This is 2020

I’m Gwen, and this is 2020.

(this would prob­a­bly work bet­ter if my name was actu­al­ly Bar­bara, but I had to give it a shot!)

Wel­come to my post on all the goals for 2020! I’ve got big plans for the year and I’m excit­ed to put them into action! .…. and since it’s now March, I’ve includ­ed an update on how I’m doing on all these goals. (also, this is not a post on any­thing to do with Covid-19 — this was writ­ten before shit real­ly hit the fan in the world)

1. Settle into St. Louis

My one and only city for the year. As I’ve pre­vi­ous­ly men­tioned, I grew up in the area, so I’m by no means a stranger to St. Louis. How­ev­er, vis­it­ing once or twice a year and liv­ing here day in and day out are com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent real­i­ties. I’ve been in St. Louis just shy of 2 months so far and made a decent amount of progress at set­tling in, but I feel there’s more to do. I live in South City, so I’m dying for the weath­er to warm up so I can prop­er­ly explore the area around my new home.

I’ve found a few dif­fer­ent groups to help me set­tle in. There’s a Young Pro­fes­sion­als group that does things around the city that are a fun group to be around. There is also a Wom­en’s 30 and Nerdy meet­up group I want to start attend­ing. They have some fun things planned for the weeks ahead! Lat­er in the spring, I’ll be join­ing a soft­ball team so that will help me get out of the house and meet new peo­ple as well.

Final­ly, I some­how man­aged to con­vince a guy to date me (haha just kid­ding, I’m awe­some — who would­n’t want to date me!?) so a lot of my St Louis explo­ration has been in the con­text of fun dates. We’ve been to the local soda foun­tain for ice cream, Cen­tral Library for an amaz­ing date of book and archi­tec­ture chat, attempt­ed the board game bar, and hit up the arcade bar. I’ve also been to the ice skat­ing rink in For­est Park and a few brew­eries with real-life friends.

(Oh, and the local per­son­al finance groups will be a sol­id social out­let as well! Can’t for­get them!)

2. Start Cooking

I was real­ly into learn­ing to cook for myself when I start­ed liv­ing on my own. I had space, time, and the dri­ve to eat well and save mon­ey. Then I moved around a bunch, had less than ide­al kitchens (or lived with oth­er peo­ple and used their kitchens), and pared down my kitchen sup­plies. I’ve been eat­ing basic foods that require min­i­mal prep for the last year or so and my waist is start­ing to show it. Too many mac n cheese, frozen piz­za, and sand­wich dinners.

So, to get back into cook­ing for myself like an actu­al adult, I’ve tak­en the fol­low­ing steps already:

• Bought a nice knife set: The first knife set I had was nice, but not real­ly prac­ti­cal for the long run. All the knives were ser­rat­ed, so I could­n’t sharp­en them. Thus, their life was lim­it­ed. I left those behind when I moved from Min­neso­ta and made do with­out a knife set since then. It was a strug­gle to cut brus­sel sprouts, so I got a new knife set after ask­ing all my friends for rec­om­men­da­tions. I went with a nice Wüsthof set that came with a sharp­en­er. My fin­gers can attest I don’t need to sharp­en them any­time soon!
• Bought cook­ing equip­ment: I’ve been mak­ing do with some cheap sub­sti­tutes and hand me down kitchen­ware, but it was time to get seri­ous and get equip­ment that makes cook­ing eas­i­er, not hard­er. I want to reduce bar­ri­ers to cook­ing as much as pos­si­ble. So, I got 2 new bam­boo cut­ting boards, a set of prep dish­es, and 2 sets of nice dish­es to use (one for every day, and one for fan­cy meals). Next up on the list is a set of pots and pans that work for a vari­ety of needs. Right now all I have is one beat-up skil­let and one big pot. It works, but some­times isn’t optimal.
• Signed up for a CSA: I’m a new mem­ber of the local Com­mu­ni­ty Share Agri­cul­ture (CSA). I pay them $55 a week for a full share that includes a vari­ety of veg­eta­bles, fruit, meat, dairy items, and oth­er local goods. By get­ting a care­ful­ly curat­ed selec­tion of local, organ­ic, antibi­ot­ic-free, and grass-fed food each week, I’ll have the build­ing blocks of food in my kitchen to try new foods and recipes. For exam­ple, I would nev­er buy a turnip for myself, but there’s one in my kitchen so I guess I’m going to find a way to cook and eat it. Rinse and repeat!

3. Find a Therapist

One of my goals last year was to start ther­a­py ses­sions. I went to 1 ses­sion the whole year. That one ses­sion was help­ful, but one is not enough. I’m feel­ing a lot more sta­ble this year, but I still think it’s help­ful to have a neu­tral third par­ty to help be your sound­ing board and nav­i­gate through life. One of the major road­blocks last year was try­ing to go through insur­ance. The ones on my plans were full or did­n’t spe­cial­ize in the areas I need­ed. I also changed insur­ance providers 3 times as I moved around.

So, this year, I signed up for Talk­space. It’s sig­nif­i­cant­ly more expen­sive, but I’ve had a few ses­sions already and have found them to be well worth the ~$200/mo. (Now that I have lit­tle debt, a cash cush­ion, and low­er month­ly expens­es all around.) Instead of log­ging on through the insur­ance por­tal, call­ing ther­a­pists or email­ing them, and then dri­ving to their office.…. I can just log on to my com­put­er and start the video ses­sion. Remov­ing those bar­ri­ers to get start­ed REALLY helped. I don’t know how long this year I’ll keep going with it, but I’m get­ting great val­ue out of it so far.

