A year ago, I had experienced one of the most emotionally taxing years of my life. As I sit here and reflect on the past year, I feel at peace saying that it was a mix of highs and lows. For me, it truly took experiencing some low lows to appreciate all of the great blessings and experiences in my life.
After moving across the country in February, I took some time away from it to start my life in Denver. Although it took me months to find the right job (so emotionally taxing), I met new friends and fell in stride with old ones, which has been one of the biggest blessings of the move – building community so quickly. My heart hasn’t felt this full since college, and it’s one of the best gifts of 2019.
In a dissimilar fashion, it turns out that not running around New York City every day for work will do some things to the body – one might say they were unwelcomed changes. That coupled with me deciding to stop taking birth control, and well, hello extra pounds. While I do love to go thrift shopping, I don’t necessarily love having to go thrift shopping because my pants don’t fit (#truelife). These changes have made me become much more conscious of my day-to-day routine. Today, I’m prioritizing how to incorporate more exercise, activities, and conscious eating into my life and am appreciating the process instead of shaming myself for my changing body.
Pulling it all together, let’s take a look at my 3 overarching goals for 2019 and how I faired:
Mind: Create more self-confidence.
Body: Increase quality time with my boyfriend.
Soul: Sell my own products.
In terms of my ‘mind’ goal, I would say that I created more self-acceptance in 2019, which was just as much needed as self-confidence. I am proud of what my body can do and how it held up with all of the uncertainty that it experienced this year. Building self confidence is a constant work-in-process.
For the ‘body’ goal, I’m ending the year feeling blessed beyond measure to have the partner in life that I have. We’ve known each other for nearly 6 years now, and a lot of changes happened in year five. We are figuring out how to grow together while simultaneously evolving individually. It feels like we’re hitting a cohesive stride, and I am giddy thinking about where this new year and decade will take us.
This spring, I started consulting (content creation, website management, social media, resume writing, etc.) and made over $5,000 doing it. What I realized throughout this process is that yes, I can make more money and supplement my income, but I also fully realized that time IS money, and I desperately want to flex more of my creative muscles and create real, physical products that I can sell. Because of this, I quit 1 of the 2 consulting gigs that I had to get more time back and figure out how to work through my imposter syndrome to start creating more of what I want to.
Looking back, this was an incredible year of transition, and I believe that 2020 will be, too. Without further ado, here are my 2020 mind-body-soul goals!
Mind: Be consistent with whatever I commit to myself.
Body: Establish a weekly fitness and wellness routine.
Soul: Learn homemaker skills.
Let’s dive into my ‘mind’ goal of being more consistent. You see, as an obliger, I seldom stay consistent for myself. Sure, others can count on me all day, every day – I seldom drop the ball for others. Unfortunately, I haven’t found a way to not let myself down. What I’ve learned from Gretchen Rubin is that because I’m an obliger, I need external accountability for activities that I WANT to do. Moving forward, I am going to strategize and execute on having more external accountability to reach my goals.
Big news: we just bought a house! It was a whirlwind process, and it all happened between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Although the timing was insane with the holidays and we agreed to a quick close, I couldn’t be more excited about this next chapter. We have a 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom house! Simply typing that out brings so much JOY to me because I have lived in a 1 bedroom, 1 bathroom space for over 5 years. When we have friends and family over, they will have their own space and won’t have to sleep on an air mattress or couch in the living room – it feels like we hit the jackpot.
Now, I’m jumping to the homemaking ‘soul’ goal. Everyone has told us the first year of homeownership is the hardest, but I am overly excited to learn. I even bought a book called, “The Virgin Home Owner” – ha! This year, I want to learn how to sew, landscape the yard, create a garden, and DIY housework as best as I can without hiring help. Excited to turn the house into a home.
Back to the ‘body’ goal – because we’re leaving our amenity building and moving 5 miles west of where we currently live, I will no longer have a Peloton bike to use (for now, anyway). I want to establish a new fitness and wellness routine that is convenient. I haven’t done much research for fitness options, but I love group classes for external accountability and motivation. I’m looking forward to developing a fitness and wellness routine that helps calm my mind and makes me feel proud of myself.
Thinking back on the past decade, it was the first 10-year span where I was an adult, and ohhh my, did I feel all the responsibilities of being one. Graduating college, getting accepted into TFA and moving to Denver to teach, finishing grad school, meeting the best guy I know, letting go of grudges, deciding to move across the country again to NYC, getting my ego crushed by being fired from a job for the first time, experiencing homesickness so hard, pushing myself in ways I had never before, trying to figure out who the hell I am, paying off all of my student debt, making life-long friends from all over, evaluating my own beliefs and guiding principles, experiencing the world drastically change with social media, dealing with never-before had anxiety, moving back to Denver from NYC, having tough conversations that I had avoided, owning who I am and what makes me tick, learning to not take rejection personally, traveling the world, learning that what you manifest, you become – the list goes on and on.
What I know for sure is that while I look somewhat similar to who I was 10 years ago, mentally and emotionally I am a totally different person – I’ve evolved. And we all do! Time and experiences do that to us. In another 10 years, I’ll be 40 (EEEK!) and look forward to reflecting on another decade past and what it taught me.
What have you learned?
Cheers,
Marah Elizabeth
