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.

This Week in Gratitude: Christmas, Gift Cards, and Hopes for the Future

1. I celebrate Christmas but I think that what I felt yesterday could absolutely be applied to any celebration, be they within other religions or just simply fun times. I have always had for the most part fun Christmases but this year in particular I just felt so at peace. I got to see all the family on my mom’s side, including my cousin through FaceTime. We shared laughs, a good meal (which I got to help cook for), and companionable silence. At home with my parents and my husband my mom was less stressed out and let me help her with things more which just made it feel so special since I want her to have a good time too. Although my parents think we spent too much on them, we were able to treat them how they always treat us and give them great presents. But most of all, there was just so much love in the house and it made me really see the true beauty of the holiday season.
2. When Weifang and I switched over to Verizon for cable we got a gift card that we could use on any Verizon products. I went to my local Verizon store today and was not only able to help my parents finish paying off their phones but also take care of our whole joint bill for this month. As an added bonus I got to confirm that my phone is all paid off so that means cheaper bills for me in the future as well. It was wonderful to take this card and pay it forward with my parents who graciously let me be a part of their plan and remove some stuff from their plate as we round out 2017.
3. Over the past week, Weifang and I have been writing down our 2018 goals, getting our budget plan in order, and just looking forward to the future. At work these couple of weeks represent some down time but it has given me the opportunity to really explore what I can and am able to realistically achieve, see how I can help my husband in his journey, and connect with liked minded people and learn from them in the self improvement Facebook group I am in which is connected to the podcast Tiny Leaps, Big Changes. New Years might seem like an arbitrary time to be doing this but I don’t care I am looking forward to all of the triumphs and challenges that 2018 will bring!

Another Year, Another….Fortune Cookie?

Today is my 27th birthday. I have been thinking a lot about all that is happened in the past year, from celebrations of friends’ accomplishments to the ending of friendships, to visits from family, both welcome and not, to growth with my husband and best friend, and, most importantly, to re-examinations of myself and how I conduct myself in this journey we call life. I have become more open about my anxiety, gotten tattoos, been apologetic in my love of those that matter to me, and (still working on this) a giver of less fucks. So where should this new year take me? That is the question.

I am a lover of inspirational sayings and pithy life advice. One recently took the form of a fortune cookie that I got a few weeks ago: “Stay in touch, above all, with how you feel.” Now, sometimes it is hard for me to say exactly how I feel since anxiety ramps up my feelings to at times absurd levels but I feel like this is a great piece of advice nonetheless. I have put my feelings aside to make sure others don’t feel uncomfortable or that I don’t let folks down even if that thing makes ME feel uncomfortable. So rather than learning how to say no or say yes to things (I challenge myself all the time and am more than happy to try new things even if I end up doing them by myself) I need to be more comfortable with saying “You know what? This makes me feel x or I should/shouldn’t do it and who cares what others think.” Because that last part is the thing that messes up my progress: thinking about what others think even though most of the time the people who have and deserve my love would respect my feelings.

I need to trust my gut as my psychology teacher taught me in high school since oftentimes your gut is correct. In this case, I need to trust my gut when it says “Hey these are your feelings and that is okay. You are feeling these for a reason.” This might take me  the whole year but if 27 is anything like 26 oh what a illuminating and awesome journey it will be.