Happy Monday, friends! I’m back at work after more than a week off so I anticipate being on the struggle bus this week. It’s always hard to get back in the swing of things!
I spent a lot of time last week thinking about my goals for 2021. Did I even want to set goals? What were the appropriate ones to set, knowing most of this year would be similar to 2020? In the end, of course I came up with a handful of goals for this year! Duh—what do you take me for? I came up with 15 goals, comprising reading goals, money goals, home goals, and fun goals. Take a look!
1) Buy a new sectional, coffee table, and area rug. Now that I have a bigger living room, the couch that fit so perfectly in my smaller living room looks miniscule. One of my goals for 2021 is to spruce up my living room with a new sectional, coffee table, and rug.
2) Work out three times a week. For the past two years, I’ve set a goal of working out 150 times, which amounts to three workouts a week. But it’s easy to get off track and fall so far behind that I have to start working out every day to catch up. That just doesn’t work for me. This year, I’m just making a goal of three workouts a week. I know I won’t hit that goal every week, but I’m going to try my best!
3) Start the process of becoming vegetarian by cutting out red meat and pork and having one meatless day once a week. I want to work toward a vegetarian lifestyle for ethical reasons, but eating meat is such a big part of my diet that it’s going to be quite a change for me. Baby steps are key here, so after doing some research, I decided that these two changes would get me on the right path without it feeling like I was missing out on all my faves.
4) Become a regular water drinker. It’s embarrassing how little water I drink on a daily basis. I’ve always wanted to be someone who reaches for water over any other beverage, but it’s just not a habit for me. YET. 2021 is the year that changes.
5) Experiment with an elimination diet. Interestingly enough, my food sensitivity results came back with no foods in the moderate or high reactivity zones! But I guess that makes sense because even if I have digestive issues from time to time, it’s never enough to impact my life. But there were a good number of foods that came back with mild reactivity: eggs, yogurt, cow’s milk, chicken, several types of fish (lobster, tuna, crab), and some versions of gluten (mainly rye and wheat). Based on these results, I’d like to do an elimination diet for dairy and gluten to see how it makes me feel.
6) Set a budget and be diligent about it. Budgets have always felt restricting for me and hard to follow. That’s why I spent a full year documenting every little thing I bought. Now I have a greater understanding of how I spend my money so I can accurately set budgeting categories and start following a system that doesn’t feel restrictive and allows me to meet my money goals.
7) Save 20% of my income. This is a lofty goal for me, but it’s one I want to strive for. In the first half of 2020, I did a great job with my savings but stopped contributing regularly to my savings accounts after my move. By the end of the year, I’d like to have at least $3,000 in my emergency savings and at least $2,000 saved toward a down payment on a car.
8) Complete the 2021 Unread Shelf Project. I loved completing this reading challenge in 2020, so it was an easy decision to do it again in 2021. It’s such a low-stakes reading challenge!
9) Read The Count of Monte Cristo. I love tackling one huge classic every year (last year was Anna Karenina). This year, I’m setting my sights on The Count of Monte Cristo. I’ll use the Serial Reader app to read this novel, which sends me short daily snippets to read that take 10-15 minutes. This app worked wonderfully for reading Anna Karenina, and I imagine the same will hold true for this novel.
10) Finish the year with 35% of my books being by or about BIPOC or the LGBT community. In 2020, 29% of my books were by or about BIPOC or the LGBT community, which is a number I’m pleased with (considering this category only comprised 18% of my reading in 2019!). But I’d like to continually work on reading more diversely, so hopefully this goal will get me there.
11) Reach out to one friend a week. I want to be better at reaching out and staying in touch with friends. I hate that I need to make this a goal, but I also accept that this is who I am as a person. The only way I’m going to get better at something is to practice it regularly!
12) Start dating again. Will 2021 be the year I get into a good dating groove? Time will tell! I’m not putting any sort of measurable goal here—I just want to be open to the possibilities and more active on dating apps.
13) Work through one Bible study this year. I’ve slowly started the process of coming back to my faith after a few years of total deconstruction (which it needed). I still have a ton of questions and I’m not yet ready to return to a church setting, but I think I would like to seek out a Bible study and complete it. I just need to find the right one.
14) Get my third tattoo. I want to get a tattoo to commemorate my grandma and while I wasn’t comfortable visiting a tattoo shop in 2020, I think this is something I can complete this year.
15) Stop drinking alcohol. I’ve developed an alcohol intolerance in the past few years, meaning that my body doesn’t know how to process the enzymes in alcohol. It’s extremely unpleasant, as it can cause me to break out in hives, feel incredibly dizzy and fatigued after just a few sips, and get flushed and overheated easily. But since this doesn’t happen EVERY time I drink—and I haven’t figured out what settings/types of alcohol make it happen—I haven’t ever fully quit drinking. Because I like it! I mean, when it doesn’t make me break out in hives. And I like the identity of being A Person Who Drinks, which is something to discuss in therapy, I guess. But it feels like playing Russian Roulette with my body. Every time I have a reaction, I tell myself I have got to stop pretending I can be A Person Who Drinks. It’s time.
Do you have any goals for 2021?