22 Things To Do - 2022 Edition

1. Figure out my next steps at BMCD and what I want my path to look like. 

2. Find and hire a designer to help us with our master renovation since this is going to be a little outside of my wheelhouse. 

3. Find at least 2 volunteer opportunities. 

4. Figure out our landscaping situation and what works here in Kansas. 

5. Go to London. 

6. Celebrate Alli's birthday in Belize. 

7. Take Mom to NYC for her 70th. 

8. Eat 3/4 veggies at nearly every meal and quit being so stupid about it. 

9. Do something Peloton every day even if it's just 5 min core or a mediation if I'm sick/injured/whatever.

10. Find a local race to run since we're missing Rock the Parkway and run a 5K with Owen. 

11. Cooking class with friends. 

12. Find new doctors/dentists/etc (GAH!)

13. Read 10 books and put my damn phone down. 

14. Master the sous vide. 

15. Figure out our plans for KC theater tickets. 

16. Find friends/community/whatever here and figure out if we are wanting to do church or not. 

17. Mother/Son trip

18. Go visit the farm. 

19. Go to the lake. 

20. Plan a CDC trip now that we all live in the Midwest again. 

21. Visit a new ballpark. 

22. Go to a Chiefs game. 

2021 To Do List Review

1. Choose restaurants with intention, rather than "I'm tired. I'm hungry. Let's go for burgers and beer."

Did great with this until we didn't. HA. But even with the move, we were intentional about choosing restaurants we wanted to go to before we left and restaurants we wanted to try when we got here. 

2. Complete at least one session with Stronger U and my coach.  (along with this comes macro tracking and being more mindful about the things I'm eating and drinking)

I did this. I had pretty decent success but slid back into old habits when we started the move process.  I just didn't have the bandwidth to keep it going all year. 

3. Lose 30 lbs by my 40th birthday. (12/5/21)

Yeah. Nope. 

4. Go somewhere new.  This is going to be challenging but I'm going to make it happen. 

Yes!  Big Island Hawaii! 

5. Go to a new National Park. 

Hawaii Volcanos

6. Get my vaccination card!  Technically this all occurred in 2020 but I want that card of sweet, sweet beauty as proof. 

WOOT! Got that sucker in January. 

7. Remodel our master bathroom. 

Check done! 

8. Go on a trip for my birthday.  I want to go to Germany but I'm trying not to get my hopes up. 

Arizona, check done! 

9. Master our sourdough starter! 

Houston derailed that a bit, it was not easy to have a starter in the heat and humidity but we will press on in KC and try a new one. 

10. Run a half marathon before my birthday. 

Oops, nope. 

11. Figure out how to compost. 

We did this but sadly left our bin in Houston and don't have space here in Leawood for a new one. 

12. Grow a garden. 

We had a really great garden this year until we had too much rain in June and most of our plants had root rot.  

13. Keep my houseplants alive. 

I managed to do this with a few plants that got left in Houston but I got two new snake plants and we carry on.  

14. Figure out my next step in my career.  Goal is to not be in my same position by next January, however that happens. 

This one, I crushed.  Kind of by accident but I have an infinitely better job now and way better prospects for growth.  

15. Do another cooking class, even if that has to be virtual. 

I did a charcuterie class and a cocktails class this year in person and Adam and I did two awesome beer/cheese pairings classes online.  

16. Take an iPhone photography class. 

I need to do this still.  

17. Hike a mountain. 

Did it!  We did some great hikes in Colorado and I climbed Camelback again. 

18. Get my CEOP and RSTBS certifications. 

Did not do either of these things but I was well on my way before we moved.  No sweat because I am onward and upward! 

Goals that are a hold over from 2020 - Let's try this again! 

19. Take Owen on another mother + son trip. 

We drove in the same car from Houston to Kansas, does that count? 

20. Date night once a month

Not intentionally but I bet we came really close if I were to think about it.  We did so many trips to KC without Owen that we wound up having a lot of parent date time. 

21. Monthly budget.  I need to follow through with this and work to pay the car off. 

NOT EVEN CLOSE. 

2021 Year in Review

 1. What did you do in 2021 that you'd never done before?

Ha. WOW.

1. Fired a realtor. (Adam says technically he did it, and I suppose that is fair.)

2. Tore apart the interior of a house to have piers put in the foundation. 

3. Touched both sides of a canyon. 

4. Turned 40. 

5. Worked to stop caring so much about stupid things (like what other people think) and started trying to take up more space in the world (DO NOT cut in front of me in line, Old White Man, because 2021 Jen will NOT have it).

6. Moved to Kansas.  

2. Did you keep your new year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year? 

I don't make resolutions but I think, despite all the things, I did pretty darn well with my to do list.  And the good thing is that I make my to do list with the expectation that 50% of the stuff might turn out to be epic fails. 

3. Did anyone close to you give birth? Hmmm. I don't think so?  Our neighbor in Houston had a baby but that's about all I can think of.  

