goal setting

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Revisiting My Loose Aspirations for 2021

While I continue to insist that I am NOT a resolutions type of person, I do like to look at the year ahead and consider some of the things I might want to accomplish before the planet makes its next turn around the sun. And I try very hard not to approach these intentions in black and white terms of success or failure. Setting goals and revisiting your progress toward those goals is a good way to calibrate your priorities, is all.

Last year, I made some extra gentle aspirations for 2021, and I think this year I will try to be even MORE gentle. Low expectations is the path to happiness, baby.

Here are the results of my 2021 aspirations. Having completed 10 of my 19 goals, I feel pretty good about what I ended up prioritizing. Especially because four were “reach” aspirations that I would have LIKED to have gotten to, but wasn’t really expecting to from the get-go.

Personal

Aspiration: Read 40 books. 

Result: Complete! This year, I read 74 books, which is so many more than I’ve ever read in a year before. I credit “joining” Bookstagram with inspiring me to read. I also really increased the number of audiobooks I listened to, which helped. It did mean that I listened to almost none of the Office Ladies podcast that I enjoy so much, but I guess you win some, you lose some.

Aspiration: Exercise five days a week. 

Result: Complete! I logged 280 workouts in 2021, which works out (unintentional pun) to a little more than 5 days per week. In reality, I logged the most workouts March through July, with my activity level tapering off beginning in August, until it was nearly non-existent by December. But I will get back into it.

Aspiration: Buy new towels. 

Result: Complete! I did this! I replaced my 10-year-old towels and my husband’s with… identical towels. Did I manage to purge my home of the old towels? No, I did not. But we take baby steps and the first step was the BUYING of the towels, and I did that.

Aspiration: Stop looking at my phone while in bed. 

Result: Incomplete. I did not succeed at this. Lately, I find myself unable to read anything but my phone, so I do look at it way more than I should. For a large portion of the year, though, I was choosing books instead. So I CAN survive with less of my phone, and I plan to make reducing my reliance on the iDistraction a goal for 2022.

Aspiration: Stop drinking anything after nine p.m. 

Result: Incomplete. I totally forgot about this. But I also had fewer issues with waking up multiple times per night to pee? Perhaps there is something to be said for making embarrassing admissions on one’s blog.

Aspiration: Make focaccia. 

Result: Complete? I did make focaccia but it was a dismal failure.

Reach Aspiration: Cut my own hair. 

Result: WHY WAS THIS A GOAL? Was I suffering from some sort of pandemic-induced delusion about my abilities??? I did not do this. I did not cut anyone’s hair, which is for the best. I waited until I could feel safe-ish going to the salon and I got my hair cut by a professional twice and it was GLORIOUS each time.

Family

Aspiration: Buy bikes for the adults and go on bike rides as a family. 

Result: Complete! We did this! All three of us have bikes and helmets! We have a bike rack for the car! And we took a very small number of family bike rides. We will do MORE this year!

Aspiration: Get out of the house, as a family, every single weekend to Do Something. 

Result: Incomplete. This did not happen. Even with my tiny family of three, it turns out I have very limited powers to motivate them to get outside when they want to play video games.

Reach Aspiration: Have a family game night once a month. 

Result: Incomplete. We did NOT do this, not that I even remembered it was something I aspired to. We had family game night… three times? But we bought one of those murder mystery games in December and plan to complete it together, so I’m hoping that we can have more game nights this year.

Reach Aspiration: Figure out how to see my parents this summer. 

Result: Complete! Carla and I flew out to see my parents during what turned out to be a lull in the pandemic, and it was wonderful. I am so glad we did it.

Work/Finance

Aspiration: Revise my manuscript and get it to beta readers. 

Result: COMPLETE!!!!! I sent my manuscript to beta readers October 1, and have been receiving such wonderful, thoughtful, useful feedback. It makes me all teary to think of how these kind, wonderful people are taking specific time out of their lives to prioritize MY writing and to offer ideas and suggestions for making it better. Beta readers are angels, truly. This month, I am going to be revising based on some of the feedback I’ve already received, and hope to incorporate everyone’s thoughts and have a revised draft by March 1.

Aspiration: Look for a writing class or writing group. 

