Did I fail? (kind of. lol.)

2024 is over! I love setting goals and aggressively chasing them, so of course I love the reflect and reset aspect of New Years.

Let's look back at 2024 resolutions and how I did.

2024 resolutions

• ✅ Feel much more comfortable and confident public speaking. Actions to get there:
  • ❌ Give 1 talk
  • ✅ Practice storytelling and presentation skills by recording YouTube videos
  • ❌ Explore thinking frameworks to be better at ad hoc presentations and discussions
• ➖ Feel more energized and athletic. Actions to get there:
  • ❌ 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)
• ➖ Have had several date nights with my husband.
• ✅ Like I'm not constantly pouring from an empty cup. Actions to get there:
  • ➖ 2 blog posts a month
  • ❌ Finish one piece of art every other month
  • ✅ Read 12 books
• ✅ And confident in where we want to lay roots.

The results

Uhh - a lot of misses. But some wins!

Date nights

I had some fantastic date nights with my husband that wouldn't have happened if we didn't intentionally set time aside for it. We were aiming for at least one a month, and did well the first half of the year, but started falling off after that since our weekend babysitter moved. We did have one just last week though and will continue to prioritize time together in 2025!

Much more confident public speaking

Alright so I didn't actually take the actions to achieve this one, but I do feel much more confident now anyway. I didn't get a talk, but I did somewhat "MC" an event I hosted. I didn't prepare at all because I was too busy organizing the actual event 😅 but it turned out fine! If I faced the same situation in the past – standing with a microphone in front of 40 or so people – I legit would have crumbled. But I didn't! So, that's some nice progress!

I also routinely have to speak on Zoom at company all hands and such and it doesn't bother me at all. Again, that would have been my literal nightmare scenario just 5 years ago.

More energized and athletic

Alright so I didn't hit ANY of my strength goals. No joke I completely forgot I had even set strength goals lol. So that was definitely a fail. I have been regularly working out though and am happy with my progress.

One big unanticipated setback I had was that we moved to a rental in Flagstaff that had a big basement where I could set up my gym. I was very excited about it having my gym IN the house rather than having to go outside to my shipping container gym that we had at the other house. It always made it a bit tricky to workout when I was watching the kids. So I set ambitious fitness goals thinking I'd be able to workout WAY more often.

For the first couple months of the year, I did make some great progress. I benched 115 fairly easily and squatted around 155 for reps.

Unfortunately, we found out there was a pretty severe radon issue in the basement of that rental. The landlord failed to fix it so for the entire summer I just had to avoid going into the basement where my gym was.

We moved into a different house in September, but this rental doesn't have room for my gym. So I joined a normie gym down the street! I've actually been enjoying going to a gym with extra equipment, so that's been nice. Recently I've been getting more into running to improve my cardiovascular health as well.

So, mostly a fail here. But 2025 will be the year of gainz I swear!

Like I'm not constantly pouring from an empty cup

I was really stressed throughout most of 2023, which I think is what prompted this goal. I didn't mark this goal off as fully completed because I didn't actually do all of the actions I wanted to get there.

But I do feel way less stressed. So I did technically achieve the goal in a roundabout way! But to be honest it wasn't anything that I necessarily did to achieve it. The truth is, the stress triggers kind of just disappeared. Work got a lot less stressful as my number of direct reports drastically shrank. My very colicky needy infant became a slightly less needy toddler. We moved to a much larger town with more resources like childcare, food delivery, and other services to make life easier.

I guess the takeaway here is that I was really living life on hard mode in 2023, but I've learned to identify when I'm feeling overwhelmed and learn how to fix it. In 2023 I was pregnant, living in a rural town with unreliable childcare and no family nearby, and working a demanding job with way too much to do and not enough hours in the day. I thought intentionally taking time for myself would fix it. But it turns out, the fix was just to find other ways to directly address the stressors.

Confident in where we want to lay roots

Okay so I gave this one a ✅ but we haven't actually decided where we want to buy a home. However, we do have a plan for gaining enough clarity around it to be able to make a decision by end of next year!

In January of 2024, we moved from a small house on 10 acres in Williams to a huge house in a suburban Flagstaff neighborhood. At first it was nice living in a little cul-de-sac with kids nearby for our toddler to play with. But honestly the excitement around that wore off pretty quickly 😅 We learned that we definitely need some acreage wherever we settle down.

We've also made plans to move to the Seattle area end of May next year! We'll rent for at least a few months out there – making sure we test out the long gloomy winter – and then decide if that's where we want to stay.

Miscellaneous accomplishments

One of the pitfalls of making goals when your life moves fast is sometimes things unexpectedly change in ways you could have never anticipated, making your old goals outdated and ushering in new ones. One big unexpected thing that happened to me in 2024 is I got promoted to VP of Marketing! Career advancement was NOT part of the plan, so that was a huge unexpected win.

And with that promotion, I spent much more time digging into that role and making sure I did a good job. The time I spent on those activities took away from some other things I had planned on doing, which is fine. It's important to stay flexible and adapt when change comes.

Going into 2025, I'm still going to set some ambitious goals that work for me right now. But I fully anticipate some 2025 plot twists that will change what I actually end up focusing on!