Goals for 2020

After sharing the things I am proud of myself for accomplishing in 2019, it seems only fitting to go ahead and share some of my goals for 2020. When the New Year rolled around, some of my friends and I got into the conversation of whether or not we were goal setters. Given how goal-oriented I can be, it’s interesting to me to realize that some people work better without having goals. I’ll blame it on my Type A tendencies and love of crossing things off of a to-do list. For my birthday, my roommate made everyone at the dinner tell their favorite quality/memory/characteristic of me. While this had me red in the face instantly, my roommate brought up the fact that no matter what I set my mind to, I work hard to accomplish and usually do. By sharing my goals for 2020, I’m hoping my roommate’s statement is correct that these will be things that I’ll be able to be proud of myself for accomplishing come 2021. The first two goals are actually roll-overs from last year that have some room for improvement, and I’m already working towards. 

Stay Better Informed

Given that this is an election year, I feel like this is a goal everyone should have. I don’t have cable, so a lot of the time, my only exposure to the news is when working out at the gym, and I’m not paying super close attention to it while there. As a solution, I try to read the Skimm and the Morning Brew (two email newsletters) as a way of staying in the know, but when things get busy, I tend to cut those out of my schedule. In case you’re not familiar with them, the Skimm is an email news service that breaks down the most important news of the day in an easy to read way. They started a podcast last year, and while I haven’t yet listened to it, like knowing it is there as an option. The Morning Brew is another email news service I discovered this past year, which is similar but more business and financially based (and usually a little over my head). I would love to hear how y’all stay up to date with world events since I know this is important! 

Engage

This word fits a lot since I’d love not only to be more engaged but also to be more engaging. In terms of the latter, I know that I am not the best at elaborating and sharing tons of detail. Friends and family tend to have to ask a bunch of questions to get full details on what I’ve been up to, and I don’t mean to make them do that, but it relates to me being a private person. If you don’t ask, then you may not know. I want to focus on being more engaging in that manner so that it’s not as much effort for the people I surround myself with and maybe helps me to be a bit more interesting.

On the flip side, I would love to be better engaged when with my friends and family in real life as well as on social media. These things would need to happen separately from one another since often, social media and technology interrupts time spent engaged with the people around you. Regarding social media, I want to do a better job of updating my Instagram and Instagram stories in real-time without always feeling like everything needs to be highly curated. While I’ll still be posting plenty of styled shots, I think that mixing in some snapshots of everyday life on my feed is something that my followers enjoy. I’ve already started to be better about talking to Instagram stories and am hoping to keep that up.

Run Another Half Marathon

Running a half marathon was on my goal list last year, and I’ve decided to add it to this year’s list as well. I don’t think I’d sign up for one until the later part of the year since I could probably only comfortably run two miles right now (I’ve been big into Peloton and true40 lately and have kind of neglected running). Creating a training plan and signing up for a race was huge when it came to accomplishing this goal last year, so hopefully doing the same will help me to check this off in 2020 as well. 

Strike Up and Strike Out

I had so much trouble coming up with how to phrase this one since being bold was the best way to sum it up but kept reminding me of a Panhellenic initiative at Furman, and I didn’t want to associate the two mentally. In terms of “strike up,” I need to be better about striking up a conversation with people around that I see frequently. For example, I’ve been going to the Y and true40 for such a long time and continue to see the same people but don’t even know their names. Instead of being shy and waiting for someone else to introduce themselves, I am going to try to be better about engaging with the people around me. For “strikeout,” I want to be better about accepting the idea of taking risks and potentially not succeeding. I am a perfectionist, so the notion of failure terrifies me and, in turn, causes me to take fewer risks. I’ll let y’all know how this goes…

Save

This is my last year on my parent’s insurance (womp), and with that knowledge, I’ve made myself some pretty lofty saving goals to prepare for more bills. I am hoping to set aside my entire year’s blogging income (other than what I reinvest back into the blog) in addition to what I already have set up to save. With a promotion this past year, I am confident that I’ll be able to do this, but it’ll take a conscious effort to achieve. I was so proud of all that I saved in 2018, and with so many weddings in 2019 definitely didn’t do as good of a job, so this is my solution to get back on track! 

I’d love to hear what goals you’re working toward in 2020!