2024 Goals!

We are officially one week into the new year, and today I’ll be sharing my goals! This is probably more exciting to me than any other post that I create in a year. I absolutely love making goals for myself (in fact, every week I sit down and make a  list for the week and love to check each item off). This year I decided to do something different than usual. I keep seeing people doing 24 for 2024 lists since it’s such a nice and even number and breaks down to 2 per month, so that’s what I decided to base my goals on this year. I broke them down into four different areas, and tried to make 5 regular goals for each area as well as one year-long goal. Let’s get into the goals!

 

Fitness

Run a trail race. I love to run trails and don’t get out nearly enough, so my goal this year is to make that happen. One way to force myself is by signing up for a trail race (hopefully more than one!). I already found a half marathon in May, so that will be my goal. I’m also looking for a few others so I’m excited to work on this and get out on trails more.

International triathlon. I’ve really enjoyed doing triathlons the past two years, and this year I want to step it up by moving from the sprint to international. This doubles all of the distances (1500m ish swim, 25 mile ish bike, 10k run).  The hard thing with this one will be timing, so I hope it’ll work out! Otherwise, my goal will be to beat my times from last year in all the races I do this year!

Bike the entire Neuse River trail. Last year I made it a goal to bike the American Tobacco Trail, and now I’m going east of Raleigh to do the Neuse River Trail. This is about 28 miles from Wake Forest to Clayton. It should definitely be doable so I’m looking forward to doing this.

Month of yoga. This should be an easy goal to cross off because I always do Yoga with Adriene’s 30 days of yoga challenge in January! I’m already in it and will make sure to cross this one off in January.

Day hike. I want to get out on more hikes this year and do longer ones, so I’m going to try to do a day-long hike (which I’ll consider something over 10 miles).

ANNUAL GOAL: Try a new class each month. I want to get out more and try new classes and studios, so I’ll work on getting out for one new (to me) class every month.

Personal

Learn a new language. I will talk more about this goal in the upcoming months (there's a particular reason why I'm doing this but I don't want to share anything until things are more certain!) but I want to focus on learning a new language this year. I already know Spanish decently, but I'm going to try to learn Italian! To make this more of a SMART goal, I'm going to do a Duolingo lesson every day and listen to Coffee Break Italian at least once a week. Later in the year I want to try to find actual language exchanges so I can practice.

Monitize hobbies. I absolutely love to paint and crochet, and I would really like to be able to monitize it a bit. Right now I do a lot of free gifts for friends and family which I enjoy, but I want to see if other people would actually buy my stuff. I have a few ideas for making this happen and I'm both nervous and excited to give it a go.

Catch up on scrapbooks. I'm so bad about keeping up with scrapbooks (I do them for every international trip that we go on). I'm one trip behind right now, so I want to be all caught up by the end of the year, which would include any trips I go on this year!

Volunteer. I used to volunteer back in Pittsburgh and loved it, so I want to find something local to do regularly. I found one opportunity but it's a one-day event, so I want to find something I can do on a monthly (or more!) basis.

Meal plan/prep weekly. I really enjoy meal planning and prepping and it makes the week so much easier, but I've gotten really lazy about it lately! I want to get back on track and at least plan some meals for the week every week.

ANNUAL GOAL: Phone free day monthly. I'm really bad about being on my phone too much, so I want to start doing one day with no phone and also cut back on social media on the weekends.

Family

Make a budget. Going along with my meal planning goal, I want to be better about my finances this year! When I don't make a plan for the store I end up over-spending and have to go back multiple times. So, I'm going to track my spending in January and then try to create a realistic but tougher budget to hit each month. I also want to cut back on other frivolous spending as well and save more money this year.

Go on a backpacking trip. I enjoyed backpacking last year, so I want to go again this year! 

Declutter challenge. I hate clutter, so I'll be finding a fun challenge to get me to go through each room and get rid of the junk...

Deep clean entire house. ... which will also help me to really deep clean the entire house!

Organize garage. Our garage got completely in disarray with our bathroom project, so I want to get it organized again and utilize the space we have a lot better. 

ANNUAL GOAL: Date night every month. I'm really excited about this one! I saw a couple on TikTok that wrote down unique and fun date night ideas and pulls one once a week, so I decided to give that a go. Dan and I have been together for so long that we don't really put a lot of effort into making fun date nights so I thought this would be a really great challenge to do more things together.

Fun

Beach day trip. Easy goal- I live close to the beach and want to do a day trip! A lot of my friends do this a lot and for some reason I just haven't yet. 

Spa day. We all deserve some pampering..right?!

Outdoor concert. There are a lot of really cool outdoor venues in the Triangle, and I haven't been to any! I want to change that this year and find a fun show to go to.

Read best fiction of 2023. I decided to change up my reading goal this year, and instead of reading all of the winners of Goodreads Best Books of the year, I want to read the top 10 fiction books. 

Attend a local festival. There are so many fun festivals going on around me, particularly in the summer, so I want to go to more of them this year. My goal is only one, but I would love to go to as many as possible.

ANNUAL GOAL: Monthly cooking challenge. I did this goal a few years ago and really enjoyed it, so I thought I would bring it back this year. Each month, I'll find a cookbook at the library for a different type of cuisine and make a meal from it. I like to try different types of food and also visit new grocery stores to find specialized ingredients, so this should be a fun (and delicious) one.

What are some of your goals this year?