January Goal Update

January was such a busy month- not only did I pack my schedule full of social activities (3 book club meetings; hosted a "board" party, a progressive dinner party with my neighbors, dry January non-alcoholic beer taste test, a movie night, and a game night; brewery yoga; Bunco holiday party) but I also had 3 releases for work that made me work nights and weekends, as well as a new project that made me travel in to Pittsburgh for a week! To say it was hectic is an understatement, and February is going to be even more busy!

One of the highlights of my month that I talked about above was a neighborhood progressive dinner party. This was an idea a friend posted about and I shared with my neighbors a year ago- we finally made it happen! The way we made it work was that each course of the dinner was hosted at a different person's house. We started with cocktail hour at Wanda's house, then moved to my house for appetizers, went next door to AL's for the main course, then Kelly's for dessert and after-dinner drinks. It was SO much fun, and a great way to spend lots of quality time with the people we see daily!

Now, let's get to a round up of how my 2024 goals are going. I'll just be sharing goals that were completed that month (or made progress for longer-term goals). Here's a quick visual of what my goals look like after January:

Let's get into it!

Fitness

Month of yoga. I finished Yoga with Adriene's 30 days of yoga, and (spoiler alert) I'm still going! It's been a nice daily activity and makes me feel amazing.

ANNUAL GOAL: Try a new class each month. In January I actually tried two new classes- Interval Training and rock climbing! It was really fun trying these and I liked both of them. I've been rock climbing a lot, and even got my own gear! The gym I go to also has yoga and other classes so I've been trying those out as well.

Personal

Learn a new language. I have been working on this! I came up with a plan to actually make this a "measurable" goal- for the first 6 months of the year I want to do a daily duolingo lesson, and once a week listen to Coffee Break Italian. After June, I'm hoping to feel comfortable enough to do some kind of language exchange and practice a bit more with a real person!

Catch up on scrapbooks. I finished my Belgium scrapbook, so I still have quite a few to go but made a little progress.

Volunteer. I found a really cool opportunity to volunteer and started this month! There's a library in Charlotte, NC that is creating a "living archive" of interviews with residents talking about their experience with Covid and how it affected them. My job is to listen to it and make corrections to the AI generated transcription. It's been so interesting to hear the stories of the diverse group of people that are interviewed, and I'm really enjoying it. There's going to be a big event for the exhibit in June, so I'm excited to see what everything looks like when it's complete.

Meal plan/prep weekly. I have been working on being better about this- I've made a meal plan every week and stuck to it which helps a lot, but haven't done as much meal prep. This month is full of a ton of travel so this might be an off month from this goal which is fine!

ANNUAL GOAL: Phone free day monthly. I didn't do a full phone-free day, but did have a few days with no social media. That counts, right?

Family

Deep clean entire house. This month I deep cleaned my bathroom! One room down, many to go.

ANNUAL GOAL: Date night every month. I wrote down 12 different date night ideas, and for January we pulled movie night! For this one, we went to Cary Theatre, which is a smaller theatre that mostly does indie or older movies. We saw Lost in Translation, and it was so fun! Afterwards we took a stroll around the new Downtown Cary park, got some coffee, and had a great day.

Fun

Read best fiction of 2023. So far I've read 3 of the top 10 books on the best fiction list from Goodreads - Yellowface and The Five Star Weekend were both read last year, and this month I read Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano. I liked the book but didn't love it.

ANNUAL GOAL: Monthly cooking challenge. This month I borrowed Chetna's 30 minute Indian Cookbook and tried out the beany stew, chili and cheddar naan, cucumber raita, and spinach kofta with creamy almond-oinion curry.