2024 resolutions

I cannot begin to explain how much I LOVE planning and goal setting. For me, the perfect New Year's Eve involves a group of friends sitting at a table together with our bullet journals and mood boards just vibin while we plan out the next year (a little debauchery and dancing on tables later in the night is always welcome as well ofc).

That's basically impossible to accomplish now with 2 small kids, but I did the next best thing – opened the notes app on my phone at night in bed and brainstormed where I want to be a year from now. This is what I came up with.

In a year, I want to:

• Feel much more comfortable and confident public speaking
• Feel more energized and athletic
• Have had several date nights with my husband
• Like I'm not constantly pouring from an empty cup
• And confident in where we want to lay roots.

To accomplish this, there will have to be some overlap in the actions I take to work toward each goal. Here are the measurable actions I'm taking that I believe will get me closer to that outcome.

More comfortable and confident public speaking

Growing up, I was always the kid that people asked "why do you never talk" 🙃 I was painfully shy. Never spoke in class and always preferred working alone. Public speaking was quite literally my worst nightmare.

As I've gotten older and frankly stopped caring, it's gotten easier. But I still get nervous in some situations. I'd like to be better. Much better. Like Obama level better. I have a long way to go haha.

Actions I'm taking:

• Give 1 talk
• Practice storytelling and presentation skills by recording YouTube videos
• Explore thinking frameworks to be better at ad hoc presentations and discussions

Energized and athletic

I set fitness related goals pretty much every year. I typically don't have any trouble achieving them because I really enjoy working out. However, since having kids, it's become much more difficult. Not because I don't want to do it, but because it's often impossible to find the time.

I think exercising in 2024 will be a bit easier though. We recently moved and I now have a basement gym! I'm already finding it much easier to sneak workouts in (usually by bringing one or both kids into the basement with me 😄)!

Here are my fitness and health goals:

• Bench – 135 lbs
• Squat – 200 lbs
• Deadlift – 245 lbs
• Run five 5ks
• 38 inch box jump
• Hit 75% of recommended micronutrient targets on Cronometer 4x per week (before taking any supplements)

I'm keeping my lifting targets pretty reasonable. Now that I'm done having babies, I plan on hitting the weights hard for the first time in 4 years. However, lifting alone won't accomplish my goal of improved athleticism. I need to improve my cardio and explosiveness, so I'm adding in some cardio and box jump targets.

Last time I had a box jump goal it forced myself to incorporate a lot more explosive exercises, so that's really the motivation behind the seemingly random box jump goal. I think training explosiveness plus some cardio will make me "feel" much more athletic.

To challenge myself a bit more and really work toward the "energized" portion of the goal, I'm trying something I've never done before: micronutrient targets. I'm actually super excited for this one. I've been tracking macros on and off for over 10 years, but never really looked much at my micronutrient targets.

I've been doing this for a month now and have already noticed a huge difference in how I feel. Could be placebo, but my skin does seem to be "glowing" a lot more and my hair seems shinier. It turns out though, hitting 75% is hard. I have to really think about what I'm eating and make sure I'm getting a variety of fruits, vegetables, legumes, and nuts at every meal.

One interesting thing I've noticed so far is that I'm eating more calories (~2300 average), but losing weight at a faster rate than when I was doing lower calories last month (1900-2000). I've always been a die hard CICO (calories in calories out) believer, so this has been interesting to experience. I don't want to lose any more weight, so I'm likely going to have to increase my calories a bit this year.

Date nights with my husband

Y'all. Having kids is hard. I'm pretty certain my husband and I haven't even broken 10 dates since having our first child 3 years ago. And I don't mean anything extravagant – literally just a quick lunch together (without kids) would qualify. We can barely manage that. I want that to change this year.

The goal is 1 date a month. We now have 2 small kids, so it's even more difficult to get time away. So, what makes this year different from the last three years? We don't live in a town with a population of 3000 anymore! Previously, in the rare cases we could find a sitter we trust, we'd still have to drive to the next town over to actually do anything, which was a 1.5 hour commute.

Now that we live in a bigger city, we have way more options for childcare and it won't take very long to get to wherever we want to go for a date. So I'm pretty bullish on us hitting this 1 a month goal this year. January was a super chaotic month, but we were still able to get a lunch date in. So far so good!

