Fifth Week in Review: New Years Resolutions

Five weeks down! And now that January is over I have made it through my first month!  Here’s my summation of my progress.

1. Use my exercise bike every day. I had to do some catch up this week but got back on track. And now I have even more of a desire to keep up with this since it will help me with my fencing training.
2. Use my arm weights every day. I had to do some catch up this week but got back on track. And now I have even more of a desire to keep up with this since it will help me with my fencing training.
3. Write at least two blog posts a week. Though I don’t use it to write actual posts, it is nice having WordPress’ app on my phone so I can write down title ideas for posts throughout the week. Then I already have a jumping off point for when I actually sit down to write.
4. Find (and hopefully start) a new job in 2018. My dad is putting me in touch with one of his colleagues who has a lot of experience with Congress so it will be very interesting to hopefully sit down with him and see how I can become more involved. If anything I can make sure that I am a better and more informed voter by the time the midterm elections roll around!
5. Say Yes and No quicker. I am go glad that I finally said yes to myself and overcame my hesitancy to take advantage of the fencing class that Weifang bought me for Christmas. Though I was the oldest at my first class and have a lot to learn I am so excited to take part in a sport that I have long admired.
6. Use social media more effectively. I have really enjoyed using SnapChat more recently to keep better in touch with friends who use this social media more often than other means of keeping in touch. I will never use it enough to make long stories but being able to send Moe temporary funny pictures to folks has been great.
7. Drink more water. I fell off the wagon a bit with this this week since I did not adequately plan for having time to drink water when I was busy or distracted during the week. I hope to be better at this in the coming week since it is this behavior that has led me to not drink enough water in the first place.
8. Call a/on different friend once a week. I checked in on a couple of friends over the phone this week to see how they were doing after tough weeks. It felt good to be able to catch up with them and make sure they were doing all right. I am planning on catching up with another dear friend over lunch during National Harbor’s restaurant week on Saturday which is sure to be a good time.
9. Stay in touch, above all, with how [I] feel. Some of the courses that I was listening to on Lynda.com involved being a better listener and how to deal with difficult situations. It is hard learning things about yourself that you realize you could have done better or recognizing behavior that you don’t like in others in yourself. But at least by recognizing it now I can work to make my behavior reflect how I truly am and what I aspire to be. And it will help me have more empathy when dealing with others which is extremely important.
10. Study Chinese at least four hours a week. I didn’t study as much of this as I would have liked this week. But I am able to recognize more words when my husband speaks to me and able to use more words in conversation so I am on the right path!
11. Be even more intimate with my husband. Now that we are in the month of Valentine’s Day I need to figure out my plan. It sounds so unsexy but since we are both busy people and I should be the one to take the initiative since this is all largely on me I will do my best to find a day where we can just enjoy each other.
12. Stick to the budget my husband and I make. Even with paying for our vacation we saved around $200! Every little bit is a great achievement and I cannot wait to keep working towards our goal of saving around $800-1,000 when we do not have any big trips planned.

Fourth Week in Review: New Years Resolutions

Four weeks down! Here’s my summation of my progress.

