It’s time for another check-in on the goals I set for myself at the beginning of this year. It’s crazy that we’re already in the last quarter of 2022! Where did this year go?! In this recap, I’m going to be brutally honest about the goals I think I can achieve by the end of the year and the ones I know won’t get done. Let’s get into it!
Three Big Goals
1) Reduce my sugar intake. Ugh, no. This is the problem with making such an arbitrary goal. I should have made it more measurable, such as “stop drinking soda completely” or “only have dessert two nights a week.” But I know I haven’t been doing what I need to do for this goal.
2) Save $4,000 for a down payment. No progress made. At this point, I’m planning on continuing to rent rather than buying a home.
3) Reorganize my blogging categories/tags. I have been working hard at this goal all year long! While I will not finish the recategorization process by the end of the year, I will have made lots of progress.
20 Fun Goals
1) Buy a new mattress. I have $1,100 saved for a new mattress so I am so close to making this goal happen! But I doubt it will happen by the end of this year. I need to really focus on building back up my savings in Q4 (which will be hard with a vacation + the holidays in the midst of everything!) But I’m proud of myself for getting really close to this goal in 2022.
2) Complete the 2022 Unread Shelf Project. In progress. So far, I’ve read:
- January (the book you’ve been putting off reading): The English Wife by Lauren Willig ★★★☆☆
- February (a title you couldn’t resist): Wordslut by Amanda Montell ★★★☆☆
- March (a memoir or biography): Why Not Me? by Mindy Kaling ★★★★☆
- April (a book by an indie publisher or small press): When She Woke by Hillary Jordan ★★★★★
- May (the shortest unread book on your shelf): The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin ★★★★☆
- June (a book about a journey): Outlawed by Anna North ★★★☆☆
- July (a book set in a country/culture different than yours): A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles (DNF)
- August (a book chosen by your friends or family): Pretty Little Things by Sona Charaipotra and Dhonielle Clayton (DNF)
- September (a book that represents the reader you want to be): The Girl with the Louding Voice by Abi Dare ★★★☆☆
3) Read all of the books added to my Goodreads TBR in 2017. (16/21) I am right on track with this goal! I need read about 2 books a month to mark it complete. Easy peasy!
Columbine by Dave Cullen★★★★★I’ll Give You the Sun by Jandy NelsonDNFAll the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven★★★★★Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca SolnitDNFAccidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People by Nadia Bolz-Weber★★★☆☆- Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
The Purity Myth: How America’s Obsession with Virginity Is Killing Young Women by Jessica Valenti★★★★☆Words in Deep Blue by Cath Crowley★★★★☆Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader by Anne FadimanDNFThe Odds of Loving Grover Cleveland by Rebekah Crane★★★★☆I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou★★★☆☆Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town by Jon KrakauerDNF- A Mother’s Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy by Sue Klebold
- Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult
- Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward
How to Be a Person in the World: Ask Polly’s Guide Through the Paradoxes of Modern Life by Heather HavrileskyDNFDoes Jesus Really Love Me?: A Gay Christian’s Pilgrimage in Search of God in America by Jeff Chu★★★☆☆Flight of Dreams by Ariel Lawhon★★★★☆Close Enough to Touch by Colleen Oakley★★★★☆- The Nix by Nathan Hill
The Names They Gave Us by Emery LordDNF
4) Do 100 Peloton workouts. (66/100) Welp, I am very behind with this goal. I need to log 11-12 workouts a month to mark it complete. Which is completely doable! I’m not going to pressure myself to get it done (because sometimes I’d rather go for a long walk than do a Peloton workout, especially now that the weather is nicer in the mornings), but I’m going to try my best and see how close I can get.
5) Restart my novel. No progress made. I don’t know if this will ever happen. It makes me sad because I always thought I’d be a novelist, but I don’t know if I have what it takes to make it happen. (And that’s not me putting myself down! I would have to reshuffle my priorities to make it happen, and I don’t really think I want to do that.)
6) Go back to therapy. Complete! I wish I could go to therapy every week, but alas, I can only afford it once a month.
7) Watch 12 standup specials. (6/12) I’m a bit behind on this goal! I just need to watch two standup specials a month, though! I can do that.
