I wasn't initially going to share these on my site, but I got inspired to do so after seeing so many other do the same. Setting New Year’s resolutions is not a practice that I’ve partaken in in quite a few years after a string of failed NYRs, but the end of 2018 brought a lot of excitement for me in my career and hobbies. Further, I’ve recently developed a practice of journaling at the beginning of the week to reflect on the goals for the upcoming week (minigoals!), so I’ve been spending more time reflecting on longer term objectives. Because of this, I found myself particularly excited about goal setting for 2019. Though I did set financial and professional goals for myself, I do not intend to share them here.
The following two goals were set on my birthday last year, with financial commitments to them coming soon after. Since I realized that I’ll be turning 30 in 2019, I chose a couple goals that I’d had in my head throughout my twenties and decided to finally go for them this year.
Given my background, I’ve always considered myself fairly environmentally conscious. However, 2018 was the year that it finally hit me just how big of a problem has been created. Trying to be zero waste took over my life for a couple months (and probably annoyed the heck out of my boyfriend and those around me) until I realized that re-framing it as “low waste” made the practice more sustainable for me in the long run. This year, I want to continue my efforts to be personally low waste and environmentally-minded by doing the following:
Since picking watercolor back up in early 2017, I’ve been wavering in and out of the habit. This year, I set a big goal for myself, probably the one on this list that scares me the most: display my art in a cafe. This has been something I’ve thought about for years, but like the 70.3, I’ve decided that this is the year that I’ll actually do it. I’d also like to continue learning more artistic skills, so I’m committing to taking one Skillshare class a month (most of these are pretty easily digestible and only last ~2 hrs) and would particularly like to take up calligraphy.
2018 was the year that I got back into reading with a fervor. In previous years, I doubt that I finished more than 4 books and my reading rate felt extremely slow. My reading list grew and grew at the end of last year, so I decided to actually finish compiling a 2019 reading list, which is almost evenly split between fiction and nonfiction. Further, I’ve been trying to get in the habit of reading more academic papers in order to broaden my scope of knowledge in machine learning and environmental health. I’m trying to commit to reading at least one paper a week to get through the backlog of papers I’ve amassed.
As a result of reading more in 2018, the writing bug has also hit me. I’ve become acutely aware of my lack of writing since leaving a job that required it and would like to change that.
After traveling to Lebanon last year, I decided to pick up learning French again (I took a year of French in high school) because 1) had I known French I would have had an easier time communicating with locals, 2) I wanted to exercise the language learning muscles again and 3) I already speak a Latin language fluently so it seemed like an easier endeavor. I got to a 70 day streak on Duolingo and then quit. This year, I’d like to beat that streak and as a stretch goal, hit 365 days. Though if I really want to commit to learning French this year, I need to find some more learning resources. In addition, I’d like to read one book in Spanish.