Not To Be Trusted With Knives

Goals for 2023 – The Final Report

January 1, 2024 by Beth

When I last checked in on my goals, it was July (because – spoiler alert – I did not do my third quarter report, so failed at my goal for doing quarterly reports) and honestly, I didn’t accomplish too many more of my goals than I’d done at that time. I managed to achieve 8 of my 20 goals.

At the time of my July check-in, I’d made 29/23 new food/beverages, and since then I added three more things: beef empanadillas, fondant potatoes, and curry dip ((A non-online recipe that my mom’s had for many years but I haven’t made before.). So that’s 1 completed goal.

I set a goal for making one charitable donation every month, instead of waiting until December to do all my donating. I was good up until July, when I totally forgot. But I donated to something every month from August-Dec and I made 2 donations in December to make up for it, so I averaged one per month. So I’m going to count that as a 2nd completed goal ((I also made a recurring monthly donation to one particular cause, but I wasn’t counting that because I was already doing that.)).

Another of my goals was to learn 12 things, and I realized that “things” is too vague. Like, I could say that I learned how to crochet and count that as one thing, but I could also say that I learned how to do a read a yarn label, convert between US and UK crochet hooks, do slipknot, a single crochet, a double crochet, a half double crochet, a triple crochet, a crochet slip stitch, and how to expand and how to decrease stitches in subsequent rows, and how to crochet a circle – and that’s 11 things. Similary, I learned stand up comedy sounds like one thing, but I could also say I learned how to write stand up jokes, build a comedy set, what the point of open mics are, and probably a million other things I’m forgetting at the moment. Other things I learned this year include how to play Fortnite (thanks to my sister, brother-in-common-law, and youngest sibling), and how to spell “Philippines” on the first try (thanks to my trip to Manila, I typed “Philippines” a lot and now don’t try to spell it “Phillipines” and then have autocorrect correct me). Anyway, I think I’m going to go with the smaller definition of “thing” and say that I definitely learned more than 12 things this year. So that’s my 3rd goal completed

The other goals I completed were:

• eat fish or plant-based protein at least once per week (52 times) – I did 58 (4th goal completed)
• make a habit of setting up the coffee maker every night so it’s ready for the morning (5th goal completed)
• buy wood for shelves – done and I got the shelves put up too! (6th goal completed)
• practice French 365 days in a row – did this (and I’m currently on a 487 day streak)! (7th goal completed)
• Do at least 100 mindfulness meditations (almost 2 per week) – I did 178 8th goal completed)

I did get close to my book reading goal – I added 18 books to the 2 that I’d read as of July, for a total of 20/23.

Four books were related to things that I learned this year – two books about crocheting and two books about stand-up comedy. I also read two books (The Ex Hex and The Ocean at the End of the Lane) as audiobooks in the week after I had my laser eye surgery and was avoiding reading with my eyeballs. I also read 3 children’s books (gifts that I gave to a friend’s kid, but I read them before I gave them so that I could count them as books that I read this year!). And the rest was a mish-mash of stuff that I wanted to read (or, in the case of the 1001 quotations, it was something that I had on my kobo that was really short when I made a last ditch, but ultimately failed, endeavour, to reach my goal).

In terms of number of pages read, I only read 5338 of my goal of 7500 pages (71%), thought I think I missed recoding a bunch of papers that I read, though probably not enough to make up the difference.

For my goal of doing stretches 260 times (5 days a week) – I only did just over half that (135 times), but that’s still waaaaay more stretching than I usually do, so I feel like it’s a good base to build on.

I only did 27/52 (52%) journal entries and 15/52 (29%) blog postings, so those were two big fails. Also a big fail: do 10 unassisted chinups or pullups. In my defence, I was working on chinups/pullups, and then I got elbow bursitis and couldn’t do them anymore.

The other fails were basically all about being organized. I guess early 2023-Beth thought making those things into goals would be motivation for me to actually do them. Oh sweet summer child!

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