Result: Complete! I reached out to an author friend who serendipitously had an opening in a writing feedback group, and I joined it, and it has been lovely! We kind of paused over the holidays, but I’m hoping we’ll get back into it again soon. It is so wonderful to be part of a group of smart, talented writers who can give you to-the-minute comments on my work!

Aspiration: Put money into a personal 401(k). 

Result: Complete! I am still kicking myself for not doing this earlier. It was very easy.

Reach Aspiration: Get a first draft of manuscript #2. 

Result: Incomplete, but a good start. I am 50,000 words into Manuscript #2. I am going to finish it in 2022.

Home/Property

Aspiration: Touch up the outside of the house. 

Result: Incomplete. We did not do this, but it will be a goal in 2022. Our trim is starting to look Very Shabby, to the point that I am certain our neighbors are whispering about us.

Aspiration: Deal with the tree issues in our backyard. 

Result: Incomplete. I… don’t know what I meant by this goal. I mean, our trees still look kind of awful? But I have no idea what to do to fix them? I think I emailed the landscapers, asking their advice, and then maybe never responded to them? Whoops.

Aspiration: Get a fake Christmas tree. 

Result: Complete! We got an artificial Christmas tree and put it up this year and it was lovely and I don’t mind it as much as I anticipated I would. Plus, my husband now has to pretend for the rest of our days that he enjoys putting it together because it was his idea.

Reach Aspiration: Hire someone to repaint the interior of the house. 

Result: Incomplete. This did not happen. But I am really distressed by the state of our ceilings, so I am going to put this back on the list for 2022. 

If you care to share, was there something in 2021 that you were really excited to have accomplished? Or, conversely, some mild aspiration you spectacularly failed to achieve/remember?

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Extra Gentle Aspirations for 2021

Despite… everything… I want to continue with my now two-year-old tradition of coming up with a few aspirations for the year ahead.  I do. But these goals are VERY optimistic. And I am going to be especially gentle on myself, I think. 

Personal

Aspiration: Read 40 books. I read 46 books in 2020 – a personal record. Given that sometimes I can devour a book in a day and other times I read nothing at all for weeks on end, it’s hard to say whether I will ever meet this goal. But it’s fun to track.

Aspiration: Exercise five days a week. This is the same goal from last year and seems worthwhile to try for again.

Aspiration: Buy new towels. My bath towels are twelve years old. I use them daily and they refuse to be soft anymore and NO MATTER WHAT I do they have a very faint whiff of mildew.  It seems easy enough to just… buy new towels.  But no. It is not that straightforward. My husband is the first hurdle; they are not his so they don’t affect him, plus I do have other even older towels I could use (but they are blue and our bathroom color scheme is GREY). And then also I feel so wasteful and frivolous, because they still DRY. And I do have the blue backup towels. And some people don’t even have ANY towels. But they are uncomfortable and faintly smelly and I want new ones, so I’m putting it on the list.

Aspiration: Stop looking at my phone while in bed. There is absolutely ZERO benefit in scrolling through my news feed when I am trying to fall asleep. Reading a book is SO MUCH BETTER for my mental health. 

Aspiration: Stop drinking anything after nine p.m. This is kind of dumb, but I tend to drink a mug of tea late in the evening… and then I am up every hour to pee all night long and it is NOT restful. So perhaps I can just… not do that? 

Aspiration: Make focaccia. Listen, we have to have some FUN aspirations, right? I have long wanted to make focaccia. Every time I see a focaccia recipe, I ogle it. I have even headed into several weeks of the past ten months fully intending to make focaccia. But it has never come to pass. This is the year, Internet. The year of focaccia!

Reach Aspiration: Cut my own hair. This sounds bonkers, I know. I can’t cut a straight line to save my life; how can I possibly cut my own hair? But it is coming up on a year since I last had a haircut, and my hair is long enough that it could (probably) survive even a botched little trim; I could simply go get a professional haircut if I make a mess of it. I have watched extensive YouTube videos about how to do it, and it seems fairly straightforward. Perhaps I can persuade my husband to do it for me? He cuts his own hair and is very meticulous and steady-handed. Can I make “persuade my husband to cut my hair” a goal for the year ahead?

Family

Aspiration: Buy bikes for the adults and go on bike rides as a family. If the bikes my husband and I have been looking at since literally last April ever come back in stock, we can make this happen.

