Yay I finished a couple days early with my 2015 resolutions wrap up.
The promises you make to yourself are the most important to keep, but make room to roll with the punches.
In the beginning of 2015, I made a quick set of 10 things I felt would be important for me throughout the year. Here they are again for reference.
- Eat Healthier – Check. This year I’ve changed my diet significantly. From transitioning from bacon fat and noodles all the things, to focusing primarily on Paleo type meals. Figuring out the right balance was hard. Initially I’d have headaches and would wake up in the middle of the night from low blood sugar. Now I think I’ve got it set whereby I will have a paleo based lunch and then have a light carb for dinner. Through this and consistent exercise I’ve lost 15 pounds since January and 3% body fat. Win.
- Find the next IT – Check-ish. My IT has always been work. I adore work. A female coworker recently said to me “I need more women friends like you, who are career minded. In my current group of friends, a lot of them are only concerned with their Tai Tai (Chinese for being a wifey) status and knocking out babies.” Tai Tai status and knocking out the babies scares me, because work has been one of the things that has consistently made me feel useful, great about myself and it’s not something I ever want to give up. I don’t want my identity to become just Tai Tai or Mom someday, I want to keep kicking ass and being awesome. Maybe priorities change as we get older, but I don’t want work and the pursuit of knowledge to ever go away.
In the middle of the year, I thought I found IT, but then I lost IT. Having a loss every year for the past couple years has been harrowing. Sitting on a beach in Costa Rica however I realized maybe my IT should be something else, I just don’t know what that is yet. Maybe it’s seeing more of the world and getting to connect with more people… could that be my new IT? - Spend More Time With Friends – Check. Talking to a lot of my friends about this bullet point, many of them find spending time with people exhausting so they just spend time with a small subset of people. For me, I only think interactions are exhausting when you’re talking through each other and parties aren’t listening or connecting with each other. Emily said something kind of profound to me this year, “You like learning things from other people.” Combine this with Danielle’s comment to me that “You have a lot of hobbies, you like a lot of things.” and this is why I need to spend time with people. My friends are human RSS feeds for things that I have a high probability for having an interest in and want to learn. Being around good people gives you energy and inspiration that you can’t get in a vacuum. Doing my 100 Days of People and Texts helped reconnect me with a lot of friends I haven’t seen in a while and was a good chance to catch up and learn new things.
- Learn how to swim – Check. Took lessons and while I’m not a strong swimmer by far yet, one can now call what I do swimming.
- Blog more – Check. Blogging helps me look back and give gratitude towards the things that have happened over the year, it also helps me remember the details later on when I’ve forgotten things. I’ve definitely written more this year, but I haven’t necessarily published more, if that makes any sense at all.
- Take more photos – Check. Taking vacations helped me with this. I love photography because it takes me away from rapid fire thoughts that swirl in my mind. When I’m trying to get the perfect shot, it’s just me and my lens and how to convey how I’m feeling in that precise moment, even without a caption the photo should speak my words. Cliché I know, but true. It’s the epitome of mindfulness.
- Buy less, un-clutter – Check-ish. This past weekend I went through and started making a serious donation pile. Slowly but surely I will Kondo-fy my life.
- Love more – Check. I’ve done well at this, and I want to get better. I honestly tell at least one person everyday why I think they are great, and it’s something I don’t consciously think about doing. It like I have this extremely positive and cheery version of turrets that just kind of comes out when someone is being awesome. I fall in love with new things and people every single day, it’s not wrong and I’m going to continue this.
- Me time – Meh. I need a lot of personal time. I’m still not the best at this but I will get better. Friendship is a series of concentric circles, I need to shave off some of the outer rings that drain me and aren’t letting me do me.
- Take more risks – In everything – Major check. I went all in this year, on a lot of things I find very scary. I did a lot of trust falls, some worked and some didn’t, but I took a lot of chances which is funny because I’m actually completely OCD and am vehemently opposed to being out of control.
Zip Lining
Waterfall Rappeling
Kayaking with Dinoflagellates
Skydiving at Lake Taupo Flew a Plane!
Fish from the Macs
Brown Rice Bowl in AZ
Healthy eats. Homemade Sous Vide Chawanmushi
Werk. I’m not sucking anything in BWAHAHA
Pretty places inspire change.
Pondering what’s important.
New It?
Gangsta Nano
Reliable Sammy!
Sexy Monica
Slow, but now a swim fan.
Beautiful bit chilly day in Joshua Tree National Park. Hiking trails, scaling rocks. It was really nice trail running the short loops because of the sand, and well… to keep warm. #joshuatree #twentyninepalms #desert #hiking #onmywalk #california
Didn’t think that #Adele could sound better than she already does on digital and then on a whim we walked into @getvnyl. She sounds amazing. Now want a record player. #abbotkinney #vinyl #recordplayer #music #la #losangeles #hello #vacation #travel #travelblogger #wanderlust
Merry Christmas. It’s time to fill the glasses, because really it’s 5pm somewhere. #merrychristmas #drinkup #fancy #holidays #christmas #christmasday
#fbf That time we went for a stroll in the SF library. #lookup #sanfrancisco #memories #architecture #pretty #window #skylight #sf #library #nostalgia #home #california
Wayne Enterprises. Er… I mean the Chicago Board of Trade. Ironically for Batman Begins Gotham architecturally was represented by #Chicago. #batmanbegins #wayneenterprises #geekingout #comics #comic
Graffiti quest check. #chicago
Totally cribbing the idea for this shot from @wynk, I mean as inspired, by . #chicago #lookup
Morning O’Hare, it’s good to be back.
Design Studio
At the end of this year I’m proud of what I’ve done. I’ve kept my word to myself, but also left room to be flexible to update goals when things changed my plan of record. Next year I’m ready to continue the same with a new set of goals. Here’s hoping I can do as well as I did this year.
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