Merry Christmas!!
I thought it’d be a fun exercise to review my resolutions.
I’ve found that the top resolutions people make usually center around:
- losing weight
- getting out of debt
- quitting a bad habit (smoking/drinking)
- enjoying life more
As I don’t really have a problem with any of the above, my resolutions tend to be more specific rather than vague, and more around things like learning a new skill or language.
I never say things for my resolution I cannot achieve realistically.
I know we should all aim for the moon to land among the stars, but I don’t buy into it when I feel disappointed for having shot TOO high.
2009: Get my driver’s license & buy a cheap car
- Got my license in November
- I picked up a used car for $1800 cash.
- Insurance ended up being $300 per year ($25/month) and gas is at a minimum.
- No maintenance required except new windshield wipers, 2 car batteries (one drained — oops!) and new tires.
- Other bonuses are that I got rid of my $60,000 of debt after I started in 2006, budgeting and tracking my expenses.
2010: Go eco-friendly & shop my wardrobe
GOING ECO-FRIENDLY:
- Am eating vegetarian (if not, vegan) two to three times a week, sometimes more*
- Switched to a basic soap (no perfumes, etc)
- Removed shampoo, then had to settle on green shampoos (my hair is too long for poo-free)
- Household cleaning is all natural: white vinegar, lemon, baking soda, soap, water
- Not much laundry detergent used (just warm water in a machine, on occasion soap if there’s grease)
- Dishwashing detergent is rare (with hot water, if the food isn’t crusted on, it cleans just fine)
- Man-made chemicals kept to a minimum (mostly present in my makeup)
- Body lotions and face creams are as natural as possible (hello Korres and argan oil!)
- Walked a lot more than I drove my car (helps to be centrally located)
*Plain soba noodles in a package, not the ramen kind, mixed into a miso broth and adding some sliced mushrooms = AMAZINGLY tasty.
NO SHOPPING FOR 2010:
- Had 3 things on my list as a gimme — I ended up buying 2 pairs of trouser pants for work
- Still have 1 “gimme” leftover I was going to use for hiking boots, but they didn’t have my size
- Shopped my wardrobe and worked my accessories
- Was tempted a couple of times, namely by this shirt.
So what’s next?
2011: Tour Asia, Yogify and learn Chinese
TOUR ASIA FOR A MONTH
This is a major trip that I was going to take in 2009.
Then 2010.
But now this year, there is no more delaying it!
I am going to Asia come hell or high water.
- Japan
- China
- Indonesia (?)
- Thailand (?)
- Malaysia (?)
- Singapore
TURN INTO A YOGI PRETZEL
My health resolution is to get more into yoga. I’ve done it halfheartedly and I need to step it up and make it a habit (I skip days when I feel lazy, and that’s just dumb).
Goal? Be able to bend like a pretzel.
I’ve always been envious of circus performers who can fit into ridiculously small spaces. This skill might come handy one day if I decide to smuggle myself across the border. (I kid, I kid! 🙂 )
Or when I decide to run away and join the circus. Skip to 1:36 for an OMG moment
Then 3:10 for the This is UNBELIEVABLE Shut The Front Door moment, if you’re impatient.
LEARN SOME CHINESE
My learning resolution is to learn Chinese. I already know French enough to converse in it, listen to TV and radio shows, and read it. It’s just a question of practicing it now (which I’ll most definitely get with having BF around).
As for why Chinese, I think it’s becoming a global language and it would be nice to know what people are saying to me in Chinatown when I buy food. 😛 I’d like to learn Mandarin, specifically.
I also don’t want to spend a lot of money on this, but if any of you think it’s worth it, I’d pay for a tutor or go to classes.
Can anyone suggest something in Toronto that’s a condensed 6-week crash course downtown, or a tutor who charges a reasonable rate? And what is a reasonable rate for a tutor?
I won’t be in one city for a long period of time which is why I haven’t signed up for classes. I never know where I’ll be next.