Aspiration: Get out of the house, as a family, every single weekend to Do Something. This obviously will depend heavily on the status of the pandemic, but even a walk around the neighborhood counts. I just need to inspire us to LEAVE THE HOUSE.

Reach Aspiration: Have a family game night once a month. We LOVE playing games together, but so rarely do during “normal” life. I think it would be really lovely to try to dedicate a day to doing it purposefully. Carla is at a great age for games now, which opens up a bunch of new options. This is a reach because a) my family might not buy in and b) it’s likely I will forget about this.

Reach Aspiration: Figure out how to see my parents this summer. Should the pandemic continue apace, we will obviously continue to stay home. But if it slackens a little, I would really, really like to visit my parents. They have a guest house where Carla and I could stay and quarantine, if that became necessary, so the real hurdle is getting there. Flying makes me Very Nervous. But perhaps we could get a private berth on a train? Then rent a car when we arrived in their state? A train ride would be A Big Fun Adventure for me and Carla to undertake together (my husband would not be able to join us because he wouldn’t be able to leave work for enough time to complete a quarantine), but when last I looked at train tickets, the price was too high to be worth it. Perhaps if we stayed with my parents long enough, it would be worthwhile?

Work/Finance

Aspiration: Revise my manuscript and get it to beta readers. This has to happen. It is my number one priority. 

Aspiration: Look for a writing class or writing group. Note that this is not an aspiration to JOIN a writing class or writing group; we are being extra gentle. But I am thinking it might be useful, at this stage of the writing process, to find an online group of writers who are working on fine-tuning their manuscripts or learning how to write query letters or are workshopping chapters together… I’m not sure what I WANT, but I want to look into it. That’s it, that’s the goal. THEN I can decide whether I actually want to sign up for whatever it is I’ve found.

Aspiration: Put money into a personal 401(k). Again, there is no excuse for not doing this. 

Reach Aspiration: Get a first draft of manuscript #2. This is ridiculous, when I haven’t gotten through a proper revision of the FIRST manuscript, but once I do, I want to jump right into the second novel, which already has about 40,000 words. 

Home/Property

Aspiration: Touch up the outside of the house. We need to repaint the trim.

Aspiration: Deal with the tree issues in our backyard. We have SO MANY issues. The first is that the large oak in the backyard has some sort of fungus. I want to figure out how to address it. The second is that the arborvitae that line three sides of our yard are in rough shape. Some have been devastated by heavy snow and harsh winds, others have been ravaged by hungry deer. It looks terrible and I need to figure out how to take care of it. I think it is going to cost a lot of money, yikes.

Aspiration: Get a fake Christmas tree. This is not really my aspiration; it’s my husband’s. But he gets so grouchy about buying a real tree and setting it up and putting the lights on it that it really harshes my happy Christmas buzz. So I have come around to thinking a pre-lit artificial tree would be a blessing. We have looked for trees in the past, but haven’t ever gone through with the purchase because the one we want is either too expensive or sold out. They haven’t gotten LESS expensive, but I think we’ve mainly gotten over the initial price resistance. Now all we need to do is find the one we want when it is available.

Reach Aspiration: Hire someone to repaint the interior of the house. My parents apparently had someone repaint the house every five years, which boggles my mind. But now it has been ten years since we’ve lived here, and I can see signs that the house needs repainting. The biggest problem areas are the ceilings, believe it or not: they are not popcorn ceilings, but they have a texture, and in the kitchen and bathrooms especially, paint is peeling off of some of the textured areas. 

We shall see how many of these aspirations come to fruition, Internet! I am hopeful and game… but we shall see!

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Goals Report: Revisiting My Aspirations for 2020

Frankly, Internet, I revisited my 2020 goals primarily for a laugh. I mean, whomst among us hasn’t, at some point in the past year, thrown up their hands about ever having a goal again? Plus, even in the best of years, I am not much of a goal-setter or goal-sticker-to-er.

Turns out that some of my aspirations from last year ARE quite hilarious. But somehow I managed to achieve a few of them??? Perhaps I am getting better at setting achievable goals. 