Keeping my cup full

Okay this one is kind of sad lol. And probably hard to understand unless you also have kids with no "village". I essentially have zero time for myself. Here's what the typical weekday looks like:

• 6:30AM – Wake up and get ready
• 6:45AM-8:00AM – Get kids up and out the door
• 8:00AM-4:00PM – Work. Really. I work 8 hours straight with no fucking around lol.
• 4:00PM-5:00PM – Drive to pick up the kids and drive them back home.
• 5:00PM-5:30PM – Get kids fed, situated, etc.
• 5:30PM-6:30PM – If ALL goes right, I head down to the basement gym with the kids. Tablet time!
• 6:30PM-8:00PM – The exact time varies, but my husband gets home during this period. Make dinner, feed dogs and kids, dishes, prep toddler's lunch, etc. 7 month old goes to bed around 8PM.
• 8:00PM-9:00PM – Get toddler ready for bed. Get myself ready for bed.
• 9:30PM – Both kids are asleep by now. At this point I'm BEAT and am also in bed. I'll try to read a bit or doomscroll Reddit. Oftentimes I have my laptop in bed to finish up some work I didn't finish during the day. Usually asleep by 10:30PM.
• Throughout the night – Various wakings to nurse 7 month old back to sleep.

The weekend is typically full of family outings, errands, laundry, cleaning, meal prep, a bit of work as needed, etc.

Doesn't leave much time for myself, much less time for hobbies. However, my resolution requires 2 hours per week to non-gym hobbies. So, how the hell am I going to accomplish this? I'm not sure!

I'm writing this blog post right now while my 7 month old is sleeping in my arms. And its taken me 3 weeks to finish it 🙃 So clearly not off to a great start on this goal! January has been rough though with both kids getting sick and a lot of family visiting from out of town. I'm hoping February is a bit easier.

I think a lot of this "me" time will just have to involve grabbing literally any free moments I find in the week and using them on myself.

Regardless, I need a way to quantify this. I've picked out some of the things I really love doing and set goals around them. Hitting these goals requires that I have time alone to myself to work on them, thus forcing me to find that time throughout the week. Here are the goals:

• 2 blog posts a month
• Finish one piece of art every other month
• Read 12 books

If I'm able to accomplish these, I've likely had 2+ hours to myself per week.

Lay some roots

The final goal is to figure out where we want to live. I spent 30+ years in Las Vegas, the worst city on Earth. Shortly after having our first kid 3 years ago, we moved to Williams, AZ, which is essentially the most opposite of Las Vegas as it gets. We lived in a small 1 bedroom home on 10 acres. The town has a population of around 3500. I loved it.

Unfortunately, living in such a rural area with kids is extremely difficult. There are no daycares, no kids classes, only one grocery store, no Postmates/Uber/etc. It was truly like living life on hardmode.

Last month, we moved 45 minutes away to Flagstaff! I absolutely love it here so far. We're in a rental right now, but I'd like to buy in the next year or so. To do that, we have to figure out if Flagstaff is actually where we want to lay roots.

In a perfect world, I'd live closer to my family. Right now, they're scattered around SLC, Seattle, and Las Vegas. Everybody agrees we want to live near each other, but nobody can agree on where exactly.

Regardless, my husband and I have some non-negotiables for where we want to live and what we want out of our forever home:

• lots of greenery – ideally near a forest so we can mushroom hunt
• good schools
• within 10 minutes of a town with population of at least 50,000, but under 500k
• doesn't get hotter than 100 degrees, and even mid 90s are rare
• "outdoorsy" culture
• ability to purchase home on at least half an acre
• Bortle scale 3
• Bonus: waterfront, 2+ acres, long growing season

Last November, we took a trip back east to explore New England. We absolutely loved Kennebunkport, Maine, but not sure if we want to move that far away (assuming family doesn't want to move there). Seattle area is also top of our list. And, of course, Flagstaff checks nearly all of our boxes besides waterfront and long growing season.

Even if we don't buy a house this year (literally worst time ever to buy a house 🥲), I'd love to at least settle on where we want to live.

Anyway, that's it! I will check back in at the end of every month to log what progress I've made.