So I obsessively recorded my year. I did mean to only do a few pictures a month but I wanted to get it all down. Maybe a resolution will be to do a monthly post this year. Hmm… I know I will come back to this next year and in 5 years and reread it though. Because I did that last year:
I had to go exploring for resolutions in my older posts. I’ve never been a big resolution person but it’s always fun to take a quick trip down memory lane and 2007 made me laugh and sigh. How far I haven’t come? Be nicer, make the world better, be a better mother, spend time with friends and family… It’s a never ending struggle I guess. 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2012 were all similar. Cook, organize, clean… Logging my books on GoodReads made me laugh. But that does go with the organization theme!
I still wanted to do a short(er) recap and also get it organized to do a social media post with fun pics and videos. So here it is…
Traveled: LA, Mammoth, Palm Springs (2x!), Florida (St. Pete), France (Paris, Aix-en-Provence, Sainte Maxime, Monaco), Laguna Beach, San Diego (multiple times!) Switzerland (Zurich, Lorcano, Stoos), New York, and a cancelled trip to Big Bear…
Multiple health checks and scares: Breast biopsy, stomach & breast MRI for me; surgery for Sam
Language learned: Continued with French (3 year streak – 2,749 minutes, 46 hours of learning this year)
Music played: 23,743 minutes, 400 hours (The Alchemy & Down Bad were my top 2 songs #taytay)
Podcasts: (Included in the total music played time above) I started the year with a lot of OnPurpose, ended with a lot of Mel Robbins, and my favs are Sync Leadership Lab, Demoted, Holderness Family, and a little bit of RealPod and Giggly Squad. With a shoutout to the upcoming podcast of Midlife with Katie!
Meditations – many mindful hours of the Calm meditation app – longest streak: 89 days!
Health: Daily cardio for mental health and a full year of weight workouts – I lost 30lbs almost two years ago and have continued to keep it off!
Games: Continued CandyCrush & Spider (Solitare) addiction. Let’s be glad I don’t know the amount of time spent on these!
Books: 62 books read – I can’t choose just two favorites, I must catalog my top 10! #comingsoon
Volunteer work: Did not do as much as I would have liked to but still helped with Boy Scouts, YL Theater, Love YL, and helping Sam with her Gold Award
Theater (kids): I watched Oklahoma, Oregon Trail, Little Mermaid, Cabaret, Senior Sing, Chicago, Christmas Carol (also watched Descendants, Noises Off), and a bunch of hysterical ComedySportz shows!
Theater (professional!): MJ, Beetlejuice, Peter Pan, Great Gatsby, Romeo & Juliet, Rockettes, Outsiders
Kids: GG turned 16 (got his license!) and Sammie turned 19
Family time: Saw my Dad four times this year and spent a week with him in France!
Most emotional: Sending Sam off to college
Best moment: Shouting “SORTIE, SORTIE” at the top of our lungs with Sam and G in a 5 story parking garage in Aix-en-Provence
Worst moment: Having a panic attack in hour 2 of waiting for Sam to get out of surgery
Best concert: Imagine Dragons!
Best hike: Aliso Peak with Angie in July although walking the Seine multiple time was fantastic…
Best bike ride: Okay, bike riding on the Seine! (Although we did a few beach rides that are always so nice!)
Best meal: Branzino with Nicole at Predalina, Tampa in February (Michelin recognized!)
Best movie: My Old Ass – I cried 10 minutes straight through the end of that movie
Best TV series: One Day – I cried through an episode and a half, and I even knew what was coming
Best Selfie: Too many ridiculous ones to count
Work front
Bosses: 3 this year! A new record
Team: 7 people, a new record
Travel: First trip to Zurich!
First leadership conference: Yassss!
Kaizen: First time facilitator (caused a huge panic attack!)
Engagement scores: 100% in manager effectiveness and 96% overall
Overall
Meaningful personal growth! Oh, what a year. It’s ending on quite a dramatic note but I’m thankful that I had started this draft months ago as a reminder of the highlights of the year and what I wanted to remember.
