The Groves

The Groves

Tuesday, January 3, 2017

Another Year, Another List of Resolutions I Probably Won't Pull Off

You know, I honestly can't even remember if I made resolutions for 2016. I'm sure I did, but as far as I can tell I didn't write them down so I have no idea what they were. So instead, I'll talk briefly about what I personally accomplished in 2016-

I voted for the first time (twice!). I know. It's gross that it took so long, but for a very long time I felt that it would be silly of me to vote without being informed, and I didn't have the drive to be informed. The end of 2015 and the whole of 2016 saw that change for me in a huge way. Now I'm possibly TOO informed, but the fact still remains that in 2016 I did my civic duty quite fully- even if things turned out pretty much the worst way they possibly could.

It took until the end of the pretty god-forsaken year, but I finally got an official management position at AJ Motion Sports here in Sandy. I got to the end of my rope with the carrot-dangling at Salomon and applied to AJ on a whim, and had a new job with a raise and a guaranteed full-time schedule by the middle of that same week. It was kind of intense, but extremely validating and kind of vindicating. November and December were overall incredibly emotional months for me all across the board.

I visited 9 national parks, including 2 I'd never been to before, 7 that Brady and I had never been to before together! I pulled off another successful rad road trip, most of which you can read about on our national park blog, https://brennp.wordpress.com/.


I somehow gained weight, somewhere. I'm still not sure how this happened but a pair of pants that used to be loose is now almost tight. I'm not complaining in the slightest, but I wish I knew what I'd done so I could continue doing it! Haha.

I started implementing a budget and have been managing our money a lot better. Even though writing that rent check every month is still painful, it's less painful when I'm not waiting until the paycheck right before it to cover most of it. I know. It really shouldn't have taken this long.

I acquired a LOT of Salomon shoes. Hahahaha.

We're pretty effin' cute.
So, with all of that in mind, here are my actual official resolutions for 2017.

1. Visit 5 new-to-us US national parks - stretch goal 10! We have plans to visit Black Canyon of the Gunnison, Joshua Tree, Death Valley, Great Basin, and Pinnacles, as well as Jasper in Canada. (Plus a bunch we've been to before, haha.)

2. Climb once a week (get back to leading 5.10+, teach Brady to climb multipitch routes by Thanksgiving)

3. Ski once a week

4. Settle one of our big debts (and get both of us credit cards so we can work towards our goal of buying a house in 2021)

5. Get a passport BOOK. ha.

6. (I know, every year) Gain 15-25 pounds

7. Complete three or four big home-y projects:
  • fence the yard
  • build the gear "closet"
  • plant the garden & start a compost heap
  • (optional) replace the bathroom sink with one with an ACTUAL COUNTERTOP ugh
8. Implement and stick to our budget for real for the whole year

9. Read 52 new books

10. BUILD OUR TEARDROP!! Haha. Yeah. Jackie's kind of getting put on the back burner for a bit. We love her so dearly, but that love for her is also making us want to make sure we don't screw her up. It's also going to be pretty expensive, so we decided to try our hand at building a teardrop camper first. A teardrop is also a better option for our style of road tripping, where we're a lot more nomadic and just need a good place to sleep. A portable tent, if you will. We've found a lot of plans for them online and think we're probably pretty solid on it. My personal goal is to have it done by Thanksgiving. I want to name it The Sasquatch and call her Sassy so we can have two mythical creatures to camp with. hahahahaha.