As always, my overarching goal – “I am not going to put a huge amount of pressure on accomplishing anything outside of keeping myself and my child alive. Even my husband is ON HIS OWN, for keeping-alive purposes.” – was the most important. And I did manage to accomplish that one, at least.

Let’s take a look at the other aspirations I had when we sailed into 2020, not knowing what it had in store for us.

Personal

  • Aspiration: Read 30 books. Last year, I read 23 books. Reading just… falls by the wayside. And that’s ridiculous because I LOVE to read, and reading helps inspire and inform my own writing. So I want to really prioritize reading this year.
  • Result: Complete! I read 46 books in 2020! Woo!
  • Aspiration: Buy new sport bras. Like last year, I am borrowing this undergarment goal from Stephany. Thanks, Stephany! I have probably around a dozen sports bras. But they are all terrible. Half of them are from high school and college, which, you may recall, took place TWO DECADES AGO OMG. So these sports bras have put in their time and deserve to retire. The reason I keep them around is because they are so comfy when the sports bras I have purchased in the past few years are so horribly UNcomfy. They are too tight or pinch my armpits and at least one of them has created a skin tag on my back which I DO NOT LIKE. One of them has a decorative trim that has come loose and another has a piece of padding that continually folds over on itself and both of these things make me feel unkempt – not that I am at my most kempt while exercising, I understand this – and in general I just hate all of them. What has prevented me from just getting rid of these awful torture slings, you ask? Cheapness, I answer. Sports bras are EXPENSIVE. But I am committing to, if not replacing ALL of them, at least buying two or three new ones that I actually like. I wear a sports bra probably five days a week, so this is a reasonable thing on which to spend money, SELF, ARE YOU LISTENING TO THIS LOGICAL ARGUMENT?
  • Result: Semi-complete. I bought ONE (1) new sports bra and I also bought myself a handful of bralettes because this was The Year of No Bras. 
  • Aspiration: Exercise five days a week. My husband and I got each other a recumbent bike for Christmas, so now we have that and a treadmill AND I still have a package of barre classes I purchased when they went on sale at the end of last year. Plus I have an abundance of exercise videos and the whole entire internet at my disposal. There is no reason for me to not exercise daily. It lulls the hamsters in my brain and elevates my mood and gives me more energy.
  • Result: I completed 217 workouts in 2020, which, if my math is correct which is questionable at best, works out to exercising about four days every week. So. Not complete, but not a total failure. The thing is, I am very good about exercising when I can do it on My Preferred Schedule, which is at about eight o’clock in the morning. This is not a schedule that is workable when Carla is doing remote learning, so I do not exercise during the week when she is learning remotely. Should I simply get up earlier and exercise then? Yes. But that does not work for me, either. Hopefully she will be back in school, in person, next week for a very long time and I can get back to exercising the way I like to.
  • Aspiration: Limit my phone usage to one hour per day. Hahahahahahahaha. This is probably the most wild and ambitious goal of all, but I am going to try it. I have set the timers on my phone which is the first step. The second step is to stop hitting “ignore time limit” every time I reach it.
  • Result: HAHAHAHAHA. I did the exact opposite of this. My screen time skyrocketed during the pandemic. Just copious, endless amounts of time on my phone. There were multiple days when I had to plug my phone in before the day was over, because I had run down the battery just through doomscrolling. 
  • Aspiration: Find a good balance of social/solitary time. It seems like I have this bad habit of swinging wildly between over-scheduling myself with social events and then reacting to all the over-stimulation by hiding away and doing absolutely nothing and then reacting to feeling isolated by over-scheduling myself with social events. Repeat. I am an introvert. I know this. I should limit my social activities to once – maybe twice – a week, which should help still the pendulum.
  • Result: HAHAHAHAHA. My social activities were VERY LIMITED this year.
  • Aspiration: Take better care of my skin. I have found a combination of facial oil and moisturizing lotion that I like. I have acquired some moisturizing spray. And now I just need to make sure I wash my face EVERY NIGHT.
  • Result: Semi-complete. It’s much easier to have quick, easy nighttime cleaning ritual when you hardly ever wear makeup anymore (pandemic). And yet I still sometimes managed to fail at this goal?
  • Aspiration: Practice the piano. I am stealing this one from Nicole, and, admittedly, it is a wild and ambitious goal that I am unlikely to accomplish. Who will even know, anyway, as I do not plan to track my playing on a spreadsheet or even mark it down on a sheet of paper I could leave handily on the piano. So why aspire to do something I have so little faith in doing, you ask? Well, we have a beautiful hand-me-down baby grand piano and I have thirteen years of piano lessons under my belt and I have a bunch of sheet music of songs I’d like to learn/re-learn. Plus, playing the piano is something that would definitely enhance my life, so I am going to give it the old half-hearted try. I will attempt to play the piano twice a week this year. No specific time requirement – just sit down at the piano and noodle around for a while.
  •  Result: Incomplete. I definitely noodled around on the piano a lot more than I have in years past. But I did not do it twice a week.

