It’s tiiiiime.
Anyone who’s followed my blogs for any significant period of time knows that I’ve been doing this survey every year for over a decade (with the exception of 2010). It’s a tradition that traces its roots back to Xanga and Myspace, back when they were the blogging/social media sites de jour.
The questions are juvenile and not conducive to truly personal revelations, but I don’t know, I have an affection for it - this survey is kind of like a mini time capsule that I leave myself every year. My year condensed in 40 questions.
Every year I also find myself feeling the need to justify why I continue to do this survey, so this year, I say fuck it. I’mma do what I want. This year I resolve to stop feeling the need to justify anything I do or why I want to do it.
Past years for reference:
2014
2013
2012
2011
2009
2008
2007
2006
2005
2004
2003
1. What did you do in 2015 that you’d never done before?
I played real ass shuffleboard in NYC. I successfully landed in eka pada galavasana. I ate monkfish liver and sweetbreads. I got comfortable parallel parking and became a true LA resident in the process. I achieved Southwest A-List from my travels to and from San Francisco - so long, “B” boarding group!
2. Did you keep your New Year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
My 2015 goals:
- Work out 3-4x/week: Total fail, as far as consistency goes. But still, the fact that I work out on any regular basis is impressive to me, considering the years after college in which I literally did nothing except watch TV and feel sorry for the pounds accumulating around my midsection (and thighs, and arms, and face).
- Dress like a grown-up: 100% success. High-fucking-five to me.
- Save more money/stop spending so much money on food: Lol. As usual, I failed at this, as I do every year. I mean, I had dinner at The French Laundry again this year, if that’s any indication of my lack of fiscal responsibility. That’s two more times than I ever thought I would go in my life.
- Read more, write more: I definitely wrote more, but alas, didn’t read more.
- Learn how to code: I got halfway through Codeacademy’s Javascript section and realized that I don’t really want to be a programmer, I’d really rather do something more creative, like get back into graphic design or some other artistic pursuit. Basically what I’m saying is I got toe-deep into Javascript and nope’d the fuck out of this resolution.
- Make friends/find new hobbies in LA: I halfway achieved this, I would say. I definitely made more of an effort this year to reach out to old friends and acquaintances in LA and foster those relationships. I didn’t meet any new people, but I’m looking forward to the opportunity to build deeper relationships with the people I do know in LA, and I think that’s a good start. I also got a little closer to dabbling in new hobbies, but not as deep as I would have liked.
My 2016 goals:
- Stop using Jojo as a mental excuse for not working out, going out, being productive, etc. This year I found myself justifying not going to the gym or not going to my coworking space because I wanted to hang out with Jojo. It was a flimsy excuse to rationalize deeper problems - my laziness, my depression, my light agoraphobia that I’ve started to develop in the past year. Next year I’d like to focus on refining my daily routine and allocating appropriate time to work, to Jojo, and most importantly, to myself.
- Follow through. Beyond just following through with my hobbies and promises to myself to work out more, write more, read more, etc., I’d also like to be better at following through with other things. Like when I tell someone let’s hang out, I want to follow through on all aspects of this process - reaching out, making plans, responding to texts in a timely manner, being punctual. This year I noticed that I would sometimes reach out to people and check that box on my list, so to speak, but then would be terrible at actually responding to texts within a timely window. While I’m an extremely reliable person in professional settings, next year, I’d like to translate this sense of reliability into my personal life as well.
- Gain expertise in a new hobby. I don’t know how this will take shape just yet. In previous years I’ve focused on improving myself in areas I know I excel in, like writing and yoga, but I languished, I think partially because I’m already pretty comfortable in those areas. Next year I’d like to tackle something new, something foreign, something to really push myself outside of my comfort zone. I have a lot of peripheral hobbies - things I’ve dabbled in in the past but haven’t touched in years, like web design, graphic design, photography, collage art and hip hop dancing - I’d like to revisit these and reattain a sense of competency in at least one of them next year.
- Develop weekly grocery habit. I don’t have this, and honestly, it’s what contributes to most of my eating out. I grocery shop so rarely, I don’t know how to do it. It’s crippling. I’m paralyzed by the idea of cooking at home, but if I want to save money and develop healthy eating habits, I know I need to do this.