4. Did anyone close to you die? No funerals that I attended this year so that is a small win.  We had a close family friend pass away but that's all I can think of. 

5. What countries did you visit? COVID IS STUPID.  But I'm booked for two trips in 22 and I WILL BE GOING unless the world falls apart or something stupid. 

6. What would you like to have in 2022 that you didn't have in 2021? Pretty much the same answer as last year.  "Normal" life back.  And I don't mean that as much as I did then in the nostalgic "life before Covid" sense but more so in terms of us finding our routine and balance here in KS.  I feel like 21 was one long year of crazy. 

7. What dates from 2021 will be etched upon your memory, and why? September 23rd.  We drove from Houston to Wichita, KS.  Didn't quite make it all the way but it was 3/4 of a really long journey that was a really long time coming. 

8. What was your biggest achievement of this year? { 2021 answer: Not being admitted to a mental hospital. Seriously. } 2022 answer:  Same (ha!) but also surviving.  It felt like a long slog of a year due to all of the things we had going on as a family.  Every day was just a lot to get through.  

9. What was your biggest failure? It's complicated but it's all related to the way things ended at my job in Houston.  I shouldn't classify it as a failure, it's more just a sad state of affairs that things wound up the way they did.  Instead of failure, I think I'm landing on "crummiest thing" of the year. 

12. Whose behavior merited celebration? All three of us in our little family. We made it to the other side of some really crazy times and some really hard things. 

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed? I wouldn't say appalled but a person in my family disappointed me in a lot of ways this year.  

14. Where did most your money go? Renovating the house (again, HA!), realtor commissions and closing costs, moving, restaurants while we lived in temporary housing, thankfully, OH SO THANKFULLY we got to spend some money traveling this year again. 

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about? MOVING OUT OF HOUSTON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Hawaii.  MOVING OUT OF HOUSTON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

16. What song will always remind you of 2021? Pretty much anything by Doja Cat, Levitating by Dua Lipa

17. Compared to this time last year, are you: a) happier or sadder? b) thinner or fatter? c) richer or poorer?

a) FIVE MILLION TIMES HAPPIER. Seriously.  Moving and subsequently turning 40 and losing a lot of the ability to give a fuck has been amazing for my mental wellbeing.  Also not working in a toxic hellhole with actual terrible people helps a lot.  Midwest Nice People make it really hard to be sad. 

b) a little thinner (thank goodness) but not by much.  Dammit.  Ooops.  Will remedy this in 2022. 

c) richer, thankfully.  But about to spend all the monies ripping apart our master suite. 

18. What do you wish you'd done more of? exercised.  I'm such a bitch without endorphins and I consistently suck ass at remembering that when life gets hard. 

19. What do you wish you'd done less of? waiting. It felt like I was always waiting for something this year. 

20. How did you spend Christmas? We drove home from Preston's wedding in Colorado and had 4 glorious days off that we spent organizing our house and garage and we had a really quiet day at home.  We went to the movies to see Sing 2 and it was kind of a debacle, life in the Covid world continues to be ridiculous at times. 

21. Did you fall in love in 2021? with Leawood, Kansas.  Aka Mayberry. 

22. What was your favorite TV program? Ted Lasso

23. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year? probably not?  Other than really any politician that I was unaware of in 2020 and know now, I probably hate them.  

24. What was the best book you read? Atomic Habits

25. What was your greatest musical discovery? Doja Cat

26. What did you want and get? a move out of Houston

27. What did you want and not get? the move to have taken place before school started

28. What was your favorite film of 2020? Sing 2 was awesome, In the Heights was also great

29. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you? I turned 40 and we went to Arizona for 5 days.  It was great, we got to climb Camelback, do the spa, cross two off the bucket list (Horseshoe Bend and Antelope Canyon), spend time with my cousin and we ate and drank a lot of really great food, including a best meal at Mariposa in Sedona.  Arizona just has a vibe that I dig so it was a very happy time.  

30. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying? Not having the Delta or Omicron variants. 

31. How would you describe your personal fashion concept of 2021? having to actually buy business type wear

32. What kept you sane? the idea that we were GTFO Houston

33. What political issue stirred you the most? Covid continues to irritate me - how it's political, how one side is moronic in their feelings about how science works and how the other side continues to spew all this "we're ALL GOING TO DIE" rhetoric.  It's so dumb.  

34. Who did you miss? I miss our friends in Houston and moving so far away made me miss our friends in Dallas and Chicago quite a bit, too.  It was weird to feel homesickness pangs but not really for a place, more the idea that we weren't quite home. 

35. Who was the best new person you met? Pretty much everyone in my new department at work.  Everyone is incredibly nice, supportive and we have a lot of fun while getting shit done.  

36. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2021. 
I think I learned how to assert myself a little bit more and I also realized that I had to demand solutions to being sad and depressed, that life wasn't going to get better unless I worked toward that.