2012 Resolution Success Evaluation

Way back in January, I spent several days stewing about my 2012 resolutions. Now that the year is over, time to check in on how I did. 

Perhaps the most interesting thing about my resolutions this year is that I attempted to prioritize them, with the most important coming first.  I tried to use a separate color to differentiate resolution from recap.

1. Complete my first (and likely last) weighted marathon. I'm aiming to run the Bataan Memorial Death March Marathon on March 25 in New Mexico. DONE! Although, I'm not sure you'd know it from reading the blog. I never finished my race report. Oops. I still need to do that, primarily for anyone who may be interested in running that race in the future. Running a marathon while carrying a 40 pound backpack was not easy. The training and even the return to unweighted running were both painful and SLOW. But doing this race in particular made it all worthwhile. Getting to meet the Death March survivors and hear their stories was an experience I will never forget. And I performed better than I ever could have imagined in the marathon. Utterly incredible experience.

2. Travel to one new-to-me country. The current plan is that the country will be China and this will happen in October, but if things change, I still want to go somewhere new in 2012 -- I need to keep broadening my horizons and experiencing new cultures. DONE -- kind of! We went to China in October. Because I was in Hong Kong on vacation in 2001, and it was already part of China then, China may not really be a new-to-me country. But the resolution was intended to get me to explore someplace utterly unfamiliar and foreign (and maybe even a little scary or at least well outside my comfort zone). Our trip definitely met those objectives.  Seeing and walking on the Great Wall is something I think I will remember for my whole life.  The people, the food, the atmosphere of growth and change, all absolutely remarkable and a true highlight of the year. 

3. Stairs at work going up every Tues-Wed-Thurs that I'm in the office and it's not raining. I am on the fifth floor, and the parking garage adds one more flight. I'd love to try to do it on Mondays too, but with working from home on Fridays, sometimes I'm really loaded down with my laptop and too much other stuff on Mondays. So Mondays I'll play it by ear, but Tues-Wed-Thurs, game on. And if it's raining, then I'll take the stairs from the first floor instead of from the parking garage (I think the stairwell is outside). But this resolution doesn't go into effect until Jan. 5 (since I need to make sure I know where I'm going and my co-worker to show me isn't back in the office until Jan. 4). DONE! The resolution went into effect on Jan. 4, a day earlier than planned, and I rocked it. I even took the stairs most Mondays. I think I missed the stairs on about 15 times all year (some Mondays, occasionally another day).  Even on days that it rained, I took the elevator to 1, and then walked up the rest of the way. I've learned that many flights of stairs while wearing wedges is substantially more difficult than I would have imagined.  But when our office moved from the 5th floor (plus a parking garage flight) to the 9th floor of a new building in the mid-November, I started invoking my "Monday pass" pretty much every week and I did the elevator on a few non-Mondays too, especially when I was bringing in stuff to hang on the walls or I'd already run to the office that morning. But the resolution came to a crashing halt about Dec. 11 when I was denied permission by building management to keep using the fire stairs.  Insane, but don't get me started...  My solution was to ride the elevator up on Mondays, carrying my clothes and lunches for the week.  Then Tues, Wed, Thurs, I'd ride the elevator up to 9 to get my clothes, then stairs down to 1 to shower and change, then elevator to 2, then stairs up to 9. 

4. A 10k or shorter PR. A little more flexible than last year's resolution to get a 5k PR. I could very easily get an 8k PR, but there aren't tons of 8k races around here, and that wouldn't really be fair since my 8k time is from 2007. But most of my other PRs in that distance range (5k, 4m, 5m, 10k) will take some real work to beat. I'd also like an 8 mile and 15k PR, but that's just getting greedy. DONE!  I got a legitimate 10k PR (barely, but a PR is a PR), and an "illegitimate" 10 mile PR (it was my first 10 miler ever).  It's very misleading to say I got a legitimate 10k PR, but all it takes is one second, and my resolution was sufficiently vague to let the tiniest PR count.  Hopefully next year I can make a similar resolution and crush it! 

5. Entertaining at home. Again. At least 6 occasions feeding friends with home-cooked food. At least 3 of those occasions must include people who haven't been part of this resolution last year or the year before. I think we're going to have two parties -- one next week for some friends who live in Sweden now and are back visiting, and one in April for the anniversary of our rehearsal dinner.  DONE!  And four of the occasions were with people new to our dinner parties. I love this resolution -- I love doing it, and I love that the resolution reminds me to do it, because it could easily be something I didn't otherwise push myself to do.  We did most of this in the first half of the year, but the resolution was met and will likely repeat in 2013. 