My word of 2024 was Strength
I want to continue my strength training. I want to feel strong, and confident, and calm. I want to walk through 2024 knowing I can trust myself, count on myself, and be steadfast. Even though I want to be strong, I want to lean on my friends and family and have the strength to know what’s right and be vulnerable and open to the present moment. I want to have the strength to continue to know myself better. And to make positive choices and decisions on what’s best for me. I want the strength to give myself grace.
I’m working through what my word of 2025 is.
But I liked how I found a quote in my files that said “If we can’t give ourselves grace, then we won’t enjoy the journey” and I feel peace when I read that.
I think I did a good job with 2024 and strength. On the obvious side of things, I kicked ass in my weight workouts. I did them at least 5x a week, doing two longer/harder workouts every week and shorter 10min sprints on other days along with cardio. I moved up to 12lb heavy weights, using my more awkward 17lbs and 20lbs for RDLs and other things. I could probably lift heavier weights, but I tend to focus on increasing the number of repetitions instead. I need to find heavier weights that are more manageable in size.
I was stronger and more confident in a few areas of my life. In work, I had several times that I can recognize where I was calm and I said my piece to the people I was working with, and I made my points. I can think of three specific times where I had a goal to be confident and composed and I came out of those meetings feeling like I kicked ass.
I was also more vulnerable with some of my friends and family.
Not a lot. But more.
And I’m slowly growing to know myself better and make those positive choices. I feel closer relationships with my kids and my Mom. My friend relationships are infinitely better because we’ve shared so many hardships this year and leaned on each other for what we needed.
So I’m proud of myself for that.
I’m still toying over some of my resolutions for 2025.
I never started Atomic Habits but G read it and loved it. And I agree with the basic principle which is making a small, tiny change to current habits makes long-term goals achievable. And it makes it easy and fun.
So that said, I have a few small changes that I want to stick to.
- Meditate 3x a week
I’ve really enjoyed meditation and if I don’t prioritize it in the mornings, it just doesn’t get done. And the last 6 weeks, I haven’t had a very strong routine. I’ve barely scraped by with my workouts and have definitely missed a few days here and there. I was in the habit of doing a meditation after the workout and I haven’t been doing that. And I’m okay with missing workouts, to be clear. I want to give myself grace but I also really enjoy having a daily routine and I really depend on it for my mental health. But for meditation, I want to try to hit 3x a week. Right now, I’m barely doing one. Whether that looks like right after a workout, or making the time to fit it in elsewhere, I want to figure that out.
Meditation is such a small thing but by doing it, it helps me be calmer and more present. If I continue to meditate, I think I can continue to work on the very adult goal of being present and calm and a nicer person. That’s always a good thing!
- Continue language learning for 5m a day
I feel like this is such a gimme since I’m going to hit my 3-year streak on Duolingo next month but I really have to make time for learning and I want to continue it. Learning a new language is INCREDIBLY difficult and spending 2 minutes a day is easy but I don’t learn anything. Two minutes is basically one lesson. Spending 5m is definitely making a difference. 3x a week, I will do 10-15 minutes a day so I want to reaffirm my commitment to learning every day. In 10 years, I would love to speak two languages. And doing 2-3 lessons a day, will get me to this long-term goal that I just decided on now. LOL
- Writing 1,500 words a month in some form on a personal level
Writing is really satisfying. It’s a love/hate relationship because sometime I read my words and hate hate hate them so much but others, it just feels magical that I can re-read what I wrote and really feel that I was able to articulate exactly what I was feeling. Or find something fun that made me happy about. There has always been some form of resolution that I make about writing over the years and sometime I follow through with it and others I don’t. But I feel like 1,500 is a sizable amount and would require at least 30m of me sitting down and being thoughtful. It makes me happy and it’s not a huge ask of myself.
