Here we go, 2019

January is the living worst. (Yep. I say this every year but I stand by this). It's been a long winter in Kansas. Our first snow was in October. What? And it snowed again this weekend. (I think this is number 5 or the season). In recent years, despite my loathing of January, I don't mind winters in Kansas as much as I used to due to the fact that it is so blasting hot in the summer month. I need this time of deep couch hibernation.

However, since winter here has been off and on for an extra month this season, I feel fed up. I am tired of it being so dark. Since I am limited to what exercising I can do (due to my hip), I get really frustrated when it's too dark and cold to go on a walk. (Yes, I realize I still could but it's super hard to be motivated to go walk around in the chilly dark).  I am not swimming (again because when it's cold and dark I am not motivated to go jump into cold water, even if it's in a heated building). Despite my semi-complex relationship with exercise, it is helpful when I have some sort of consistent routine. It helps manage my anxiety and obviously helps me be a healthier person in a very basic sense.

All this to say, Hello, I am a major grump this month. But I've given enough space to that already.

This blog post is actually about living in a new year and how I sometimes have goals. I actually did okay with my 2018 goals as well as my life goals.

Let's recap.

On-going goal #1: Become a yogi master. 

Yoga has seriously changed my life. Not only is helpful with anxiety and mental loads, but it physically made a big impact on my body. In the past two years, whenever I've been at the doctor's office and they've measured me, I have been consistently measured at 5 feet, 7 inches. This is a whole inch taller than I have been recorded being in my post-growing years. I did not turn 30 and grow a whole inch. What I think happened was what I was somewhere in between 5'6" and 5'7". Then I started doing yoga and it significantly improved my posture so much that now I am consistently 5'7", my true height. That's nuts, right? I've been consistently practicing yoga for over two years now (since I joined the YMCA 2 years ago in January) and while change does not happen very quickly, I can consistently see myself (slowly) becoming more flexible, stronger, and balanced (both physically and mentally). Yoga is also the only thing that consistently helps with my hip pain. So yoga continues to be my life goal.

On-going goal #2: Eat more vegetables 

So last year, I said I was going to try and come to terms with cauliflower. I definitely did not do that. It freaks me out. Overall, I would say my intake of veggies has improved or at least I think it has somewhat. At the very least, I definitely ate way more spinach this year. My sister taught me a way to steam broccoli that I don't mind (especially if I can eat it with other stuff). So there's that. This year maybe I'll try brussel spouts. I saw a recipe recently for shaved brussel spouts, and I didn't think it looked that bad. So maybe I will try that out this year

On-going goal #3: Make room for creativity (that isn't always baking). 

Geesh, I love baking so much. (I am catching up on The Great British Baking Show and loving every single second of it). This past year I wanted to try, however, to not always depend on butter for my creative outlet. I think I did this. I bought some watercolors and have had fun playing around with that. I also got a new color pencil sketch book that I am slowly filling. I painted something on a canvas and actually finished it. And finally, I took a watercolor letting class in Wichita this fall. That was really fun. I am hoping that this year I will be brave enough to sign up for a painting class in Wichita. (Although it is kind of expensive and with moving and wedding stuff, I haven't made it a priority yet. But we'll see what happens).

This year, I am adding another on-going goal

On-going goal #4: Look for creative ways to reduce the amount of single-use plastic I use

This is such a hard one. You can not buy anything (it seems) without there being some sort of sneaky layer of plastic attached to it somehow. I want to be more mindful of this. In 2018, the greenest change I made had to do with the type of plastic I use for my garage bags for my kitchen trash bags and my cat litter waste. They are both still plastic things but the "poop bags" I bought are actually biodegradable compost bags (that the airbnb I stayed at in Seattle this past spring used). They make great poop bags. For my kitchen trash, I found these bags on amazon that are made out of sugar cane, so they are also suppose to biodegrade. So that's an easy place to start. This year, I would really like to get away from buying ziplock bags on a regular basis. This means that I am going to need to invest in some freezer-friendly storage containers since most of my ziplock bags are used for freezing the various breads and sweet treats I make. That should be an easy thing to do.

In terms of specific goals for 2018, I think I actually did everything I set out to do, more or less. My goals were to communicate more with my BFF Jille (who lives in Qatar). I might not have sent her a snapchat once a week, but it was definitely more than I had before.

I also made a lot of sourdough bread and crushed my 2018 reading goal. 

Here are some specific goals for 2019

1. Read 40 books

2. Go through my pantry and use up some of the random, forgotten grains, noodles and baking ingredients. I have to move this spring (again). So I want to get a move on this goal, since it will mean more creative cooking and less random packets of lentils to move with me. 

3. Try and plan a wedding with Levent without completely loosing it to anxiety. So far, I have not been doing great on this goal. But with mindfulness (and some therapy), we can totally do this.

That's basically it. I like to try and give myself attainable goals, which all of these are (as long as I remember about them...)


Okay, 2019. Here we go.