Good Bye 2017, Hello 2018

2017 for us was our first full year of being married, and we had a lot of fun experiencing it together!

2017 Experiences

  • Traveling. A LOT. I didn’t get a ton accomplished outside of this, but bein
    g able to see parts of the US that I’ve never seen before was pretty much worth it. Denver, CO. Raleigh, NC… And got to get back out to Portland, OR and Seattle, WA. Sharing those fun adventures with Chris was a lot of fun.
  • Broke PRs. Running wise, 2018 was a rocket year. I PR’ed my 2M, 5K, 10K and 13.1M distances. 26.2M would have been a PR if my legs could have stayed healthy at the end. I’m happy to say I’m back at it with fresh legs.
  • Drank a lot of good craft beer. Along with traveling, I also got to visit a lot of local craft breweries along the way. A few of my favorites include:
    • Outlander (Seattle, WA): With so many different flavors to choose from, Outlander was definitely my favorite from our Northwest trip. Despite it’s small appearance from the outside, it has a lot to offer craft beer lovers. Meeting the man behind the scenes was pretty cool as well.
    • Bombshell Brewery (Holly Springs, NC): After arriving at the brewery, I had no idea what I was getting out of my 45 minute drive outside of Raleigh. I got to meet Ellen, one of the very few women craft beer owners in the country, and fan girl over her achievements. Their Oktoberfest and Lady in Red both were great; I wish I had of had more time to try more. If we ever make it back out to that part of the country, I will be sure to be back for more.
    • Heavy Riff Brewing/Center Ice Brewing (St Louis, MO): It’s a tie between these two for my favorite this year. Heavy Riff has some excellent dark brews, and Center Ice is fantastic, especially for being very new to the brewing scene. Both are off on their own, so you don’t get a ton of bar hoppers, making them both very easy to socialize and hang out at.

I try my best to not think of goals as resolutions, because let’s be honest.. Resolutions usually fall through in the first few months of the year. Instead, I’m trying to create a list of goals with dates/times tied to them for 2018.

2018 Goals

  • Web Design & Development Improvement. Lately I’ve felt like I’ve been on the “going with the flow” train with my work skills. I’ve been taking a few online classes here and there as well as getting to know CSS Grid, but feel like with frameworks like React.js becoming more and more popular, I’ve got some serious catching up to do. I’m going to update my Web Portfolio (and actually get a URL that doesn’t use my maiden name) and hopefully be able to catch back up to modern front-end web development times.
  • Draw More. To go along with design, I need to feel more comfortable drawing. I realize I’m never going to become a well known illustrator, but drawing more will help me create icons and my overall design skills improve. Plus drawing should be fun, not something I stress over.
  • Reading. Along with the Web Development magazine I just subscribed to, I need to get better about getting away from my cell phone and actually finish some books. I have to finish Mistborn: The Hero of Ages by Brandon Sanderson, and then jump into Lord of Shadows by Cassandra Claire that I got for Christmas this year.
  • Catch Up on Kingdom Hearts Series. I’m nearing the end of Kingdom Hearts II, but need to complete the rest of KH2.5 and get through 2.8 before KHIII is released. Here’s to hoping we’ll at least get a release date on that one this year!

Not a ton of goals as you can see, but I also want to be able to focus on these three (or four if you count the silly one). For myself, in general, I need to be better about being okay about staying at home and getting things done rather than traveling every weekend. I’m sure my wallet would enjoy that as well.

Don’t get me wrong though, I’m still going to get out and have a good time every so often. We already have tickets to see Story of the Year in this weekend down in St. Louis, and a Gulf Shores, AL trip is in the works for May. And of course there will be new craft brews to try along the way.

Just spreading out the trips here and there… For balance.

I hope your 2018 goals go smoothly as well.

Goals for 2018

Inspired by my friend Brian, instead of naming some resolutions this year, I’m going to set a few goals that I can *hopefully* keep myself accountable for. So let’s dive right in!

Blog More. This is the main goal for this year. I keep telling myself I’m going to write a post for the blog, but have a bad habit of not falling through. This post is a great example! I’ve been meaning to write these goals down for two weeks and despite having ample time I just hadn’t done it. I’m going to keep this goal conservative and make just one post a month. If I do more than that great, but there will be at least one a month. And two in one month doesn’t cancel out the next month either.

No unfinished video games. The last few years I always seem to have a game or two on the shelf unopened when it comes to an end. Life does keep me pretty busy, but completing the 4-5 games I buy every year shouldn’t be hard. So the goal here is to complete the 3 games I currently have sitting on the shelf, plus any new ones I buy. The goal is to complete one game every two months. That might be cutting it close, but I think it will get me there.

House Renovations. In 2017, I managed to get the basement finished, and it’s worked out really well. Now we have two places to hang out and play games, which is nice when Alyssa’s friends come over. This year I want to re-do the upstairs bathroom (currently trapped in the 1960s) and the back and front porches. The bathroom is the bigger of the two projects so I’m going to start with that one first. I’m going to give myself until the end of May to complete it, and then spend the summer/fall working on the porches which really just need a fresh coat of paint.

Keep getting faster at running. I set a whole bunch of running personal records last year, and want to keep that going. I’m not doing another a marathon, as two years in a row is enough for me, so that one isn’t manageable but everything else is on the table. In particular I’d really like to take a few more minutes off my half marathon, which is probably also going to be the hardest. I managed a 1 hour and 59 minute finish last year and it was pretty tough. It also felt really good, so that should give me some serious motivation. I’m going to set my goal for the half at 1 hour and 55 minutes, but I’ll settle for anything under my current time.

That’s all the goals I’m going to set as that list should keep me occupied for most of 2018. They should also generate plenty of things for me to blog about! Exciting!

Here’s to a great year!