The Year That Was 2013

It’s the first day of a new year, and like others, I like to examine my life and try to figure out the things that might be worth changing. Before I move onto 2014, I thought I would take a look back at the goals I set for myself last year. When I did it last year, I had three different posts around the three different parts of my life. I’ll quickly review these before I move onto the few goals I have for this year.

Part 1 from 2013 was the “physical” goals I had in mind. Part 2 was the professional goals, and Part 3 was some stuff that I couldn’t slot in the other categories.

The physical goals were as follows:

1) Lose 80 pounds this year: This didn’t happen, and I think I will be starting this year heavier than last, which is ultimately okay. 0/1 so far.

2) Run the Utah Valley Half-Marathon in Under 2 Hours and 30 Minutes: I “trained” for this for the first part of the year, but then the marathon happened after I moved to Illinois, so I pushed it back to this year. If I am able to get back to Utah in time for this year’s, hopefully I will be able to accomplish this goal in 2014. 0/2.

3) Maintain My Sobriety Through October and Beyond: Finally, a success! This one is still ongoing, and I don’t see it coming to an end anytime soon. 1/3 goals achieved.

4) Pass an Army Physical Fitness Test by the End of the Year: With everything else that happened this year, this kind of got pushed to the side, so I guess this will go down as a fail. 1/4 from Part 1.

The professional goals from 2013:

1) Become a (More) Successful Writer: Seeing as how I decided to stop writing to focus on school, this goal is a fail. We’ll leave it at that. 1/5 overall.

2) Get Accepted to Grad School: Another success! This was probably the first goal accomplished this year, as I received notification in March that I was accepted to three of the four schools I applied. 2/6.

3) Get Cracking on the Book About My Parents: This one is still just an idea kicking around in my head, and I don’t think I will be able to get started like I want to unless I get back to Utah sooner rather than later. By then, it might not happen for their 50th anniversary, but it will happen eventually I’m sure. 2/7…not so bad.

4) Write a Business Plan for Whatever My Business Will Be: Another thing that got put on the back burner. As with the book, the ideas are in my head, and written down in a different format, but I really need to write out more of it. 2/8.

The miscellaneous goals…

1) Get Total Remaining Debt Under $10,000: Not having a job for half the year made this goal kind of difficult, but I did manage to avoid adding a bunch more debt to the total… other than all the new student loans I had to take out to bridge the gap between the GI Bill and paying some living expenses. 2/9

2) Continue Growing My Epic Beard Until Movember Rolls Back Around: Making goals that require doing nothing to succeed are the way to go. No plans to shave anytime soon either. 3/10!

3) Stop Worrying About Finding “Her”: Imagine that. You stop really worrying about something and it ends up finding you. Hooray for Kim and making my life much more enjoyable this year. 4/11

4) Be a Better Friend and Sibling: I think, for the most part, this goal was successful, at least in the 5 months that I was in Utah. My brother became my weekly movie date and gym buddy. We also went on a bit of a road trip without murdering each other. That alone boosted my performance in this goal. There is still some work to do with this, but being separated from all my friends for most of the year didn’t help, though I did manage to see all the important ones went I went home for Thanksgiving. 5/12.

Overall, not a bad performance, though in a perfect world, it would have been at least 50% of goals accomplished, but I can’t complain ultimately. I ended the year much happier than I had been in years past, and almost all of that increase in happiness is because of my wonderful girlfriend Kim. Without her, I think I would not be nearly as happy with the result from my goals over the past year.

That is all for 2013, so my next post will highlight the handful of goals that I will have for next year. Hope you all had a wonderful 2013. Onto 2014!!

Until next time…