Yeah, strange title, I know. But honestly, I wasn’t really sure how else to put it. It does. It really does. I guess what spurred this post right at this time is a couple of deaths I encountered recently. One was the death of my mom’s best friend. She passed away last week. (I don’t know why I always tend to try to use “passed away” instead of “died”. It’s not like it’s any different either way. I guess it just sounds less harsh to me. Death’s a harsh reality, so maybe it makes it a bit softer? Not really. Anyway.) Apparently, she hadn’t been too healthy lately. Getting old kind of sucks sometimes too. But I remember spending a lot of time with her and her husband when I was a kid. They were my parents’ best friends, and they hung out with us quite a bit. They had known my parents’ since high school and were practically an aunt and uncle to me. My parents’ didn’t do the whole “godparents” thing, but if they did, I have no question that this couple would have been my godparents for sure. The guy passed away (there, I did it again) in 2004, and that had been difficult. He was a really cool guy. They never had any kids, but they were great with them. He was always a fun person to talk to. He was pretty into cars, and had this really neat slot car racetrack set up in his basement that I remember playing with as a kid. They were just a really neat couple. Everyone loved them. I know he has been really missed for a while now, and his wife will be now too. Especially by my mom.

The second thing that has this on my mind is the death of a good friend of mine’s dad yesterday. It sounds like it was pretty sudden and he had some health issues that didn’t really come up until pretty recently. I really felt for her when I saw her post about his death on Facebook. Losing a parent… well, there’s not really anything you can compare it to. And there’s no way to know what it feels like until it happens to you. There’s not really any way to prepare yourself for it. And there’s not any way to “get over” it. It basically just creates this hole in your life that will be there from then on. You don’t get rid of the hole, you just get used to it being there. It never gets any smaller. You just learn how to live with it. It will always hurt, you just figure out out to live with it hurting. Life goes on despite the pain.

I’m not really sure of the point of this post, other than just to articulate what I have been feeling. Losing loved ones changes you, especially losing a parent. There’s just no way to prepare yourself for the death of one of the people that brought you into this world and raised you. I know my friend will be ok, but I also know she’s forever changed now. I guess for me this scene from Grey’s Anatomy just sums it up. I know I’ve posted it before, but here it is again. Welcome to the dead dads club. I seem to have several friends that have been inducted into it now as well, and it pretty much sucks. But the rest of us members will do our best to help you through.

So I promised when I posted my annual review that I would also post something once the new year started about my goals for 2015. Resolutions don’t seem to work, as everyone knows how we all joke about the gyms being more full of people in January that are gone again by February or March. So I have goals. A lot of times those don’t work either, but I’m pretty determined, so this year I’m hoping that they will. I know, a lot of you are probably saying that I’m setting myself up for failure by saying “I’m hoping”, but I’m just being realistic. I’m pretty determined, but I also know my track record. Anyway, let’s talk about how I’m living in 2015.

I don’t really have a nice inventory list made out like I did for my 2014 review, but I do feel like I’m on a good track. I have heard some people talk about having a theme for a year when they start it. If I had to pick a theme for 2015, I think the theme would have to be BALANCE. I feel like I learned a lot about myself last year, and I discovered what I need and don’t need and what works for me and what doesn’t. I started out at the beginning of the year much like this one, pretty determined to be healthier and lose weight. I used the asphalt calculator, to measure my weight and body measurments to know how much fat I have on my body. And I kind of veered in a few different directions with that. I tried to find things that worked, so I tried a few different things. Some worked better than others. For instance, I tried both yoga classes and joining a new gym. I liked both things, but the time and cost it took up to do both proved to not work very well for me. So I stuck with the gym. I didn’t go as often as I should, but I did go. So for now, I dropped the yoga classes. It’s just too much for me. I need to not spend that much money, and honestly, I need a lot of free time. That’s just what works for me.

I also tried some different diets.  Advocare, a green smoothie diet, eMeals… again, some worked, some didn’t. Advocare cost quite a bit, and so many pills made me sick. I know it works for a lot of people, and I know they say the pills are safe… but it just seemed like a LOT of pills to me – too many. I liked the green smoothies, but well… I really like food. I need more to eat than that. eMeals, on the other hand, seems to work well for both myself and Ricky. And it’s probably about the most time and cost effective way for us to cook at home. As I’ve already mentioned, time and money are both pretty important to me.

Also, I didn’t really have any short-term goals or plans in place. Just… lose weight. Now I have more specific goals and plans in place. My gym gives out medallions for each month that you go 12 times. In 2014, I never even got one medallion. I did go, just never that much in one month. This year, it’s my goal to earn all 12 medallions for the whole year. I even have specific days picked out each week to go – Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday. If I can’t make it one of those days, I have promised myself that I HAVE to make it up either the day before or after. If I follow these guidelines, I’ll have no problem getting fit this year. My gym makes that easy, as long as you are consistent.

