Hello 2014

Inspired by Taylor's post, here are my 14 goals for 2014. While I still have my huge goal list these are more of overarching things I'd like to accomplish this year.

1. Become a real certified teacher-    This encompasses a lot of little goals all in one. 1) Finish my credential- meaning I need to do my final project and pass it! 2) Finish my master's project- Ahhh! 3) Get an actual job! Which means I need to apply for jobs and interview and all of that. And I need to decide where I want to live. (As a side note, I really want to do a "Diary of a First Year Teacher" blog once I start teaching full time)

2. Document my life- I have slowly been slacking on the various ways that I try to document my own life. I stopped blogging, I stopped taking photos, even though I have a great camera, and I haven't been keeping any type of journal. I spent about an hour last night looking back at my blog posts from my freshman year of college, most of which explained moments in my life that I had forgotten about. Also looking at them reminded me that I thought all of those events were huge deals back then, and now they totally aren't which helps me put what's going on today into a little bit of perspective (not everything is a huge deal!!). I want to document my experience more than I did this year, in whichever way seems the best at the time.

3. Volunteer more- about halfway through last year I decided that I wanted to spend at least one day a month spending my time volunteering at something/somewhere. This lasted about two months. I do think that spending 5-7 hours a month helping someone else is a totally realistic goal. So I'm going to try to do that!

4. Get off of Facebook! I read an article a while back talking about how Facebook makes people more depressed. Wow I just googled that and I can't believe how many articles I found. Well here's one of those. I hate Facebook. Well that's not true, and love sharing my life on Facebook, but at least 3 times a week when I sign on I feel either disappointed about my own life or upset by something someone else said. So while I do plan on continuing to share my life and perhaps this blog on Facebook, I vow to spend less time on the damn thing. Really this relates to a bigger goal I have in general, stop comparing my life and myself to others.

5. Travel- I need to go some place new! I'm trying to get up to Tahoe and to either Shasta or Yosemite while I still live in the Bay Area. I want to travel way more, and I've realized that you can travel cheaply if you plan it right. And I want to be a little more adventurous about my travelling. I haven't gone camping, in a tent, for about 10 years.

6. Be fit- I have a bunch of stuff that fits under this goal. I am going to finish the race that I have been preparing for. Even if I end up crawling over the finish line. If you don't know, I'm trying to do the Escape the Rock race, which is a 1.5 mile swim from Alcatraz to SF followed by a 7 mile run. I know I can do it, but I need to get a wet suit and really start getting in the bay once a week, or at least once every two weeks. I bought Cassey's fit journal, found here, it's really cute. I'm going to start recording in it on Monday.

7. Along with being fit, I really need to eat healthier. Like really, I eat so much crap all of the time. It's horrible. (But Oh! So Yummy!) Jenna and I are challenging each other to give up one thing monthly. January is sweets! It's day two and I want some chocolate so baddd! Here's the link to the other things were planning on giving up. We'd like to expand the list for the whole year, so we added alcohol and red meat. Someone suggested trying to add something healthy for a month instead of taking something bad away, like making sure that each day you eat 5 servings of fruits and veggies which we might do too.

I'm only at 7! I'm running out of things! So my goals may get smaller and more specific from here on.

8. Learn how to have small talk with people that I've just met. Or as my aunt said learn how to get information from people. Meaning knowing how to ask good questions and learn about people and then actually remember what they told you. This sounds silly, but it's really hard for me to engage in conversations with people who I've just met. I'm not sure how I'll do this, but hopefully I'll figure it out.

9. Finish projects before starting new ones. I have so much fabric and random materials in my apartment of things I wanted to make or sew. Some of them I bought stuff for and never even started to create something.

10. Oh! Truly embrace the Four Agreements. While I have tried to do this for the last few years, I don't think I've done a good of a job that I could be doing. The four agreements are the following:
Be Impeccable With Your Word
Don't Take Anything Personally
Don't Make Assumptions
Always Do Your Best

These are from Don Miguel Ruiz's book, which I highly recommend anyone read. I want to finish the companion journal this year. And try to apply Ruiz's wisdom to my own difficult situations.

11. Read 24 books- I'm going to steal this one from Taylor, only I want to do 24, 2 for each month. And I'd like at least 5 of them to be educational based (about teaching in some way, or even math I suppose) and 5 of them to be other nonfiction books.

12. Learn more about religion. My aunt bought me a bible last year and I haven't been doing a very good job at reading it. Generally I'd like to know more about what people believe, because I truly am ignorant when it comes to this type of stuff.

13. Be more truthful. I read this article the other day, and it made me realize I tell A LOT of little white lies. It's dumb, I should stop both for my benefit and the benefit of others. Also sometimes I say things and then I think, why did I just say that? Its not even true? Why it pop out of my mouth? I need to be more aware of what I say.

14. Be more aware of what is going on in the world. I am really really bad at knowing what's going on out there, if it ain't big enough to be on Facebook, I don't know about it. And then I pretend to know about it when others are talking about it (Damn lying!) I need to read the news semi-often and even watch some documentaries or something. There's lot of cool things to know about. I watched Blackfish the other day, and I am never going to Sea World ever again, see information is power. Also have you heard of Birdmen? I haven't watched it yet, but it looks crazy!

Yay! That was actually kind of hard, coming up with 14 goals/resolutions for 2014. I hope I can stick to them. I plan on looking back on this a lot to remind myself.

Since Taylor inspired me to do this, hopefully I have inspired someone else!

<3 Looking forward to the year!

Goodbye 2013

Things I’ve accomplished in 2013 that were on my goal list last year:

Learn CPR

Walk for a cause

Raise money for MS research

Put a dollar in the Paris fund every day

Take public transportation more

Get a plant and don’t kill it

Take a self-defense class

Be in New York for New Years (Idk if this counts as this past year or the one before) 

Have a totally different life by this time next year

 While I did more than these things these were the ones that I actually wrote down and did from last year. <3

Life's too short to spend time mad at those who love you.

A New Year

I know I like to make a new blog about every 6 months and then I don't stick to it and fade away and then finally make a new one and start all over, but I do believe that a new year calls for a new start (aka a new blog ha)
I had a pretty crappy emotional year. And I'd like something fresh and new to begin this one off with. So here goes!
Hope whoever happens to read this magical little thing finds some inspiration in it somewhere.
I will try to not use it to vent as I so commonly do.

Lets see how 2014 goes!