2020 Goals

Happy New Year!  I can't remember the last time I officially made any New Year resolutions, but this year I figured, why not?  It will give me something to strive for and it will help me be productive. 

On another note, my Adobe Creative Cloud is acting buggy and I can't add a watermark to this photo.  But this is from our trip to Quebec City's winter carnival in February of 2018.  Though it was super cold, we had a blast and highly recommend it to anyone looking for some winter fun that's not skiing or snowboarding.

Read 10 Books in 2020

In late 2019 I signed up with Goodreads and assigned myself a goal to read six books before the year ended. I used to be an avid reader when I was a kid, but over time my devotion to reading waned, mostly due to school studies and, well, life. I surprised myself by surpassing my late-term goal and actually read nine books. Most of that reading was accomplished on flights for work and pleasure because I was confined in a single spot for several hours. I find it harder to read at home because there are always distractions, namely in the form of cleaning or working out or cooking dinner or all of those things that need to be done after a work day (plus sometimes I just want to relax and watch some TV). But I just need to commit even if it's only for 30 minutes per day. I'm already half way through my first book of the year, Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup. I also have two other books started as carryover from last year (The Goldfinch and The Overstory), but the hold list for these at the library is long so I'm never able to renew them to give me enough time to finish them.


Make a Quilt

I've had a box full of fabric for a quilt that I intended to make over probably 20 years ago. I'm amazed I still have the fabric. I don't know how much fabric I have, so I don't know how big the quilt will be, but I will feel so accomplished if I can reach this goal. I will probably sew it by hand since I don't have a sewing machine and don't know if I'll use one in the future.


Home Improvement

This is a bit general, but there are some tasks we've had on our list for a while. One is to pick out three of our travel photographs to get printed so that we can frame them and hang them above our bed. We've had the frames for over a year, maybe two, so this is a long time coming. Another task, which my husband is leading, is to finally put blinds in our kitchen windows. After a mix up with the custom blinds company leading up to Christmas, we finally received the correct order. Now all we need to do is install them. Finally, a more minor home improvement task is to paint our master bathroom vanity. It's a medium brown wood color, which is totally fine, but it was newly installed when we bought the place and we want to add some color to the bathroom without spending a bunch of money.


Exercise

I don't usually make this an official goal because I feel I generally keep up pretty well with my workouts. However, I "fell off the wagon" in August after completing a workout series because work became very stressful and I was also a little burnt out from the repetition of working out, so I counted myself lucky if I worked out once or twice a week. I fully realize that I let those excuses make my decision to not work out. Now it's time to step back up and get back into a workout routine. My ultimate goal is to work out 5 days per week. I subscribed to several different streaming fitness apps last year, each for different reasons. I have Fit Radio for when I run on the treadmill or do my own weight lifting combinations because they have rotating playlists and guided (recorded) coaching for running, biking, etc. I have Beach Body on Demand because I love Shaun T's HIIT workouts (Insanity, T25, etc.). And I more recently subscribed to Les Mills because I missed taking BodyPump at a gym and their Grit program is also great HIIT. I need options because after a while I get bored with doing just one thing.


Be More Environmentally Conscious

I try to make good environmental choices as a product consumer, but it's an unfortunate reality that a lot of items are shipped or packaged in plastic. However, I think there are some small ways in which I can reduce my footprint. In the last quarter of the year I started using ThredUp and Poshmark to buy secondhand clothing; it would be better if I shopped at thrift stores, but I haven't been too thrilled with the selection in our town. We started using less paper towels to clean up messes by instead using cotton dish cloths. We also bought some silicone bags for food storage and bowl covers to use instead of plastic wrap. We are purchasing more fresh food items that aren't packaged in plastic, even though it costs a little bit more. (Trader Joe's really needs to stop packaging their items in so much plastic!) We already use reusable shopping bags, but we aren't 100% perfect with it. Next I'd like to find some cleaning products (e.g. laundry detergent, dish soap, brushes) that use less plastic packaging and possibly some cloth bags to use for bulk dry food purchases.