6. Yoga. One month of heated yoga, and then yoga at home once a week minimum or 48 times in the year (not counting the month of yoga in January). I think it's relaxing and good for me. It may help me be more patient, more fit, more calm.  MOSTLY-DONE!  I did the month of heated yoga in January -- every single day, completing a 30 day challenge. And then I didn't do anything really, at home or otherwise, for a couple months. Then I tried about 18 sessions from April to July at a new studio.  Then I went back to heated yoga in late July and did another 30 day challenge (missed one day the studio was closed and ended about 2 days early due to a trip).  Then I did most days during the month of September at heated yoga.  That got me about 100 yoga classes total for the year. But really, I missed the heart of the resolution -- the resolution was balance, to do it regularly, including at home when there wasn't a convenient class.  I should work on that in 2013.

7. Emptying our magazine rack. This should be so easy, but I want to actually flip through everything that's in there before throwing it away. I'm down to two magazine subscriptions in 2012 -- Vegetarian Times (a Christmas gift from my brother and his new wife), and a Texas running one. FAIL.  I've made some progress but barely. I've cleared out a few, but I need to make a ton more progress.  The big step was moving a big stack upstairs, so at least it looks less cluttered in our living room.  And I'm not subscribing to anything other than Vegetarian Times now, so at least the collection isn't growing -- and when I'm done flipping through one of those, the issue goes over by the cookbooks, so not into the magazine rack. 

8. Finish our wedding scrapbook. We've been married since April 2009, and my memories of the day aren't getting any fresher. I'd love to make progress on some other photo albums, but the wedding scrapbook is most important to me. IN PROGRESS.  As of January 1, 2012, it was about 1/3 done.  I completed about half of what remained (so now it's 2/3 done), and I brainstormed a bit for the remainder that is still undone, but I need to spend a couple more weekends working on it. I really need to finish this one.  Seems like a good plan for January/February, after Christmas stuff is put away and life is a bit calmer. 

9. More quality time with my two female best friends. One lives in Virginia but I am planning to see her more this year, and I'd like to call more too. And one lives here in town. She had a tough year last year and we didn't get to spend as much time together, and I miss her terribly. Whether we spend the time running, going for ice cream, working on puzzles, watching bad tv, doing yoga, whatever, I just want to spend the hours together. I'll call it DONE. I'm doing better but not great on calling the one in Virginia. But we got to spend a lot more time than usual together.  First, in February, we went to Mardi Gras together, so we got to hang out for a few days.  Then, she came to Dallas with her husband (and no kids!!!) in early September for 5 days and we spent almost every minute together except while I was working.  I'm also doing better on the one who is local -- we've mostly been going to yoga and doing things with her family (like our roadtrip to the Blueberry Festival, and spending Memorial Day weekend at her parents' house). We've got more fun things planned, but glad I looked back at this resolution -- it's spurring me to make a phone call and get some more on the calendar!  I value both their friendships so much, and I need my allocation of time to reflect that. 

10. Maintaining a list of the books I read this year and reading at least 20 books. I used to read so much more, and now I just feel exhausted when I fall into bed, but I need to add it in somewhere since I enjoy it. I'm torn as to whether I should count books that are currently in-progress (I think I'm reading about 3 right now). I think I will. An incentive to finish them. DONE!  I published a list here from the first half of the year, and I will wrap up the second half of the year post soon.  I read a lot more the first half of the year, but I think I got to 20 books total -- and I should get extra credit for multiple very long non-fiction books!  I could read about 20 copies of long fluff fiction very quickly, but that doesn't seem fun or like it has any self-improvement value. 

11. Learning at least 100 Mandarin Chinese characters. One of the blogs I enjoy reading, AlmostFearless, had this statistic recently: Full fluency is 3000 characters, but with 100 characters, you're already 42% fluent. That would be lovely! If I could get to 200 characters, I'd be at 55%. Now I'm no Joseph Needham, and I know it will be tough, but I would think I could learn 100 characters in 10 months. Maybe. I hope. It will be fun to try! 1500 characters is 94% fluent, so it's really diminishing returns at some point. FAIL. I basically gave up on literacy but I worked on speaking before our trip. It was hard, but being able to say some very basic things was a lot of help. I worked with our neighbor's relative and did a little trade -- I helped her with English, she helped me with Chinese.  I'd guess that I learned about 10-20 characters, so complete fail on the resolution. 

12. Closet purge continued. Alter or donate most things that do not fit. I might try that old trick of turning all my hangers backwards to see what I actually wear, but I think I do wear most of the clothes. It's just more than I need. How many black tops does one person need for example? IN PROGRESS, if I'm generous, otherwise, FAIL.  I made very little progress.  I turned the hangers backward, but it just showed me that I do wear a lot of what I own. But it's still too much. I need to work on this one a lot.  I don't think I got anything altered, but that was because I have a certain weight I want to be at when I get things done, and I'm not sure I ever saw that weight in 2012 (if I did, it wasn't often), and even if I'm only 5 pounds heavier, I don't want things altered for that fit because I want to encourage myself to stay at the lower weight! 

All in all, particularly given that I prioritized my resolutions and I had a lot of success on the first half-dozen, I'd call it a win.