I think those are three solid ones. I have more thoughts about weight training, about exploring more volunteer work, about thinking what I do with the stock market and managing my money – because I’m extremely obsessive about it. But I don’t have anything fleshed out specifically so I’m going to leave it alone for now.
For my work resolutions, I’m going to spend a few hours with a work colleague diving more into that in the new year. What I’m sort of thinking right now is…
- Find an eCommerce mentor/buddy
This will involve me actively reaching out to eCommerce people that I don’t know, finding people to chat with, and actively pursuing this. It’s something that would be nice to have and I think would be valuable but also sounds like a lot of work. Do I really want to do this? I want to think about it a little bit more.
- Develop my team more
Each of my team needs such different things. I know my team will be changing and I want to think deliberately how I can help affect each one of them. Some of them need more than others, some projects are more impactful than others. I need to figure out how to prioritize that.
I want to keep reading some helpful books, listening to podcasts, and being more intentional about how I go about doing that. I’m not sure what type of resolution that is so I need to keep thinking about it. I have my goals for the year already of what I want to achieve. I have a daily management board laid out that I want to follow, so I know it starts there. I just need to figure out tangibly more of what that looks like.
I know it starts with what book I want to read, or what podcast might interest me. But I’m not sure what I want my personal development goal to be either.
There is something pinging in my brain about feedback with my team. Giving it and getting it. I read a good post about something to say when soliciting feedback that I saved. It said asking the person what rating they would give (the meeting, the speech, the program) and no one ever giving something a 10 so that allows me to ask what I could do better and it’s an easier conversation. I want to start that, I just need to figure out what that looks like. For giving feedback, I can probably start to think in those terms of “it wasn’t a 10, here is what you could do better” but really being able to sandwich in the positive and the negative so it’s constructive. I really want to work on that more. It involves me really noticing all those details and I have a hard time listening sometimes. Listening to hear, rather than listening to just think of how I want to respond next and what I want to say.
So.. I guess I have a good start 🙂 It’s just not concrete.
That said, I have now written a lot and have a few ideas of my word of the year.
Connection: I really liked this word because I want to connect more with people at work. Meditation will help me be more present and connect with friends and family. Writing will help me connect with myself. It was definitely ringing a bell but it wasn’t hitting the mark.
Harmony was another word that felt really nice. I need more harmony in my life and some of my above goals would really work with that. I also struggle with wanting alone time but wanting deeper connections with friends and family. And I’ve always had a struggle with work/life balance (except I see no problems with overworking!) but this word would fit in really nicely. It still wasn’t hitting the mark though!
I put some of my thoughts yesterday into AI and among other words, expand, adapt, and elevate stood out to me. Expand because I’m trying to expand my influence, my knowledge, expand my travel… I really liked adapt because I KNOW a lot of change is going to happen this year and I need to be able to roll with it, be strong, and take everything on with a smile. Adapt was actually one of my second choices behind connection but it didn’t feel powerful enough. Elevate was nice. It made sense. Had some of the similar vibes of expand but was a prettier word but again, it wasn’t connecting with me.
Now that I have spent… oh, a few hours…? Typing all of this up, I put it into AI and asked what other words I should be considering. It gave me a few other possibilities. And I have my winner.
CULTIVATE
I love it! Of course, I looked up the definition. To prepare, to grow, to improve. Essentially to nurture and help grow and develop.
That is exactly what I want to do this year. I want to continue to grow and develop. I want to build off my year of foundational strength and continue to nurture my relationships, my body, and my entire self.
I’m so excited about my word, I already went to Google to buy a bracelet (or two) with my word to remind me. Yaayyyy!
While it’s entirely creepy (?) to use AI and feels a little like cheating sometimes, I really appreciate that I can write out my thoughts and then use AI to dig in deeper to what else I’m thinking of but can’t identify. It’s really interesting how it helps with self-reflection.
2025, I’m ready to take you on with a deep breath in, a calm exhale, and a smile.