- Taylor Tomlinson, Quarter-Life Crisis ★★★★★ (I cried with laughter from this one. A must-watch!)
- Nate Bargatze, The Greatest Average American ★★★☆☆ (There were some chuckles, but overall, kinda blah.)
- Mike Birbiglia, Thank God for Jokes ★★★★☆ (A bit more heartfelt than funny, but still a good special.)
- Taylor Tomlinson, Look at You ★★★★★ (Is Taylor my favorite stand-up comedian? I think so.)
- Nicole Byer, BBW ★★★☆☆ (Very, very raunchy!)
- Iliza Schlesinger, Elder Millenial ★★★★☆ (Soooo funny and her thoughts about dating really spoke to me.)
8) Watch 6 TV series. (4/6) I haven’t made any progress on this goal because I’ve fallen into a hole of rewatching old seasons of Masterchef. Maybe I’ll try to knock out a few quick Netflix series by the end of the year, but maybe not.
- Only Murders in the Building – I watched season 1 earlier this year and I’m excited to watch season 2 soon!
- Ted Lasso – I watched seasons 1 and 2 in May/June.
- Abbott Elementary – I just finished season 1, and it was excellent.
- Good Girls – I finished season 1 in July and I’m looking forward to continuing with the series soon.
9) Launch two seasons of our podcast. We launched season 1 in August and season 2 launches tomorrow! Wahooooo!
10) Get my third tattoo. No progress made. I know exactly what I want to get and I just need to make the goddamn tattoo appointment!
11) Walk one 5k a month, in a different place each time. (3/12) Yup, this will not get done. Cute idea, 2021 Stephany!
- January 17, 2022 – Seminole Park – 2.82 miles with my mom and the dogs in 1 hour, 12 minutes
- February 20, 2022 – Walsingham Park – 3.1 miles solo in 1 hour, 16 minutes
- May 14, 2022 – Crescent Lake Park – 3.1 miles solo in 1 hour, 14 minutes
12) Redo my bathroom. I should have this done in October! Yay!
13) Get microdermabrasion or laser treatment—whatever is the better option for dealing with my acne scars. No progress made. I need to schedule an appointment with a dermatologist and I’m a little scared about how much everything would cost.
14) Learn how to French braid. No progress made. This will probably be a 2023 goal.
15) Go on one date a month. Lolz, no. Dating is dumb.
16) Put an extra $1,000 toward my car loan. No. I tried putting extra money toward it and that made my auto payment setup freak out. I need to figure out how to put money toward my auto loan without screwing up that setup, but I haven’t felt motivated to figure it out.
17) Make 12 new recipes. (8/12) I missed one month of making a new recipe, so I’ll need to double up sometime in Q4!
- January: Air fryer chicken breasts from Skinnytaste (not a keeper)
- February: Baked mac and cheese from Mom on Timeout (delicious but time-consuming; I need to choose different cheeses + use less topping next time)
- March: Crockpot chicken and gravy from Plain Chicken (tasted great on the first night, but wasn’t appealing as leftovers)
- April: One-pot cheesburger pasta from Budget Bytes (tasted like homemade hamburger helper. Delicious!)
- May: Slow cooker pesto mozzarella chicken pasta from The Magical Slow Cooker. (Lauren posted about this recipe on her blog and I knew I had to give it a try. It was so, so good.)
- June: BBQ cheddar baked chicken from Budget Bytes (it was fine, but not outstanding enough to add to my regular routine)
- July: Fiesta Casserole via TikTok (super delicious, makes great leftovers!)
- August: n/a
- September: Air fryer grilled cheese sandwiches (messed up the batch on my first go, but the second try was better)
18) Make a recipe book. No progress made, and doubtful I will get to this in Q4. I might roll over this goal to 2023, but I’m not sure yet.
19) Cut gluten out of my diet for one month. No progress made. I still want to experiment with cutting gluten out of my diet for a month because I’m interested in how it would make me feel, but I just haven’t planned for it and I can’t see myself doing so in Q4.
20) Buy a coffee table and a floor lamp. Complete! I bought a cute coffee table in January and a floor lamp in March.