My weight loss goal is to lose 7 pounds each month. If I do that, by the end of the year I will be at this magic goal weight that I’ve had in my head for years but never been able to achieve. Plus, I think 7 pounds a month is a realistic weight goal to try to achieve.

Another thing I learned last year is that I am most definitely an introvert. I knew this before last year, but honestly, I think I’ve come to terms with the fact that I just expect a lot out of people. I’ve had friends disappoint me in the past, and I know that part of that is that I just expect people to be a certain way. I’m not saying that’s necessarily right. In fact, it may very well be something I need to work on in myself. People are different and look at things differently and have different things they think are right. I think generally most people try to be a good person and a good friend. It’s just hard when we all have different ideas and expectations of what that is, and I know that my expectations may just be too high. Knowing this and knowing that my introvert self is generally pretty happy staying at home a lot and just being on my own (or with my family, aka boyfriend and dogs) doing what I want to do, I’m pretty content right now just focusing on my own goals and not pursuing socialization all that much. Now, don’t get me wrong… I’m not becoming a hermit, and I’m not saying I won’t ever hang out with people. I’m not saying to not ask me to hang out, and I’m not saying I won’t ask you to hang out. I definitely will. I’m just saying that right now, for me, I think I’m happier just not pursuing that all that much. And I think that’s ok.

I have some job goals as well, but I don’t like to go into those too much online. Mostly my goal is to get a promotion this year, and there are a lot of indicators that if I put enough work into it, that that is doable. So that’s what I’m going to do. Another thing that I think is worth mentioning about work is that at the end of last year, a couple of things happened to really help me out in bringing more balance and contentment to my life. Ever since I started my job, I’d been driving at least 45 minutes to an hour to and from work almost every day. It really stressed me out a lot, having to put all of that time and energy into my commute, especially during rush hour. But at the end of last year, I got approval to work from home two days a week, and I got moved to an office location that is much closer (about a 10 minute commute) to home. You wouldn’t believe what a stress reducer this is. Having that extra time in the day makes me much less stressed out and more motivated to go to the gym even on days when I work a full day at the office. I think this will be a huge help in meeting my goals this year.

Some of the things I did last year made me pretty happy, like achieving (and surpassing) my goal of reading 30 books. So I plan on continuing that this year, with a goal of reading 40 this time and having more non-fiction books in there (which tend to be more difficult for me to stay focused on reading).

So, all in all, there’s an idea of my plan for the year. It really is all about finding balance. In 2014 I discovered things that worked for me and things that didn’t, and in 2015 I plan on pursuing the things that did work and the things that made me happy and brought me balance. Get ready… it’s going to be a great year!

As a now committed attendee of World Domination Summit, I tend to follow along quite a bit with Chris Guillebeau‘s blog. Every year he does an annual review, which I think is a good idea to put things in your life into perspective, both to give you some idea of how your year went and what you accomplished, as well as help you prepare goals (NOT resolutions) for the upcoming year. I don’t always go too in-depth when I do any kind of annual review, but last year at the end of the year, I was privileged to have quite a bit of time off from work relaxing in Maui. This gave me plenty of time to think about the past year as well as what I wanted to be different in the new year. I found it pretty refreshing, and I’m looking forward to having some time off at the end of this year as well.

Lately Chris has posted about working on his annual review, so I thought it might be a good idea to take a look at 2014 for myself and how it went. He advocates starting with the questions “What went well this year?” and “What didn’t go well this year?”, which seems like a pretty simple but effective approach to take. So that’s what I did. Let’s see what my outcome was.

What went well in 2014?

Well, it made me feel good that the list of things that went well was much longer than the list of things that didn’t go well. I’ll try not to bore you too much, but here is what I came up with that went well for me this year.

I got to ring in the new year in Maui, which gave me time to evaluate. I really feel like that was a great way to end a year and begin a new one. I mean, obviously Maui itself was fantastic, but I’m actually talking more about having the time to reflect and plan. It was really helpful for me.

I covered the Phoenix Film Festival as press. This was an awesome experience for me. I was privileged to see and review some great films and meet some really cool new people that I look forward to staying connected with. (I’m looking at you, The Showerpeople!)

I attended World Domination Summit and visited Portland for the first time. This was an amazing experience, and one I hope to repeat again for many years to come.

I traveled to Charlotte, NC for work and got to meet my work team in person. I work with a lot of cool people, but we have a team that is spread out over the globe, and I am the only one in Arizona. It was fun to finally meet some of them and have real faces and experiences to put with names and voices I hear over the phone every day. This trip also resulted in getting assigned to a specific project to work on, providing some much-needed clearer direction at work.