Family

  • Aspiration: Find a new regular babysitter. I don’t really know how to go about doing this, but our current list of sitters has kind of fizzled out. By that I mean the three young women who regularly sit for Carla are more likely to a) be busy or b) not respond at all when I ask if they are available… and I feel like three in a row of those things really means I should stop bother them.
  • Result: NOPE. 
  • Aspiration: Go on more date nights. My husband and I really enjoy each other’s company. We need to spend more time alone. And I would like to try to see some movies together, like, in an actual theater. Sounds very adventuresome.
  • Result: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
  • Aspiration: Undertake more weekend adventures. This is a carryover from last year. It was fun to go on little weekend trips, which I hope we can do again. And for the remaining weekends… Well, maybe we can try to dedicate one weekend day to loafing at home – which we all prefer to do – and the other day to adventuring. I know my husband is on board with this, so maybe together we can make it happen.
  • Result: Semi-complete? Let’s count this as a semi-win, because – despite the global pandemic – we managed to do a bunch more weekends of hiking and walking together. Plus, we did a long weekend driving trip to a secluded AirBnB.
  • Aspiration: Plan a trip to visit my niece. We just need to make this happen.
  • Result: Incomplete. Pandemic.
  • Aspiration: Read/skim one parenting book a quarter. That seems like a VERY achievable goal, right? I have a ton of parenting books on my to-read list, but I have SUCH a hard time getting through them. So I need to make it a clearer goal, to read them and then share what I’ve learned with my husband. And then, I suppose, implement the useful ideas.
  • Result: Incomplete. Did I finish even ONE this year? I don’t think so.
  • Aspiration: Emphasize/encourage more adventurous eating. Carla eats enough of a variety of foods that I feel like she’s getting adequate nutrition. For instance, when I make her dinner, I can be sure there is something from each category – protein, carb, dairy, vegetable, and fruit – on her plate that she will actually eat. But when it comes down to it, the list of foods she eats is very, very short. Which means that her meals look very similar, from day to day and week to week. (Right now, the only vegetables she will eat are sugar snap peas, tomatoes, and frozen green beans. That’s IT.) Lately, I have been applying a Pick Your Battles philosophy to this aspect of parenting — there are other battles more worthy of picking — but I really do want to help encourage her to eat beyond that list. I’m not sure how to do it, but I think one of the aforementioned parenting books could help.
  •  Result: Semi-complete. We try. Carla will now eat couscous, (plain) lettuce, and (raw) mushrooms, which I count as a win. And she will (usually) at least try something new. I will take what I can get.

Work/Finance

  • Aspiration: Revise my manuscript. Now that I have all (most) of the words, I need to go through and put everything in a readable order and fill out the places where I just wrote in filler words and basically transform it from a rough draft into something I can send to beta readers.
  • Result: Incomplete. I did not write/revise a single word between March and September. I just didn’t. I got serious about it later in the year, but am still only halfway done with revisions.
  • Aspiration: Invest every single month. I am in charge of funding several investments we have. It’s a very simple process, done completely online. And yet I get freaked out by the wild movements of the market and the prospect of losing all our money and sometimes just… don’t invest.
  • Result: Incomplete. When the pandemic hit and the market got volatile, I chickened out. I know you aren’t supposed to time the market, but man. I am not good at putting money into a sinkhole. Even though the market turned around later, as it is usually wont to do. I think a goal this year is to get serious about finding a financial advisor to do this stuff for me.
  • Aspiration: Put money into a personal 401(k). Since I am earning money, even if it’s a tiny bit, I can put it into a retirement account. My dad helped me set up an individual 401(k) and I need to put what I earned last year into it before April.
  •  Result: Incomplete. I am really disappointed in myself about this. But I did have some income this past year, before the pandemic hit. So I will add that to my i401(k).

