Checking in on my New Year's Resolutions

On my YouTube channel, I like to share my New Year's Goals for the sake of accountability. I hate saying that I'm going to do something and then not do it and it's even worse to say that I'm going to do something and then not even try. I published a video on my YouTube channel today talking about some of my goals, but it was a short video, so I didn't get into a lot of detail. Here in this blog, I'll get a bit more into the nitty gritty of just how far I've gotten.

Starting with my organizational goals, I didn't have much on my list. I just wanted to clean out my clothing closet twice. Once in January, to make room for any clothes I may have gotten for Christmas, and once in September, in case I got any new clothes for my birthday. The first clean out in January was a lot more involved. I probably generated two or three garbage bags of clothes to donate. In September, I only generated one donation bag and one true garbage bag (since I wasn't comfortable donating old underwear and stained pajamas) and neither were super full. In October, I actually went a bit further and cleaned out my shoe cabinet, which I haven't done in years. I got rid of maybe ten or so pairs of shoes. It was a very brave thing for me to do.

For my spiritual goals, I decided that I wanted to work through five of our church's recommended resources which are found on the website. I've made it through three and am sort of working on the fourth, though I lost interest in it and we're pivoting to try a new devotional, Hopefully I'll finish one of them in time for Christmas and I can do an advent devotional to round out the year and meet my goal.

Money-wise, I think I've started to drop the ball a bit. I would probably pinpoint our summer trip to Disneyland as the turning point. I feel like since we returned from California, I became a lot less concerned with keeping track of our spending. I have a calendar that I was writing down all my purchases on, just to try to be more conscientious, but I haven't really stayed on top of it. Eating out is still something we don't do too much, but I think the convenience has outweighed the cost in our minds lately, and I'm no longer really crafting special occasions to justify it. Like, it's not a date night if I go out in sweatpants to Taco Bell for an afternoon Beefy Five Layer Burrito. Money got very tight after we did our embryo transfer stuff, too. From all the medication we had to purchase and the credit card bills from paying for the treatments and appointments. Because of this, I haven't been able to put away many of my paychecks since the summertime. I bought some lipstick I didn't need on sale, I've purchased Key's new album, even though I knew there'd likely be a repackage, and I've bought a couple of baby onesies even though I know that my mom is going to keep my kid clothed all on her own. I'm not being totally frivolous by any means, but there's always room for improvement. I will say, we've been eating more at home lately since I qualify for WIC. We've gotten lots of produce and food staples, so it makes it a lot easier to cook at home.

For fitness, I did get my mile time down to within a second of my goal, so I think I'm going to just count that as a win for now. The push up thing never materialized. Of course, I didn't get down to 136 pounds. The closest I got was 139, but that probably only lasted for like twenty minutes on the morning that I weighed myself. I'm sure after lunch I went right back to the 140s. Now it's totally irrelevant. Since being pregnant, I've had the appetite of a middle school boy. For the first trimester, any time I wasn't nauseous, I was starving. My appetite has definitely increased over all. I'm trying not to over do it, but it's hard to have self-control when I'm so hungry. I want to make balanced decisions, like snacking on things like apples and carrot sticks, but sometimes nothing satisfies like a bag of 3D Doritos. I'm in the upper 150s now. The weight gain was really rapid at the beginning. Hopefully it slows down. Overall, it's a gain of about 12 pounds if I count my starting weight as 145. Over the whole pregnancy, you're shooting for a gain of something between like 25 and 30 pounds, so I'm not too concerned just yet. My jeans are tight and I'm pretty much living in dresses and stretchy pants.

Creatively and hobby-wise, I felt kind of stifled after the embryo transfer. I was sick and tired for about two straight months, so when I got home from work, all I wanted to do was get in bed. For the whole year overall, things have been going well, though. I usually make two drawings a month to put in my planner (though I missed some while sick). I am very close to finishing the Sims 4 100 baby challenge; I only need to add 15 more babies and I'm done. I've read five books for pleasure: Bird by Bird, The Unofficial Guide to Disneyland, Howl's Moving Castle, House of Many Ways, and Generation Dead. I kept on top of my digital art, too, until I got sick, but I may still manage to create 12 pieces, an average of one per month, if I have an energetic and productive final two months of the year. I wanted to upload at least one or two YouTube videos a month as well. Even though I missed August from being sick and busy, I've still uploaded more than twelve videos so far this year with two months to go, so I think I'm still on track. My last goal was to write 150K words between fanfic and blog posts. Right now, not including this blog post, I'm at over 130K words. I can definitely manage to write 10K per month for November and December. I want to take on some kind of writing challenge in November as well. Even if I don't do something on a Nanowrimo scale, I may try to shoot for 500-1000 words a day, or something like that. Plus, I have more blog post ideas to share. I think I'm in good shape to reach my goals!

Sometimes, life gets in the way of the goals you thought you'd like to accomplish, but that's totally normal and to be expected. Things never go 100% to plan! Making an effort is really the most important part. I'm grateful anyway. The reason I got sluggish and fell behind with some goals is that I finally got pregnant! I always knew that things could change if and when that happened for me, so I'm not even upset or disappointed, really. It's going to stay a priority for me, however, to spend time enjoying my creative hobbies, exercising, and making goals. I don't want to get complacent or let motherhood become my entire personality. As far as my YouTube channel goes, I hope to keep making videos and to keep my baby out of them. I don't want to be a mommy-vlogger or blogger. I still want to be me and make time for the things that bring me joy! Parenthood demands sacrifice, but it shouldn't be a life-sucking chore. When the baby comes, we'll see how I deal with the challenges, but I really hope to be true to myself through it all.