2020 Goals Recap and 2021 Resolutions

2020 was.…. a year. And I had goals for those months. But 2020 being, well 2020, means those goals went up in the air (for the most part).

Giv­en that 2021 is also shap­ing into.….…. a year.…. I’m not sure I’ll exact­ly be set­ting goals/resolutions as so much seems out of my hands. Things like get­ting the vac­cine, being allowed to trav­el and vis­it peo­ple, etc.

But before we get to 2021, let’s see how I did for 2020.

1. Settle into St. Louis

I feel like I did a pret­ty decent job at this despite being ordered to stay in my apart­ment for 9 out of the 12 months. I got to explore places like the local libraries, the local parks, the Botan­i­cal Gar­den, my neigh­bor­hood and a few fun places like the local bar­cade and boardgame bar. I no longer need my GPS to get to places like my gro­cery store, the pet sup­ply store, Tar­get, and a few oth­er errand staples.

Thanks to my part­ner and I look­ing at hous­es, I’ve got­ten a much bet­ter grasp at local geog­ra­phy and can tell you the dif­fer­ence between Alton and Afton, now! I’ve also fig­ured out the areas of St Louis that has the best shops for my lifestyle (or did, before my favorite local gluten-free bak­ery closed thanks to Covid).

I’d give this goal a sol­id PASS.

2. Start Cooking

I did a real­ly good job at this at the begin­ning of the year/the pan­dem­ic. I was in a local CSA get­ting all kinds of weird veg­gies and tasty meats. I got new kitchen sup­plies like a blender, knives, bam­boo cut­ting boards and a set of pots and pans.

And then.…… the pan­dem­ic gloom set in and I lost moti­va­tion to do a lot of things. Cook­ing was one of the things that fell off the wag­on. I went back to mac n cheese, grilled cheese, lunch meat sand­wich­es or rollups, and chick­en nuggets. For a bit over the sum­mer, I joined into a meal plan with sev­er­al peo­ple in my neigh­bor­hood. A neigh­bor is a pri­vate chef who was mak­ing gluten-free meals for her, her part­ner, and their friend. I got in on the action for a lit­tle bit but ulti­mate­ly faced the same prob­lem I had cook­ing for myself: I was still only eat­ing the same one or two dish­es all week. And it was­n’t exact­ly the cheap­est option. So then I went with a local food prep busi­ness. You order the food, they prep the dish­es, you pick them up, and then you only have to bake and serve. I did one month and took over 2.5 months to eat the food, so this isn’t a ter­ri­bly expen­sive option for me. I’m eager­ly await­ing Feb­ru­ary’s menu as there weren’t many meals I want­ed to eat in January.

I did, how­ev­er, cook an entire Thanks­giv­ing meal for my part­ner and me. I’ve nev­er had to cook an entire hol­i­day meal all on my own as I’ve had old­er female rel­a­tives be in charge of it in the past. (Except the turkey. We went for a turkey breast. I was­n’t up for cook­ing an entire turkey just yet.)

So, in light of every­thing that hap­pened this past year, I’m going to give myself a PASS. There’s a lot of room for improve­ment still, but I have faith that will get bet­ter when I’m not just cook­ing for myself any­more. (It’s not fair I have to prep, cook, AND do the dish­es. So rude.)

3. Find a Therapist

I start­ed work­ing with a ther­a­pist in Feb­ru­ary through Bet­ter­Health. I liked talk­ing to her and get­ting some cop­ing strate­gies for dif­fer­ent issues I had was very help­ful. It was espe­cial­ly help­ful to have her be there as I tran­si­tioned from office work to work­ing from home. How­ev­er, the pan­dem­ic hit and all of the sud­den it seemed like every­one need­ed ther­a­py. You could only set one appoint­ment at a time. Her cal­en­dar filled up and I went from being able to sched­ule a week­ly appoint­ment to a month­ly appoint­ment. My employ­er also start­ed offer­ing ther­a­py ses­sions through our EAP so I dropped the Bet­ter­Health ser­vice. I also had to pay out of pock­et for Bet­ter­Health so I was hap­py to get that $200/mo back in my budget.

This is a sol­id PASS. I encour­age any­one and every­one to talk to a licensed men­tal health pro­fes­sion­al if you’re strug­gling with some­thing in your life.

4. Exercise

This one is like cook­ing. In Jan­u­ary I start­ed mak­ing in-roads on join­ing the local Mas­ter’s swim team at the YMCA. I got in one prac­tice and then pro­cras­ti­nat­ed on fill­ing out my mem­ber­ship form. For once, pro­cras­ti­nat­ing kin­da paid off as I did­n’t have to pay for a gym mem­ber­ship and Mas­ter’s mem­ber­ship that I could­n’t use.  I did a real­ly good job in the spring when the weath­er warmed up and I hyper­fo­cused on my cycling hob­by. I rode a com­bined near­ly 100 miles on dif­fer­ent bicy­cles. I lost 10 pounds of Covid weight because of biking.

