself grace and didn’t jump on all the bandwagons and allowed myself to say “no” to things that I felt I should be doing but had no interest in doing (looking at you, all-the-Netflix-series). There were many days where I felt drained and gave in to mindless doomscrolling, but also made sure that I stepped away often to get outside and clear my mind.

✔ KEEP UP WITH MY PLANNER/JOURNAL.

In a twist of irony, in the year when there was not much to do besides sitting on your couch, I used my planner more consistently than ever. I jotted down (and pre-planned) my weekly workout routines, meal-planned (on paper, not just in the Evernote-app), and wrote down FaceTime Calls with people near and far as if they were meetings on my calendar. I am hoping to keep it up :)

* * *

7 out of 10 goals met in the year of a pandemic? Not too shabby, I’d argue. Not that I had put any expectations on my goal’s list after the pandemic hit, but it’s nice to see that I still got some things accomplished.

How did you do?

Things I want to do in 2020

January 27, 2020 filed under: goals, lists!

Go skiing (and snowboarding).

Guess what, I already checked that off my list last week when I went to Tahoe with some friends. Skiing is secretly always on my goals’ list. It’s a real shame that I live two hours from the snow and go so rarely. I want to change that. It’s hard to get up to the mountains, if your husband is not much of a snow person, but I am hoping to go once or twice more this season.

Travel this summer with my family

I might have mentioned it here before, but if not: my family is coming to visit this summer; my parents, my sister and BIL and the kids, and I am beyond excited. They’ll be here for about three weeks and we’re in the midst of planning another epic road trip together. I wish they could just come and I could host them at our place, but unfortunately, we don’t have the space and of course, they want to see more than Sacramento if they come all the way over here. So we’ll be traveling together quite a bit and I am sure it will be a blast!

Improve my fitness and break the 2 hour-mark in the half marathon.

Does this goal sound familiar? Yes, because I copied it from last year. I did NOT run a sub-2 hour half marathon last year, so it’s staying on the goals’ list. I also didn’t run three half marathons (as two of the three I was planning to run fell during the time when I was traveling to Germany), which means I only got one shot at setting a new PR and since the only half marathon I ran was San Francisco ( = hills) I knew it was kind of a long shot.

Run at least 600 miles this year.

I want to up my running mileage again this year. I ran 469 miles in 2019, but I would love to hit 600 miles again this year. This amounts to 50 miles per month. That should be doable, even if I throw in cycling and more cross-training.

Work on my Etsy shop.

If you follow me on social media, you might know that I own a shop on Etsy. Once upon a time, it was a little endeavor I started with my neighbor-friend across the hall, but she moved away, had kids, and eventually decided that she didn’t have the time to invest time in our little shop anymore. For almost a year, I contemplated what to do; close shop or continue on my own. I eventually decided that I didn’t want this creative outlet go. I’ll tell you more about that decision in a separate post.

Continue to invest in healthy living

I have a lot of fitness goals on my list here and along with this goes a focus on healthy living. I’ve started tracking food and macros this month, not to lose weight, but to be more aware of how I fuel my body. I also set myself a goal of drinking at least 60 oz of water every day, because hydrating properly has been an on-and-off challenge for me over the years.

One act of kindness every week.

I always try to be a nice person, but I am hoping to purposefully make someone’s day every week. It can be through offering a helpful hand, a sympathetic ear, heartfelt advice, or a simple compliment. It’s so easy to make someone’s day better by adding some positivity and kindness. Yes, it’s awkward sometimes to offer a compliment to a stranger, but every time someone has done it for me, it buoyed me up through the day and beyond.

Be intentional with my time.

This is nothing new. I always feel pressed for time, have so many competing interests. Sometimes, I am guilty of mindless scrolling on social media and when people tell me that they’ve been watching this show or listened to that podcasts, I sometimes feel left out or like I am missing out, but I want to focus on the things that interest me this year and not feel bad to not jump on every bandwagon.

Keep up with my planner/journal.

I’ve tried my hand at bullet journaling the last two years and it was an on-again-off-again love affair. When I was bullet journaling, I was doing it 110%, until I wasn’t and didn’t touch it for a couple of months. I hated these empty pages in between. So, for 2020, I bought a new, traditional planner and I am hoping that I’ll better be able to keep up with it this year.

Did you set any goals for 2020?

Things I want to do in 2019

January 24, 2019 filed under: goals, good things

I promised you ~~last week~~ two weeks ago that I was going to share a ‘things I want to do in 2019’-list, so here I am. I am still a little wary to put a list together, but I also like the process of making a list and subsequently, checking things off that list.

Go to Germany.

After last year’s plans were thwarted, I made new plans to visit my family this year, no matter what. This is my number one priority. I haven’t seen my family for almost two years (hard to believe) and it’s time. Obviously, if I would have it my way, I would see them more often. I hope they’ll come visit us again here in California soon (and I know they’d love to!).

Get rid off stuff.

Before our move, I purged quite a bit of stuff, so we didn’t have to move it (I also wasn’t sure if we were going to have enough space for storage). I already felt a thousand pounds lighter, but still, there is more stuff that ended up in boxes in our garage and I am planning to go through this and truly get rid off everything we don’t want or use anymore.

