First, a review of the 2016 projects. I wanted to primarily focus on the 50before50 list in 2016, so I kept my wider project list to a minimum.
Spoiler – this approach didn’t actually work very well at all!
2016 projects
-
complete 50% of the 50before50 list (see what I mean about ambitious)
PARTIALLY ACHIEVED I completed about 1/5 (so 10) in 2016 and have made progress on another 5. This doesn’t bode well for getting through the whole list by the end of November. Need to up my game, put less pressure on myself or abandon the exercise entirely! - each morning list 3 things I’m grateful for/feeling positive about and 3 small things I’d like to achieve.
PARTIALLY ACHIEVED I stopped this in May and recommenced in October. I found it to be a pretty worthwhile exercise. Early on I added 3 things I was worried/stressed about – this was mostly to get obsessive thoughts out of my head and worked pretty well. I was also keeping a bit of a journal for a while where I was logging what I wore and ate and general observations. I’ve combined both of these things into one big journal for 2017. - eat a wider range of healthy food – more diversity with veg and salads
NOT ACHIEVED In winter we were doing pretty well with this – it’s quite easy to shove a tray of various veg in the oven for roasting for dinner. We do eat a bit of salad, but it is very retro old school with like 3 ingredients. My ongoing frustration is that fruit and veg does not keep at all well – this makes the worms in the worm farm happy, but is not really too great for us. - comment more on the blogs I love (using an RSS reader has made me terrible about this)
NOT ACHIEVED I did a small bit, not at all regularly. I’ll keep this one for 2017 I think. - drink alcohol a maximum of 5 times during the year
NOT ACHIEVED Oh my word, no! This was a total fail. BUT I did give up completely in November and made it through the festive season! - complete Palace-ly chores (and grocery shopping) during the week to free-up weekends for fun/projects
NOT ACHIEVED This is really hard, generally exhausted after work and the last thing we want to do is chores. Again, I really want to make this one work.
Holy Goodness! That’s really kind of depressing! To be fair, I forgot about a few of them. Ooops.
So for 2017:
I’m going to have a crack at an over-arching theme for the year and that theme is: perfect is the enemy of good.
I don’t think it is a surprise to anyone that I am really hard on myself about all manner of things and I am a bit (okay, a lot) of a perfectionist. I’ll often put stuff off because I know it won’t be produced to a high standard or I don’t try new things because I know I’ll never be good at them. I have overcome this a bit with running and biking – I’ll never be great, but I find both really fun. I need to get it fixed in my head that sometimes getting things done to an okay standard is fine! Really! Sometimes I’m not going to be good at stuff and that’s okay! Really!
On with the actual list:
- complete the 50before50 list
(yikes!) I’ll really need to embrace the 2017 theme for to achieve this! - stop reading rubbish on the InformationSuperHighway.
I’ve stopped reading all news entirely (really) since November 2016. I realise this is somewhat controversial, and I am quite conflicted about the head in the sand approach, but my mental health and sanity are significantly improved as a result. - comment more on the blogs I love. support the creators I love.
I’m already supporting the real talk radio podcast, the virtual memories podcast and the mcmansion hell blog via patreon and kottke on whatever the thing is he uses. And I generally kick wikipedia a couple of $ when they’re having a supporter drive. I want to do more of this in 2017. - complete Palace-ly chores (and grocery shopping) during the week to free-up weekends for fun/projects
I am convinced this can be done. Surely I just need to apply my m4d scheduling sk1llz to the task? - exercise daily – can be anything as long as it is something
Already I’m a little behind with this because of my cold. Taking a pass when unwell is totally acceptable. - journal daily
As above. Continuing this for 2017. - stop comparing myself to others
Because that way madness lies. Yeah – this is a pretty big one.
There are probably another 60 things I could add, but I think the sub theme for the year should really be don’t try to do All The Things.
xxx