I’m curious if your recent experience with having to evacuate has changed your mind about home ownership. I would say in most cases it makes sense to buy a home, because that’s the only way to ensure rent control, but if you live in a place that’s so vulnerable to climate change, I personally wouldn’t do it (and that goes for all of the South plus mountainous areas in the West, due to wildfires). That would be an interesting post to read.
Asked and answered! 🙂 https://stephanywrites.com/why-i-dont-want-to-own-a-home/
There are a lot of factors that go into not wanting to be a homeowner, mostly it’s so much more expensive to own a home than it is to rent an apartment once you take factors like insurance premiums, property taxes, repairs, upgrades, etc., into account. All stuff I don’t have to worry about as a renter! My rent usually never increases more than $100 a month; we’re living in drastic times right now.
Oh oh oh!!! I have a suggestion for #4! Peloton has that “just work out” feature now, so if you’re going for a walk, you just set it and then it is a blue dot on your calendar!
I’m excited to listen to Season 2! I really enjoy reading about your goals and your progress. You’ve done really well this year so far!
That’s a great option! I do want to try to stick with actual Peloton workouts, though, because it would feel a bit like cheating in my own head to use that feature. Does it make sense? No, but my brain is a wild place, haha.
We are watching the 2nd season of Only Murders in the Building and I’m really liking it! I think more than season 1 actually! I love Steve Martin, though. We’ll need to get a subscription to apple tv when the next season of Ted Lasso comes out.
I think it’s good to be reasonable about what you can/can’t accomplish! And the end of the year ends up being so busy with the holidays, your birthday, your cruise, etc! I’m starting to think about what I could ask of myself in 2023, and I think it will be again focused around connections. But that won’t be too challenging or I don’t think it will!
That’s great to hear that you are loving season 2 of Only Murders in the Building more than season 1. I am so excited to finally dive into it! I’ve heard so many rave reviews.
Yes, I am very much a SMART goals girl. Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Timebound. This keeps my goals from being too vague and allows me to hone in on what particular aspect of something I want to focus on. One example is drinking water, which is a challenge for me. I started from the vague “I need to drink more water” to “drink 16 ounces of water before noon each day and 16 ounces of water after noon each day” and then I can track it and see if I make progress. Reduce sugar intake is a bit vague, but it could easily be made more specific and trackable.
Like Anya, I’m also interested in your decision to stick with renting. Do you find the variability in rent (increases, relying on landlords for repairs, etc.) to be at all off-putting? I think it would be an interesting post idea, too!
Asked and answered! 🙂 https://stephanywrites.com/why-i-dont-want-to-own-a-home/
It’s very uncommon for my rent to increase as much as it did this year. Sometimes, my rent hasn’t increased at all! Other times, it’s by less than $100. So I don’t get too perturbed by that. I’ve also had pretty good luck with my maintenance team, which is probably because I don’t rent from private landlords but from leasing agencies.
Good work on making so much progress toward your goals (and for the ability to see when a rule isn’t going to happen or no longer makes sense). I’m drooling looking at the recipes you’ve tried. Pesto chicken in the slow cooker would taste amazing right now 🙂
I hope you give that pesto chicken recipe a try! I need to remake that recipe soon. It was soooo delicious and made great leftovers.
I love how you keep chipping away at your goals… and also reevaluating some of them. Honestly. it’s totally valid to throw out previously set goals, if they don’t seem to fit any longer! 🙂
Absolutely! Goals are not set in stone. 🙂
Always love seeing these updates! You are doing an awesome job on your goals – seriously. How on earth were you to know what would happen in 2022 when you set these out? Things change – priorities change (e.g., with the novel), unexpected events occur (um, hurricane?), life interferes, and sometimes we are moving in the “right direction” with something (or what we THOUGHT was the right direction) and realize… this isn’t me anymore (thinking of the dating thing).
So yep – reassess, restart, and for Pete’s sake, don’t be hard on yourself, my friend! 🙂
Oh gosh, I hope I don’t come across as harsh when I do these goal recap posts! I promise I do not take them super seriously. Like yes, there are definitely things I want to accomplish and some of these goals are very important to me… but I’m also not beating myself up for not accomplishing everything I set out to do. 🙂