I’m going to start with Pimsleur, as I did with French, but I don’t have a native speaker to help me the way I had BF to teach me French and practice… so I’m thinking this one will be a lot harder.
I’ll deem this a success if I can speak a short conversation in Mandarin, buying items of food, the weight, the price, the numbers, the different names of food and small talk about myself.
Just a girl trying to find a balance between being a Shopaholic and a Saver.
I cleared $60,000 in 18 months earning $65,000 gross/year.
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As long as you can ask directions, prices and questions about food in Chinese you'll be fine. You might even want to consider scheduling one of those preplanned touristy tours of the country (like Contiki tours). It is a super tricky language to learn. I'd recommend Beijing (the wall, Summer Palace, Temple of Heaven, the Forbidden City), Shanghai and Hong Kong. Hong Kong has the greatest museum. Shanghai is the nicer of the two major cities.
I love your resolutions/goals for 2011! Very impressive!
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Nice 2011 resolutions! Maybe you should just do Japan and China. One month is not really a lot of time and if you have to keep flying, it's even less. I love Kyoto and wish we could have spent more time there. China is a lot of fun too, but so much more difficult for an English speaker.
As for yoga, see if you can find a yoga instructor that you really like. It makes all the difference.
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I could go for longer. It could be 2-3 months 🙂 I just thought a month because a week in each city… Macau is a day. 🙂 But I might go for longer if I decide to travel to the other places.
You did awesome with your past goals and I love this years too! An amazing goal.. to be single without kids… 😉 LOL!! You're very inspiring! 🙂
Hey FB! I do try to keep resolutions, but they usually never make it to the end. Last year, I made a resolution scroll and stored it away. I opened it at the end of the year to see that I made about 50% of my goals. That was a real eye-opener. I don't remember if I made a scroll for this year, but I think the point is that I need to make more manageable goals! I haven't completely thought about what I'm doing next year, but I should be posting something soon.
After getting a parking ticket and a driving ticket in the past week I think my New Year's Resolution for 2011 will be to be a better driver. (or at least stop getting caught). I had a post on my website where I asked why it is rare to hear people saying they want to be better people as their new year's resolution. I guess it is too broad. Plus it would be much easier to give up soda….like I plan on doing. Happy New Year's!
Wow, my tummy rumbled when I read your simple soba recipe. I'm going to try that! I constantly make lists of goals, and here's what I've condenced this year's goals down to:
1) Organize: Put everything away as soon as I'm done with it, always. Continue to purge/simplify. 2) New Career: Apply to one opportunity that will help me achieve my new career daily. 3) Health: Eat more vegetables and move more. (nice and simple, I won't get too ambitious in the health arena or I will crash and burn!)
I'm excited to start with a new slate and keep working toward my goals. I'm envious of your 2011 trip to Asia. You deserve it; have fun!
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Oooh, Asia…. *swoon* I've always wanted to go there, but money and a fear of non-English characters holds me back. I'll have to live vicariously through you, instead!
I used to make resolutions each year. They were all pretty stereotypical: lose weight, make more money, yadda, yadda, yadda. I finally realized around age 20 that I never stuck to them and they just made me feel bad. Until this year, I didn't do any intention-setting. For the solstice, though, I felt like I should take advantage of the cosmic alignment and choose some realistic, healthy points of focus for my new year. Things like "be a better friend" are much more awesome and achievable than "lose 20 pounds". 🙂
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You are going to have a great year!
That is fabulous about the eco friendly changes you made. Bravo!
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The only resolution I'm making this year is to write a daily journal everyday and hopefully at the end of 2011 I'll know a little more about myself.
Happy New Year everyone!
Rosetta Stone is the way to go my friend! My anglo co-worker from Minnesota learned Farsi in 8 months. It's awesome!
I have vague memories of my dad trying to teach me Chinese (mandarin) and failing miserably. For someone with English as a first language, the characters and tones were such a puzzle. Plus, I really didn't care to learn at the time. Do you have any Chinese speaking friends?