4. Exercise

This one is going to be one of the most dif­fi­cult goals for me to take on. I am a social per­son and need account­abil­i­ty from oth­ers to work out. I pre­fer to fol­low a set list of exer­cis­es so I don’t have to put the men­tal ener­gy into fig­ur­ing out what exer­cis­es are going to work what mus­cles and how that all bal­ances out long term. Right now, the only exer­cis­ing I’m doing is run­ning my mouth and that’s not help­ing my pants fit.

I have access to a fit­ness facil­i­ty at work, but it’s fair­ly small and crowd­ed when I would want to work out. My employ­er also has a deal with the local YMCA, so I could sign up for that. The clos­est loca­tion to my house has a Mas­ter’s swim team which go a long way towards help­ing me work out.

Final­ly, when the weath­er warms up, I’ll be able to bike com­mute to and from work. I’m only about 5 miles away, so it would be a pret­ty easy ride. I’ve been told traf­fic from the Car­di­nals games will make get­ting home rough after work on game days when the sea­son starts, so I might actu­al­ly get home faster on my bike than I would driving.

5. Bullet Journal

Short­ly before 2020 began, I down­loaded and read the book The Bul­let Jour­nal Method by Ryder Car­roll (affil­i­ate link). As some­one who feels hope­less­ly dis­or­ga­nized, I thought this might be a good way to help keep track of my life. I have friends who swear by their bul­let jour­nal and post a lot of cool art from their books.

3‑month progress report:

I start­ed writ­ing this post at the begin­ning of Jan­u­ary. Then, work took up a ton of my men­tal ener­gy and I more less stopped writ­ing through Feb­ru­ary. So, now that it is March, I feel like adding on this progress report is a good way to not waste the draft­ed post.

1. I’m set­tling into St. Louis nice­ly! I’ve felt right at home from the begin­ning and have only felt more at home since. I’ve met some of my neigh­bors, made new friends through the meet­up groups, and deep­ened friend­ships with my friends who already live here. I also start­ed dat­ing some­one so it’s been real­ly great to have a built-in explo­ration part­ner when I want to go do things. I did not expect to join a D&D cam­paign, but I did and it’s been a good way to get out of the house, meet more peo­ple and have some fun.
2. I’ve got my new-to-me pot and pan set, which I have been using fair­ly reg­u­lar­ly. My moti­va­tion to cook comes and goes. Some days I make my own alfre­do sauce (which was deli­cious!) and oth­er days I make mac n cheese. I try to cook most of the food before it goes bad and have been doing a decent job at it. I made a cin­na­mon apple turnip soup which was pret­ty deli­cious, but I sus­pect made me sick. I did­n’t eat the left­overs. I also picked up a good blender so I’ve been mak­ing more smooth­ies for break­fast and eat­ing less cere­al. I’ve found it’s help­ful to have the basic ingre­di­ents on hand for most things, so I’m not tempt­ed to cop out. The only prob­lem is I’ve dis­cov­ered the mag­ic of cook­ing with heavy whip­ping cream, which is prob­a­bly not help­ing my waist­line go down.…
3. I’ve been see­ing a ther­a­pist since the end of Jan­u­ary. She is real­ly help­ful to have as a neu­tral sound­ing board for things I encounter and to encour­age me to do things I oth­er­wise would­n’t do in a time­ly man­ner (like try­ing to find my Min­neso­ta car title so I can get my car titled to Mis­souri…). I’m not entire­ly sure how long I will stay with her as I’ve real­ized I’m in a much bet­ter men­tal space than I was last year or the year before that. I talk to her vir­tu­al­ly through a web­site called Talk­space, which is fair­ly rea­son­ably priced, but still an extra ~$200 or so a month. It would be nice to have that mon­ey freed up for oth­er line items.
4. Out of all my goals, I’ve prob­a­bly done the worst at work­ing out. I’ve rid­den my bike a few times on nice days and went to 1 swim prac­tice. (That one swim prac­tice kicked my ass and I loved it!) I have the sign up sheet ready to go for the YMCA and will be sign­ing up for real short­ly. The weath­er is warm­ing up nice­ly, so bike com­mut­ing will com­mence as soon as it’s over 40 degrees at 7 am. I’m a wuss and any­thing cold­er than that makes for a mis­er­able, cranky Gwen in the morn­ing. I try to avoid inflict­ing that upon my coworkers.
5. I was pret­ty faith­ful to my bul­let jour­nal through the mid­dle of Feb­ru­ary and have stalled on using it reg­u­lar­ly. When I was using it, it real­ly did help me orga­nize my life and keep track of every­thing I have going on. Using it helped me real­ize I could­n’t go to my alma mater’s huge reunion event as my friend is get­ting mar­ried that week­end. I also took notes on events that hap­pened which has helped me remem­ber details I might oth­er­wise for­get. I will be using it more often!

So for good and for bet­ter, there are my goals for 2020 and an update on how things are going so far! If you set goals for the year, let’s hear how they’re going so far! Thanks for reading!