1. Use my exercise bike every day. Used my pedal machine more than my actual bike this week but it was a good way to make productive use of my time sitting at my desk and be able to stay on top of exercising when I knew that I would have a long night on Wednesday.
2. Use my arm weights every day. I had to do some make up in this category on Friday as after my long night at work on Wednesday and recovery on Thursday I skipped out on doing the exercises once each day. But I caught up and can still feel progress being made!
3. Write at least two blog posts a week. It is really nice to be back into a groove with this. Now I catch myself thinking about things that I have read or seen or experienced as good topics for posts and use the week to edit my thoughts before I put them to paper.
4. Find (and hopefully start) a new job in 2018. Haven’t heard anything back just yet on the applications I turned in but I will keep the faith! In the meantime I will keep looking around to see what else is out there. After doing some research on the midterm races this year for Congress and local government I am more convinced that volunteering in some form on a campaign would be a great learning experience as well.
5. Say Yes and No quicker. I have a packed weekend this weekend with the dinner I mentioned last week, a baby shower, and a movie night. It feels good to have all of these opportunities to talk to folks and that Weifang will also have time to play pool since I will be out most of the day on Sunday. Plus, got my ticket for the comic convention in March so that is all set as well!
6. Use social media more effectively. I’ve been going through all of the saved links on my Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest to print out or save things that I will actually do or use rather than just always leaving things up. This way I have new recipes to try, new craft projects to make, and lots of fun ideas for when I have children.
7. Drink more water. I am on my fourth plant! But I fell behind on Wednesday on account of staying late at work and sitting in a place with no bathroom (this goal has been a killer on my bladder!). But on the whole I have gotten better at responding right away when my app reminds me that it is time to drink.
8. Call a/on different friend once a week. I was able to help my friend Paige vent this week when she called me over the phone so I was happy to serve as her sounding board. It was National Compliment Day this week so I let all of my friends know how much they mean to me and got lots of wonderful compliments in return. I am doing better with sending birthday cards this year so far and am happy to provide that small token on my affection. And as I mentioned above I will be seeing a lot of friends this weekend for various activities.
9. Stay in touch, above all, with how [I] feel. As I mentioned in my gratitude post today I was happy that I ended a. subscription that ultimately was causing me more harm than good (guilt over not utilizing it properly, the money I felt I was wasting because of that, etc.). But I am very disappointed by how the person running it tried to make me feel guilty and small when the whole point of the field he is in is to help people feel good about themselves and live their best life. Thanks but no thanks dude I am glad I found this out now before I wasted more of my time. I also want to both commend myself for staying patient and vent about why I had to stay late at work this week. We were having our carpet professionally cleaned and I was more than happy to stay late to lend a hand since out elevators lock at a certain time and to make sure they had everything they needed. So that wasn’t the problem. But then, as is always the case, issues arose. The gentleman who showed up was late, he went up the staircase that he wasn’t supposed to which added time to his set up, pretended like we hadn’t told him which staircase to go up, complained hat he had only learned about the job that morning and therefore wasn’t prepared, and surprise, surprise, after two hours of hemming and hawing when he actually got down to business it only took about an hour and a half. Maybe he had been not properly informed by his boss. I don’t care. If it was me I would do my best and help the customer because it would not be his or her fault. Just be the bigger person. Needless to say that for once in my life when they sent the customer survey I actually filled it out and outlined my concerns. Hopefully if there is a next job they will do better. In the end, at least the carpets looked good so something good came out of it.
10. Study Chinese at least four hours a week. Weifang told me that my Chinese has gotten a lot better since I started studying since by doing it on multiple platforms vocab words are sticking in my head better.
11. Be even more intimate with my husband. Every day I look at my husband I know he is the one. The more we discuss our future and children the more I am so excited that he will always be mine. This is the mindset that I have been truly looking for to overwhelm the doubts outside forces send to me.
12. Stick to the budget my husband and I make. We are going on vacation in a few weeks! Even with this expense by eating out less and keeping to our budget but getting rid of subscriptions and not buying too much we are on track to save over $1,000 this month. We are doing awesome!

This Week in Gratitude: Theater, Study Days, and Interns

1. Last week I had the fantastic opportunity to see the play Disney’s Lion King at the Hippodrome in Baltimore. Not only was it wonderful to see a Disney classic and also go back to the theater after a long hiatus, but also to see it with a great friend who I had not seen in some time. It had all the makings of a perfect evening. Watching my fellow audiences members get super into all of the songs reminded me of how connected we all are, one might say a “great Circle of Life.”
2. Yesterday my husband and I stayed at his office (gasp! on a weekend!) so he could get ahead of closing the month, an insanely busy time for accountants. I didn’t mind since not only would we still be able to hang out with each other but we could both get work done without the distractions of home. Plus we took a lunch break to catch the Ravens game so it was still homey. A  day of work together is nonetheless a day together and we could go home and relax knowing it had been a cooperative day well spent.
3. Just a few minutes ago my colleagues and I wrapped up the first round of interviews for our next cohort of interns for the spring semester. I have been through this process a few times and started my job as an intern myself. I must say I am continuously amazed and heartened by how passionate the candidates are and how diverse and interesting their backgrounds are. And with each new intern cohort I feel like in some small way we have taught them new skills so they can go out and make a difference and they have taught us to not give up on what we believe in.