How­ev­er, I had mul­ti­ple dif­fer­ent oppor­tu­ni­ties to get in oth­er exer­cis­es through the year and didn’t.

This one gets a FAIL as evi­denced by near­ly all of my pants not fit­ting again. Sigh.

5. Bullet Journal

I could­n’t make this habit stick despite buy­ing a jour­nal, lots of col­or­ful pens, sten­cils for designs, and the best of inten­tions. I think I made it a month or two of spot­ty jour­nal­ing before I stopped using it.

Def­i­nite FAIL.

So, over­all, 3 out of 5 pass­ing goals in an unprece­dent­ed pan­dem­ic is pret­ty damn good. Good job to me, and every­one else that still man­aged to make a lit­tle bit of progress on their goals despite waves hand vague­ly in the air all that.

2021 Theme and Goals

I’ve been lis­ten­ing to a lot of Bastille this year. One song that always gets me is “Sur­vivin’ ”. The part that always gets me is this:

And I’m not gonna lie
Say I’ve been alright
‘Cause it feels like
I’ve been liv­ing upside down

What can I say? I’m survivin’
Crawl­ing out these sheets to see anoth­er day
What can I say? I’m survivin’
And I’m gonna be fine
I’m gonna be fine
I think I’ll be fine

It feels like 2020’s theme turned into Sur­vivin’. Some days it was all I could do to get out of bed and logon to the com­put­er.  But 2021 feels dif­fer­ent even if it’s been more of the same. So, I’m going to declare the theme of the year to be “Thriv­in’ ”. I sur­vived last year and I’m going to thrive this year. That thriv­ing is going to take a few dif­fer­ent forms, so read on to find out how I’m going to do that.

1. Find a house and move in with my partner.¹

We’ve been togeth­er for over a year now and know with absolute cer­tain­ty that we are com­mit­ted to each oth­er for the long run. Since Covid inter­rupt­ed the nor­mal pac­ing of our rela­tion­ship (more on that lat­er), we decid­ed to do things on our own time­line. While we are still “just” dat­ing, we will be tak­ing the appro­pri­ate steps to legal­ly pro­tect our­selves in the event of a breakup. Stay tuned for more infor­ma­tion about house hunting!

2. Meet the families

Nor­mal­ly this is some­thing that hap­pens towards the begin­ning of the rela­tion­ship, but thanks to Covid has yet to hap­pen. By the time we real­ized we’d very much like the oth­er to meet the respec­tive fam­i­lies, it was too late and we were all locked in our houses.

How­ev­er, things are look­ing up. Most of our imme­di­ate fam­i­lies have had one or both of their shots. Mr. Gwen and I have yet to even hear whis­pers of appoint­ments for vac­cines, as St. Louis is a vac­cine desert with­in a vac­cine desert. That’s right, Mis­souri was dead last in vac­ci­na­tion rates. We thought Mr. Gwen would have an eas­i­er time get­ting a shot as he is immuno­com­pro­mised, but even that has­n’t helped. So we are patient­ly bid­ing our time until we can get vac­ci­nat­ed, the weath­er warms up and we can see the fam­i­lies in per­son (even if we all are masked and 6+ ft from each oth­er). Zoom calls are nice, but meet­ing face to face even better.

3. Pay off my car loan

I have 9,000 some odd US dollery-doos left on this thing and I just want it gone. It’s an admin­is­tra­tive annoy­ance and I’m deter­mined this loan won’t see the light of 2022. No clue how I’m going to do this yet, but I might actu­al­ly be inspired to spin up a side hus­tle or two to knock it out.

4. Start exercising

One year locked in my apart­ment has shown me quite clear­ly the val­ue of stay­ing in shape. I am the worst at mak­ing myself work out solo, and need the incen­tive of group work­outs to actu­al­ly do the thing. I love to swim and was just get­ting start­ed this time last year at get­ting back into it, so that is my top pri­or­i­ty. I’ll also be look­ing to get back on the bike(s) when the weath­er stops being so damn cold.

Sur­vivin’ and Thriv­in’ and goal set­ting, here we come! May 2021 be a bet­ter year BY FAR than 2020.

So mote it be.

¹ Some­one asked me why I refer to my boyfriend as my part­ner and hon­est­ly, it sounds more inclu­sive and more adult than “boyfriend”. We’re over 30, and that term does­n’t give me the same feel­ing of seri­ous­ness and weight like ‘part­ner’ does.

Thanks for read­ing! What are your goals for 2021? Sound off in the com­ments below!