New Year's Resolutions for 2022

happy puke year

Blah blah blah, new year and high hopes and correcting the past year's mistakes and failures and so on and so forth.

First, the resolutions from 2020:

• Keto every day, no breaks — NOPE — I actually lasted maybe half the year? I forget when I stopped exactly. Keto was helping me lose weight, but I also felt like complete shit most of the time, so at a certain point, it's not worth it.
  
• 199.9 at some point — NOPE — But I was probably closer in late November than I have been in a decade. Forget keto, the thing that worked really well was calorie counting. Pretty simple. Felt good. The holidays dashed the dreams of getting below 200 before 2022, but as they say, there's always next year.
  
• Wish my friends a happy birthday — NOPE — I did start this, putting a lot of friends' birthdays in my calendar, and setting them on yearly repeats. So this goal is gonna roll over to next year too.
  
• Back up the blog — NOPE — Though I think if I had to have deferred my education till next year, I could've gotten through it. Homework, obviously, superseded a lot this fall.
  
• Watch 100 films — NOPE — I wrote about this a couple weeks ago. Close, but no cigar!
  
• Read twelve books — NOPE — Got through nine, which is better than I would have guessed (had to read one for school book report, so maybe that doesn't count, I dunno).
  
• Attend one party (safely) — YES — There were a few gatherings here and there, but I'll count Pam's and my Vaxx Bash this past April as the one that met the requirement, since it was definitely the safest. Everyone was fresh off getting their second shots, everyone was screened at the door, and we mostly chilled outside anyway. Felt good to be hanging out again.
  

Okay, not a terrible year. I only fully completed one single resolution, but for most of them, I made decent headway, enough so that I could easily roll 'em over to next year. So check out the 2022 resolutions list, and let's predict how few of them will actually get done:

• See 199.9 on the scale at some point — Starting to count those fucking calories again today, let's do this shit!
  
• Run 500 miles — The number sounds more intimidating than it actually is! I haven't run in a month or so, but if I want to today (and I might!), I could easily go 2.5 miles. Just doing that every other day would get us pretty close. Obviously, after a couple weeks of running every other day, that miles/day number is gonna bump up.
  
• Get all my friends' birthdays on the calendar and wish everyone a happy birthday — Get ready to get a text from me this week confirming your date of birth.
  
• Finish backing up the blog — Let's call this a summer project.
  
• Watch 100 films — I'm gonna do it this year!! At least 50 of them are going to be off this damn list too!!
  
• Build / install a Little Free Library on our property — Something like this. Though obviously not as nice/cutesy looking. Might be a nice little addition to our extremely strange corner of the city.
  
• Make 99 additional improvements to the house — (the Free Little Library making it 100 total.) This would include building, fixing, organizing, or special cleaning. It would not include regular maintenance like mowing the lawn or vacuuming or whatever.
• Get rid of 100 items — Living that minimalism lifestyle feels good. I don't even really have a lot of stuff lying around, but I want to take minimalism as far as I can take it this year.
  
• Engage in more BIPOC-created art — It's something I've struggled with, especially when it comes to music, for reasons I feel like I've explained a few times now. But I think we can officially put to bed to cop-out excuse of "well is this art made for me?" and just engage with it anyway, to experience some new ideas and to hold myself accountable.
  

I will make sure that these resolutions meet the SMART criteria—that they are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-based. "Specific" is why I wrote a description for each. I wouldn't have included any of them if I didn't think they were attainable or relevant. "Time-based" comes with the territory of New Year's resolutions (i.e. complete them by December 31, 2022). The only one I'd be mildly concerned with is "measurable." That's why I added numbered quantifiers to so many of them. BIPOC-created art? That's tougher to measure, because I don't want to keep a list, per se. But I think if I set monthly reminders to engage in art I wouldn't have otherwise were it not for this resolution, and if I can look back at the end of the year and I feel like I consistently did that, then I'll have met the goal.

Anyways, that's where we stand on the first day of the year. There's a lot of other bullshit that I wanna get done this year—good grades, writing, listening to music, Record Club, book club, baby-making, etc.—but I try not to include those on such a list, because they are gonna get done whether I want them to or not (like the schoolwork, which is "mostly not"). And there will be plenty of free time in between to blog about it all, every single day.

Happy New Year, and I'll see you tomorrow.