We bought a house! Ricky and I moved into a really great house that we absolutely love. It’s bigger with more storage, a garage, a really awesome view. There’s a lot of cool things we like about it, and we are looking forward to enjoying it for at least the next few years.

Ricky and I took a road trip up the West Coast for vacation. It wasn’t the vacation we originally planned, and it didn’t go 100% perfect (but what vacation does?), but it was a good experience nonetheless. We started out by driving to San Diego, taking a train to Portland, then driving to Vancouver and Seattle and flying back from there. The worst parts were a 9-hour train delay, a 3-hour delay at the border both in and out of Canada, and then a big fight our last night there (just being honest… couples do fight!). But all around, it was a very fun experience, and we got to try a LOT of new beers.

I consolidated all of my credit card debt, allowing me to pay all of it off within three years. Not too much to say about this one, really, but it did give me some peace of mind. If you are in debt and struggling to pay it (or just want to have an easier payment and ensure you pay it off relatively quickly), I highly recommend a company called Upstart. I was glad to find them and realize this opportunity was out there.

I was able to go back to Indy to visit friends and family. At first, I wasn’t sure that this was going to happen this year. But, after making some financial changes, I secured a plane ticket and made it out to visit for a few days. I got to see family and enjoy a dinner with quite a few friends while I was there, and I hope to be able to make it out more often in the future.

Ricky and I continued our tradition of visiting San Diego for Thanksgiving. So far, we have done this every year since we moved to Arizona, and it seems to work out well. We’ve gone with different people every time, but it’s always a fun trip and a tradition we hope to continue. This year we actually found a great place to stay via AirBnB. We met the owners of the house we stayed in, and they seem excited to have us come back and stay there again next year.

Recently, my work environment has improved. Pretty much all of the various frustrations I had with my job at different points this year have been eliminated. My biggest source of frustration was my commute (an hour each way), which has been solved by moving to an office location much closer to home, along with being permitted to work from home a bit more as well. This has caused my stress level to go down quite a bit. Also, after learning a lot of new things on the project I’ve been working on, it looks like there is the possibility for a promotion next year, so we’ll see what becomes of that.

I made some progress in my journey to being healthier. It might not seem like much progress (at least it doesn’t to me, but more about that later on in things that DIDN’T go well), but I did find a gym that I like (even if I still don’t go often enough) and I have pretty consistently been following a recipe and meal plan that includes healthy dinners that I cook at home. It’s really helped me to learn more about cooking, and I actually enjoy it quite a bit as well.

I surpassed my goal of reading 30 books this year.  Goodreads allows you to set a challenge for yourself for a number of books you want to read in the year. Last year, my goal was 25, which I made. This year, I increased it to 30, and I have already surpassed that number by 7 books. I’ve definitely enjoyed making an effort to read more this year, and I’ve found some really good books as well as shared a few book discussions with friends.

What did not go well this year?

We won’t look at this as bad, just learning experiences, right? There aren’t that many here, but as I tend to be very hard on myself most of the time, I still take these very seriously and they get to me. I just need to look at them as attitudes to change, or goals to work harder towards next year.

Ricky and I were not able to do our initial plan for vacation this year, which was to go to Oktoberfest in Munich. This was a decision that I made because I just didn’t feel like I really had the money to spend on this this year. We were sad to miss it, but with finances in better shape and a renewed commitment to doing it, we are looking forward to making this a definite vacation for 2015.

I did not really lose any weight and pretty much failed miserably at being consistent with working out and eating healthy. While I do now have a gym I like and a plan of attack for eating healthy, my laziness and enjoyment of food still won out this year. It’s mostly just due to a lack of consistency. I need to work on continuing to stay focused on the end goal instead of letting short-term rewards win out so often.

I honestly probably spent more money than I should have this year. Despite feeling like I have my finances under better control, there were plenty of purchases that I made this year that were probably not the best financial decision. I don’t necessarily regret any of them, however, I do see this as a challenge to take on for next year – to spend my money more wisely, and again, not let short-term rewards win out.

I did not really push myself to get out of my comfort zone all that much. There are a lot of things in my life that I feel could be improved if I got out of my comfort zone more often. After all, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, right? Some of the best things that happened this year were actually the result of when I DID get out of my comfort zone (coughWDScough), so I can only imagine how awesome of a year I will have in 2015 if I make an active decision to allow myself to be uncomfortable more often.

So there you have it. I promise there will be an upcoming post soon about what my goals and plans are for 2015, but maybe I’ll save it for after 2015 actually begins. In the meantime, I’d love to hear about some of your experiences this year. What went well for you in 2014? What went not so well?