I feel like I set some goals last year (the url of my Goals page still reads 2009, so I must have blogged about them last year) but I don't recall what they were! It was so nutty in third year journalism, it's all a blur – it was a struggle to head up a flat, be the main income earner and balance everything else on my plate.
I feel like this was the first year I really got stuck into goals and kept myself accountable by checking in on the blog every month. I'm really really really struggling to set goals for next year though. A lot of that is due to the fact I'm not quite sure if I'll be making a job change and that will have a big impact on my financial and travel goals.
I like to set achievable goals, too – I get easily discouraged (shrug).
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Agreed with setting realistic and achievable goals [I don't do resolutions ;)]. Mine–learn how to do a proper head- and hand-stands.
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Merry Christmas. Thanks for sharing a great post and for all your help as well. Truly appreciate it.
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Congratulations on doing so well on your 2010 goals, I look forward to seeing how 2011 goes for you 🙂
Most of my goals revolve around reducing my debt and being more self sufficient, including planting a garden in the back yard to produce some of my groceries myself: http://diggingoutandup.blogspot.com/2010/12/head-…
I'm looking forward to some pictures from the Asia trip, I hope you post some 🙂
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I'd like to learn German because I work for a German company and it would be pretty helpful to know some, even though my coworkers all speak English too. The office should pay for lessons though, but not until this summer.
I have too many goals for this year though – it never works if you have too many! Still working on narrowing them down from:
get out more
write for my blogs more
get new website off the ground
get some sleep!
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Like some of the previous commenters, I highly recommend you invest money into taking classes or swapping language lessons with a native speaker of Mandarin. Unlike French where you probably picked it up relatively easy because of its similarity to English (I found the same when I studied French in high school), the phonetic nuances of Chinese and its complete dissimilarity from English means that it's really not something you can become fluent in (or even passable in) by reading language books and listening to audio tapes.
I speak Cantonese at home (and have done for my entire life) and studied Mandarin for four years at university, and still wouldn't call myself a fluent speaker. Do at least a term or a semester of evening classes, and that should give you a decent enough foundation to continue on your own!
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you and your family.
Haven't set any New Years resolutions as yet, I'll keep you all posted when it happens.
Keep up the great posts.
I would like to quit my nicorette habit! I know I will not be able to until I get out of the military. It is too stressful. I need to exercise more. I have only made financial goals at this point. Need to meditate on what holistic and spiritual changes I would like to make.
Congrats on going eco-friendly and minimalist. I still have to wrap my mind around not going shopping for a year. That takes an enormous amount of discipline…very impressive. Love your Asia tour…you are already eating miso soup. Miso soup was my favorite when I lived in Japan. I have my sights on Europe, but hopefully will visit Thailand and maybe Singapore before leaving here.
Wish you the very best of 2011!
My recent post New Year’s resolutions AKA goals
Visit Asia is on my bucket list. Learning Chinese is a big one! I'm trying to organically learn Japanese from some coworkers and they insist that I should go to Japan for a month and that I would pick it up easily. I'm looking forward to when you tell us about this trip.
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I always make resolutions, except mines are more vague 🙂 But then thru the year they can change so I'm not too hung up on them.
For 2011, I would like to reduce the amount of clothes I buy- preferably to 5 max, strengthen my core with pilates (sorry I'm not a yoga person) and also reducing the number of products I use and stuff I own. Travelling will feature a big part of 2011 which is why I need to reduce what I own.
Have a Happy New Year!
This is a great post. I stopped making New Year's resolutions a long time ago. I like the way you made yours specific so they seem more feasible to achieve.
Happy New Year
With the exception of Japan I have visited all of the countries on your Asian Tour list. Each are worth visiting as each is very different in terms of culture, and food but very similiar weather scenery wise. My favourite place on your list is Singapore, and if you make it there you must go to Raffles for a Gin Sling, it,s traditional.