Improve my fitness and break the 2 hour-mark in the half marathon (gasp, I said it).

Is this year going to be the year? Running a sub-2 hour half marathon has been a goal, well, I guess since I ran my first half marathon. The first race was just to prove myself that I can run the distance, then my ambition was tickled and I started trying to improve my pace. While I had two more PRs last year, I still haven’t broken the 2 hours. My current PR is 2:02:39 (so I am literally 2:40 minutes away from my goal), but you’d be amazed how freakin’ hard it actually is to improve only a couple of minutes over a long distance like that. Back to more cross-training and running more miles, it is.

Run 3 half marathons (again).

I am a much better runner, if I set goals and having a race on the calendar is definitely great motivation. I liked having three bigger races, conveniently spaced out in spring, summer, and fall, to look forward to and work towards last year. I think I want to do this again this year.

Find at least two healthy new recipes to try per month.

I’d like to think that I am already eating pretty healthy(-ish), but I am always looking to add more, new exciting recipes to the mix.
I believe that cooking at home (mostly) from scratch with fresh ingredients (and control what goes into the dish) and an attitude of “what can I ADD to my to your diet, instead of take away” is more important than restricting my diet and eliminating certain foods entirely.

Read 52+ books.

Last year, I set a goal of 60 books (which was 1 more than 2017) and didn’t quite make it. But I read 52 books (which is one book a week on average) and my goal is to just keep that up. Any extra books are going to be a bonus.

See new places.

I am rephrasing my “travel more”-goal from last year. You don’t have to travel far to visit and explore new places and there is so much in my immediate vicinity that I haven’t seen, so I’ll be making an effort to be more of a local tourist this year.

Did you set any goals for 2019?

Things I plan to do in 2018

January 11, 2018 filed under: goals, good things

I read this great blog post the other day about setting goals that are out of your control vs. implementing actionable changes you can make to your habits to move yourself in the right direction, and I could relate so much. I am not much for New Year’s resolutions, a) because I feel like you can make positive changes on any damn day of the year, and b) because resolutions always put so much pressure on a person.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I think a little bit of pressure is necessary to make some positive, but hard changes sometimes, but if the goals are too lofty or there are too many changes to implement at once, chances are you (universal you) will fall short.

Resolutions look good on paper, but they also need to be doable. It’s great if you aim to read 100 books this year, but unless you have a clear plan how to accomplish this, this is just going to be that: a lofty goal. Before you know it, you’re three months into the new year and way behind on your reading goal.

However, if you rephrase your resolutions and really think about which goals are realistic and what kind of changes are doable in order to achieve a certain goal and which small steps to take to get there, these goals become much more attainable.

Ok, maybe that got a little bit too philosophical. So, without further ado, here are the things I plan to do in 2018 (and not all of them are ‘habit changes’):

Go skiing with my family in the Alps again.

That is in the works. I’d be ecstatic if this works out the way I am hoping (currently, I am saving every vacation and comp hour for this trip.)

Run 3 half marathons.

Why three? Why not three! I ran one in 2016, two last year and I’d just love to add another one this year. (Don’t worry, this is not going to be an ongoing future trend.) I am already signed up for the San Francisco Half again, but there is room to fit in two more, I think. I am also hoping to up my mileage from last year (766 mi) just to have something to work towards (because I always do better with a bit of a challenge).

Go back to yoga, for crying out loud.

Yes, here it is again. I can’t believe I am actually putting this on this list, because this has been on my goal-list for, like, FOREVER and I haven’t made it happen. But if I don’t put it here, the chance of it ever happening gets even slimmer. Am I thinking about this right? Good. (Hold me accountable, pretty please.)

Read 60 books.

This will be an average of 5 books per month or so. I had a goal to read 25 books last year. Twice as many as in 2016. I ended up reading 59 books, so setting my goal to 60 for this year seems just the logical – and attainable – thing to do, yes?

Take more weekend trips and meet up with friends.

Whenever I get away for a weekend, I feel so refreshed when I get back home. I want to see new places and there is so much that I haven’t seen here in California (and other neighboring states). I’d also love to spend more time or go on small trips with some far away friends.

Discover more restaurants.

J and I love cooking at home, but we also love to eat out and try new restaurants. We’ve been going to the same joints a lot last year and I want to find some new-to-us restaurants in town.

Keep on top of my Feedly reader.

I know this might seem like a silly goal to add to this list, but I am subscribed to so many (too many!) blogs that I often can’t keep up with everything and I hate that (part of what often ‘stresses me out’). I hate when I have hundreds of unread posts sit in my Feed Reader (and as you might know, I am not one to “mark all read”, lest I miss something important!)

I do know though that there are blogs that I “click away” from routinely, which I should probably remove from my Reader (and I am sorry about that. I promise it is nothing personal, there is only so many blogs a person can read at any given time.) and I should probably better organize the blogs I do want to keep. In order to do better this year and be more focused, I got my Feedly reader down to “zero” last week for a fresh start and I am aiming to keep the list of unread posts below 50 at any given time.