House Projects

  • Aspiration: GALLERY WALL. My husband is on board. He has given me full control over the gallery wall, and just needs me to present him with my vision so that we can make it happen. THIS WILL HAPPEN. 
  • Result: This has not happened. Despite technically being on board with this project, my husband has ZERO interest in making it happen. And he is the only one of us who can create straight lines, so I kind of NEED him. 
  • Aspiration: Fix the freaking toilet. I have purchased and installed FIVE flappers in our toilet. Perhaps it is a much more finicky and complicated repair than it seems based on viewing YouTube videos of the process, and I am merely missing some crucial element. Perhaps there is something else wrong with the toilet that I am unable to diagnose. In any case, I have reached the outer limit of my flapper-installation/toilet-repair knowledge AND PATIENCE – if you have never had to adjust and readjust and readjust and readjust AGAIN the length of a flapper chain while crouched uncomfortably over your toilet tank you have lived a good life indeed – and need to call in a professional. For my sanity.
  • Result: Complete! Well, sort of, if you count the fact that I gave up and bought a whole new toilet. 
  • Aspiration: Sharpen our knives. A local knife sharpener sets up camp at the grocery store at various times throughout the year. I want to load up all our knives (how???) and have him sharpen them, because they are woefully dull and therefore dangerous.
  • Result: Complete! Except that I did NOT take our knives to the sharpener guy (pandemic). My husband sharpened them himself!
  • Aspiration: Purge old items. We have a bunch of stuff to get rid of. For one thing, I think it’s time to relieve our basement of Carla’s play kitchen. I can’t remember the last time she’s used it, and she’s had it since 2014, so it’s fulfilled its duties to our household. Plus, there are many other things that we just do not need in our basement – two giant duffels that my husband has owned since I’ve known him and has never once used in all those 19 years; the battered remains of our old footstool, which my husband cannot bear to throw out despite it being so gross we had to replace it, the pots and pans we replaced but are still holding onto for some reason, TWO coffee makers that we definitely do not need, tons of shoes I do not wear or Carla has outgrown, I could go on.  I need to decide if I am going to host another garage sale next summer (host? Is that the verb I am looking for? Do I mean “throw”? But that makes it sound like a party which it most certainly is NOT.) or if I am going to find somewhere to donate all the assorted items I need to get rid of. That requires calling places, which is unappealing. But a garage sale is a TON of work, which is also unappealing. MOST unappealing is playing hostess to a growing junk heap in my basement, though.
  •  Result: Semi-complete? I got rid of some shoes and some crafting supplies. And I thinned out some of Carla’s toys. But we still have big bags marked for Donation in the basement. Obviously we did NOT have a garage sale this past summer, and it’s SO much work that I am not sure I ever want to do another one. I just need to gear myself up to take the bags to Goodwill and allow THEM to do with our stuff what they will. 
  • Aspiration: Have a realtor come evaluate our house. My husband and I are really, seriously thinking about moving out of this house. But we will not do so for about three years. If there is work we absolutely need to do to make our house more buyer-friendly, I want to do it now, so we can enjoy it before we move out.
  • Result: Incomplete. My husband wasn’t up for this, and then the pandemic happened and I wasn’t interested in pushing him to agree to something that would involve having a stranger in our house.
  • Aspiration: Touch up the outside of the house. We have a stain on the siding above our front porch. The paint is starting to peel from the trim around the garage door. Our front door has seen better days. The front porch could use some fresh paint. I need to look into what it would take to make this happen.
  • Result: Semi-complete. We had a company come and power wash the exterior, which helped a ton. But we definitely need to take care of the trim. This year!

THREE completed aspirations this year, people. Out of 22 total. That is SAD. Good thing I don’t set Real Goals, right, or I might feel like an abject failure!

If anything, this year was certainly a good example of that old saying about life happening while we make other plans. Life certainly HAPPENED, that’s for sure, and my plans fell mostly by the wayside. 

Who knows what 2021 will bring.