With the exception of Japan I have visited all of the countries on your Asian Tour list. Each are worth visiting as each is very different in terms of culture, and food but very similiar weather scenery wise. My favourite place on your list is Singapore, and if you make it there you must go to Raffles for a Gin Sling, it,s traditional.
Lots of great inexpensive shopping and loads of top rate reasonably hotels to pick from. you may find some of the more outlying areas to be a bit of a culture shock, but for my money thats part and parcel of why I visit other countries.
Loved you Resolutions for 2011, obviously well thought out, i would be happy with the weight and debt ones, so I,ll probably stick with them.
Hope your enjoying the festive season.
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Great post and congrats achieving your goals in 2010. In the new year, your goals seems very interesting and fun at the same time. Learning Chinese, well that may take you a bit longer than one year possibly. How long would you go for? Also have a look at my post, it has a similar theme for New Year and New Goals.
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Hey Girl,
Great resolutions and as usual a great post. Contact me by email (tahnyap@gmail.com) , I have a budget friendly solution to help you learn Mandarin.
Hey FB, how do you like the Arras Theme? I'm thinking of doing a theme rehaul. 🙂
I like all of your resolutions! I'd like to get more fit.. and incorporate more yoga / Pilates into my routine… and to be strong enough in my core to do a Pilates rollover!
The theme is good but really time intensive. It took me about 2 weeks to set it up properly then another month to make all my old posts with their featured image!!
(continued…) and I definitely recommend that if there is ONE language that is worth a private tutor, then Mandarin is definitely it. Can't wait to hear about your progress and read about your travels! 🙂 Merry Christmas & A Happy New Year!
(Sorry about the comment "split", I'm a talkative person, so I sometimes have a difficult time "keeping it short" : )
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These are great New Year's Resolutions! 🙂 If you're considering learning Chinese (mandarin) then I strongly recommend getting a tutor. I took a 6-week crash course in Mandarin back in 2002 and it was sooooo difficult. Around the same time I also took crash courses in Italian and Japanese (because I already knew German and French from school) but of all the languages I've ever learned (and tried to learn) Mandarin is by far the hardest. Harder than Japanese. Because in Mandarin phonetics is sooo important. Take a word like "ma" for example. The word can be pronounced in 4 different ways, and each pronounciation is a completely different word (i.e. mother, horse, scold/rope or a question mark). It's sooo tough to learn. I had a native Chinese speaker as a tutor,
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Good luck with your resolutions! 🙂 and good job on the ones for this year!
As for your resolution of wanting to learn Chinese, I've been studying Chinese in university for four years now, and one thing I would really recommend, for a few sessions, a tutor/ native speaker who can tell you whether or not you pronounce everything right from all the basic syllables to the four different tones. Chinese has quite a limited amount of syllables, so you could go through all of them pretty quickly. It's not necessary of course, but it's always better I think to learn such basics right from the start. There are some sounds that sound completely the same when you first encounter them, and those would probably be hard to learn on your own.
Chinese grammar is relatively easy: a fixed word order, no verb inflections. Should not be too hard! The hardest part for me in studying Chinese has been learning to write the characters, but if your goal is just to have basic conversations with people, it isn't really necessary to learn that too.
If you have any specific questions, just ask! 🙂 Good luck 🙂
Merry Christmas!
I enjoyed reading about your resolutions and your progress throughout the year so the recap post on resolutions past and present was like a little trip down memory lane :). I was attempting a no-shop quarter but that fell through as I needed lots and lots of work gear (this self-employed thing is no joke).
Enjoy the holiday season.
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Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to You. I have made more than my share of resolutions in the past. Most match your popular ones in the post. Always losing weight is on it. Some years I do and some I don't. At the ripe old age of 41 I have finally learned that if there is no plan in place for the resolution, it's just like wishing on a star…a nice…fleeting thought.
Everyone I know who has done an Asian holiday raves about Thailand.
Thanks for another year of great reading. I truly do feel like country mouse next to you and I love the insights into a bigger city life and a more global perspective.
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