New Year’s Resolution Confession

New Year, New Decade, New Resolutions?

Ahhh… the 2019 holiday season is behind us.  All of the Christmas decorations are safely tucked away in their boxes until next December.  The new year was rung in with very little fanfare on New York time.  Meaning I was in bed by 10:30pm.  My son’s 25th birthday was   celebrated with fun, food and skeet shooting.  Now I have time to think about 2019 and what 2020 may have in store.

I am not a big New Year’s resolution fan, but last January I wrote down some things that I wanted to work on or achieve in the coming year.  So I went looking for my list of items so I could see how well I did.  Thirteen journals and two spiral notebooks later I finally found my list.  The thirteen journals and two spiral notebooks are a whole other blog post!  Lets just say for now they are all blank or only have a page or two written on.  Back to my New Year’s list – here are the items I wrote down.

• Focus on my blog regularly
  • Learn Yoast
  • Write more consistently
  • Share more of myself
  • Maybe reevaluate my topic
  • Finish Elite Blog Academy
• Lose 20 pounds
• Be more social / rebuild my base
  • With current friends
  • Make new friends
• Try new things, even if they scare me or make me nervous
• Break out of the suburban, Highlands Ranch mom, mold
• Take at least two trips
  • Weekend or longer
  • Conferences or vacation
• Work on Ancestry
  • Contact matches
  • Find my biological parents

So how did I do?  Well as with every new year goal some were met and some were not.

• This blog is still a priority to me.  I didn’t reach all of the goals that I wrote down but I did complete other things concerning my blog that needed to be worked on.  So I will consider the completion of this resolution a wash.
• Unfortunately I did not lose the 20 pounds that I wanted to lose.  With complete honesty I tell you that I actually gained about 5 pounds. 🙁  It was a rough year and I am an emotional eater.  Plus, I am a weeny when it comes to exercising in weather that is too hot or too cold.  Like Goldilocks, it has to be just right.  Those things added together make this resolution a bust.
• A win in the social department!  For those of you who know me personally that is probably not to much of a surprise. 🙂  I made it a point to be proactive in getting together with my friends for movies, lunch, dinner, etc. on top of scrap-booking crops and retreats.  I even reached out to a couple of people that I had been wanting to get to know better as friends and reconnected with friends that I had lost touch with.
• As for trying new things I started doing Pilates at a Club Pilates studio near me.  I had wanted to give Pilates a try for a long time and I drove past this studio every time I went to the grocery store.  So I took the step of trying a free intro class and decided to buy a package.  So far it has been hard, but fun, and I am glad that I took a chance.
• Breaking out of the suburban mom thing still needs work.  It is hard to change an identity that you have had for 26 years.  That’s a whole other post as well.
• Getting away a few times this year has been very successful.  In April my husband had to go to a four day work event up in Vail, Colorado.  I know.  How much does that suck as a business trip?!  Fortunately I was able to go along!  We also made it a point to do a couple of day trips into the Colorado mountains this summer, visiting Estes Park, Breckenridge and Evergreen.  Then in October, we did a family trip to New York City.  That was really fun and the autumn weather was perfect.  And just before Thanksgiving my husband and I went to California for a long weekend.  We went to Universal Studios, Catalina Island and had VIP passes to watch the taping of The Talking Dead!
• I didn’t spend as much time working on my Ancestry family tree as I would have liked.  My attention span for all of the research is incredibly short.  Plus I am adopted, so I am trying to work on my birth family not my adopted family.  I get frustrated because I don’t know very much and I have no one that I can call and ask questions.  So when a document comes up that is for John Doe and the computer asks if I think this might be a match for the person I am looking for, I have no idea!  It was interesting to watch the DNA matches come up.  I have a gazillion sixth cousins. 🙂  I have two first cousins that come up in the DNA matches.  I contacted both of them via Ancestry messaging, but neither one has responded back to me.

Out of the seven items that wrote down last January I feel that I did well on five of them.  Not too bad if you ask me.  The other two I will put back on the list for 2020.  I haven’t yet sat down to really think about what I want this new year and the new decade to look like.  Now that life is settling down and we are getting back into a normal routine, I will be working on that list.

Do you make New Year’s resolutions?  If so how did you do on your list?  What does your 2020 list look like?  I would love to know your thoughts so please share in the comments below.  Weather you are a resolutions person or not, I wish all of you a wonderful, happy and healthy New Year!!!