2021 – The year that was a decade

Is it just me, or does every year now feel like a decade? I sat down to try and begin a blog about 2021 and I got so overwhelmed I put it off for 2 weeks. I don’t want to bore you with all of the ups and downs – after all, we kind of went through them together. Remember allll the way back at the beginning of 2021 when the vaccines (that’s right, more than one! We had options!) were proved effective and safe? And we thought “wow, this pandemic is going to end! FINALLY!” And then fast-forward to a “decade” later, at the end of 2021, when we had yet another variant and went back to checking positivity percentages every day. Yea, that part kind of sucked. But the good part about living a decade within a single year is, we had some pockets of time that were great!

I usually do a year recap in the form of a bullet journal goals check in. Bad news, I kind of gave up on my bullet journal in June. Oops. Good news, the reason I gave up on it was because I was doing too many fun things and couldn’t keep up! More bad news, I started another bullet journal because I guess I’m a masochist.

Anyway, I was able to achieve a lot of my 2021 bullet journal goals, despite the fact that we lived on the cusp of anxiety attack every day of the year.

Health

Mental health? Precarious. Physical health: not too shabby!

I was able to complete 260 Peloton cycling classes, which was 60 more than my goal. Also, I completed 100 strength classes and 100 stretching classes on Peloton. Not to mention, I joined Orangetheory and I got 10,000 steps/day all but 9 days of the entire year. Remember those mental health walks from 2020? I’m still going on them. I walked a total of 4,986,793 steps.

 Also, I achieved my goal of only ordering in food once or twice a week. I know that may seem easy, but in New York, not so much.

Here’s what I didn’t achieve:

• Going to a dermatologist. I tried, but when I got there I discovered they didn’t take my insurance despite their assurances on the phone. Then I gave up because I was pissed.
• Drinking water every day before coffee. We have limited joys now, coffee is one of them. I threw this goal down the drain in February.

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Work

Honestly, I didn’t write down any work goals. And work has been… CRAZY. My main goals were to get through every week without screaming at any coworkers or shooting myself. I sort of succeeded.

Social Media

Well guys, I failed you again. Every year I try to publish 2 blogs/month and every year I fail. I posted 13 all year. I am going to try and do better! I also failed at getting 5,000 followers on my braiding Instagram, despite going viral for the NYC Marathon. I have been hovering JUST under 4,000 for 3 years now. *shrug*. This next year I’m focusing more on TikTok, but more on that in my next post.

Finance

Crazily, this is the main place where I achieved all of my goals. Despite my major return to international travel, I was able to max out my Roth IRA, reach my goal in my 403B, AND get to a net worth of 60K! This is huge considering the amount of student debt I am still carrying around. Not having to pay any student loans for the entire year definitely helped my finances.

Relationship

I’m still in one, so yay! He tells me he loves me every day, even after I yell at him 900 times for leaving his dishes in the sink. We didn’t go on one date/excursion per month, but Covid made that difficult at times. We almost made it, though! We did some at-home baking with a zoom class, we traveled to Aruba and France together, and best yet, we set a wedding date!! It’s soon. Yikes. Maybe I’ll write more about this, maybe I won’t. So far, I’m the worst future bride I’ve ever met.

Other

These miscellaneous goals were hit or miss. I DID see 3 Broadway shows. Impressive, considering Broadway wasn’t even open all year. I didn’t achieve 3 things on my NYC Bucket List. In fact, I didn’t even complete one of them. I tried to see the Nutcracker but the show was cancelled two days before because of Omicron. I did travel to three new countries (four if you count Monaco). I tried to call a friend once a month, but I really hate talking on the phone. I braided clients for a musical festival, a wedding, Halloween, and two races. Not too shabby considering I spent most of the year avoiding strangers’ faces.

2021 was a wild ride. It felt like 60% of the time, my butt was melded with my couch, and 40% of the time I was out of the country. We moved apartments, we went snorkeling and ATV-ing, Chris ordered from Amazon 100 million times, I did my nails 55 times, and collectively we got 6 new credit cards. 2022 is guaranteed to be a crazy year, too. We already have 4 weddings in the next 5 months, and we are hoping to start trying to have a baby (what?!?). Next week I’ll let you know what my 2022 goals are. Do you have any suggestions?

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