2020 Yearly Goals, Quarter 1

Oh, NGS of January 2020. You really didn't know anything, did you? Okay, here you go.  My original post is here.

Area One: Health
1) Work out three times a week for 30 minutes or more - I don't know.
2) Work out an additional two times a week for at least 15 minutes
3) At least two strength training workouts every week

These are great goals. I'd love to be able to tell you whether or not I did them, but I had some serious issues with depression early in the year and I was barely able to shower daily and brush my teeth, so keeping track of whether I actually worked out or not just didn't happen. I know that I bought a 15-class yoga pass for Jan/Feb and used every pass.  Beyond that, I just don't have the data. Sorry to let you down. I vow to do better data collection in quarter two and on.


Area Two: Professional
1) Get my email under control and keep it there (try to keep the inbox to 15 emails or fewer at all times)
I have mostly managed to do this. I took a couple of weeks and started to cull things very carefully before I just said fuck it all and deleted everything that was older than three months.  I have three inboxes (work #1, work #2, and personal/volunteer) and my work inboxes are definitely clean. I get a ton of junk email in my personal/volunteer inbox, so it sometimes does creep back up to 100 emails, but I just go in there and delete everything about once a week.  I feel much better about looking at my email now and if I can keep this inbox hygiene habit, I'll be happy.  I definitely don't feel dread at opening my inboxes anymore.

2) Volunteer position - I'm on the board for my local community center.  I'm head of the programming committee and I'd like to get a program started in 2020

I have no idea if the community center will exist at the end of this pandemic. We aren't holding regularly scheduled committee meetings and I'm not doing any work on it.  Eh.

3) Update my resume and cover letter
I actually did this when I was sort of surprised invited to a job interview that led to a job offer.  Yay!

4) Create a portfolio 
I did this, too. I don't know if you can see it or not, but I'll try to link to it here. I (verb tense is hard here) am/was teaching a class that is portfolio based and I wanted my students to see an example of a portfolio, but I didn't want to do an academic topic because I didn't want them to copy my structure/work. Anyway, I created a portfolio about Hannah the Dog. Done.


Area Three: Communication 
1)  Post to Instagram once a day  
I have posted 58 times since January 1.  That's a 63.7% completion rate. Not great. Not terrible. It's really hard now that I'm social distancing and  mostly staying home, but I'll try to be better about documenting the things that make me happy.


2) Update blog at least twice a week
I posted 11 times in January, 8 in February, 11 in March. That's an average of  2.3 times a week. Yay! Nailed it.


3)  Keep track of books read
Totally did this! Nailed it.

4) Send a postcard/note/letter to my two elderly aunts and one uncle every month
One of my aunts died in February, so I'm going to change this goal to my mom, aunt, and uncle.  I did manage to do this, although I'm not going to lie - I sent the March postcards on March 30.

Area Four: Personal Improvement Projects
1) Tackle one project around the house every week 
See depression comment above. I probably did this about 25% of the time, but I most certainly did not track it.
 
2) Duolingo every day
I lost my over year long streak at some point and just stopped doing it. I will restart in the next quarter.


3) Take at least three more classes with Hannah
We completed a class session! We were signed up to move up to the Intermediate class, but that was cancelled with the COVID-19 chaos. Hopefully we can get in another session in 2020, but in the meantime I've stepped up our at home training, buying a new book on tricks and some target sticks.  She will be mentally stimulated no matter what!

4) Try a new recipe every week
We started off strong, but I think we only tried five or six new recipes.  Still, that's better than nothing. I did not track this, either.

So the lesson here is that I need to have a better tracking method or at least one that's easier for me to do at night when I'm exhausted.  I'll have a think on this because I'll need better data for all of you in my next quarterly roundup.