2018

Hello!

Happy New Year! 

Our little family has started the new year off with renewed motivation and while we're still so new into 2018, we're feeling pretty good about the things to come and goals to accomplish. 

I don't normally make resolutions but I was talking to Yangkyu yesterday about all the things I was hoping to learn, maintain and overcome this year. 

I want to still continue to improve on my food journey. The holidays were a little tough and while I didn't consume meat, except for on the day we bought our new car (we hadn't eaten anything all day and by the time we were finished it was already the evening and I just didn't have the energy to find a place that offered a vegan menu - we ended up going to a Korean Chinese restaurant and I ordered jja jang myun, which has a sauce with meat in it. I didn't eat the meat, but still the whole sauce is cooked with it - bleh), I did have many things that probably had lots of butter and milk. 

Since November, we been relying on a lot of frozen vegan food but this year I would like to make things from scratch. I would like to bake, too and hopefully start compiling a list of vegan recipes. 

I also want to buy less. I have been pretty good about this for a while, but last year I just started to buy a lot of things I didn't need. It led to a lot of clutter and not having a lot of space in the house to store them, which I think brought down my mood (because I like to have a tidy home and having things accessible to me and not cramped up in some corner inside a closet). Already on January 1, I was tempted to buy a few things but I always kept reminding myself that we don't have room for it or or that I just simply don't need it. With clothes, home decorations and such, I am hoping that I keep up my will power and perhaps only buy (if I really need) during major sales (such as 4th of July, Labor Day, etc.). 

Hand in hand with less buying is that I would like to save more money. Yangkyu and I have been happy in our little end unit for what will be 5 years now. It's going to take finding a home with a nice backyard for us to move but we hope that will happen sooner than later. And for that to happen we need to save up for a down payment. We don't have two full time income, it was a sacrifice that Yangkyu was more than willing to take because he didn't want to see me stress with work, but you'd think running an at-home dog boarding business could at least bring in income to be saved month after month. And you know that? It definitely could. But unfortunately every month last year we overspent (see above paragraph) and a lot of the times we were using our Piri's Place income to cover our monthly overuse. So no more of that. It's such a waste when I think about all the money we could have saved.

I'd like to lose 10 pounds by May. Weight has been something that I struggled with throughout my thirties. It was just something I could not get used to. I never had issues with weight in my twenties - I would eat all sorts of junk food and it never affected my weight. I was always a steady 105 pounds. Perhaps it was my grueling work schedule. Or that I was just younger. But I had all of the sudden (seems like overnight) gained 20 pounds. While I don't wish to be 105 again, I hope to be leaner and healthier. I used to run often in 2016, and while I don't think I'll bring running back into my life (just too inconsistent with dog guests), I hope to do something at home for at least 30 minutes a day, every day until May. 

Oh, there are so many more things -- I want to be patient. I want to be consistent. I want to learn to let things go. I want to be more straightforward with people and say what's on my mind instead of worrying if I'll hurt their feelings. I want to stop apologizing for things that I don't need to be sorry for (I'm really bad at this - even in grocery stores when I am passing in front of someone who is looking at something, I say sorry - I normally expect them to say "it's ok" and when I don't, I get hurt. No more of this in the new year). I want to learn how to still hold my values and be compassionate, but be firm at the same time. I want to embrace being creative with my photos and videos again. I want to be less OCD! I don't know how this got so severe last year, perhaps having a lot of dog guests just made me that way (just always cleaning and wiping and cleaning), but it got to the point where I couldn't even stay at weekend rentals by the lake. I couldn't get myself to sleep on the beds fearing that it was dirty. And then it got to the point where I couldn't stay in hotel rooms either thinking that people probably walked all over the room with their shoes on. It was such a shame because it never used to bother me and we didn't get to travel much because of this (among other reasons). Hopefully this year, I can get over it and be more adventurous.

After I was done going through all that I want to do and maintain in the new year with Yangkyu, I realized what a tall order it was. 

I will probably stumble but the most important thing is to take it day by day. 

I hope I can share that I've been mostly on the side of sticking to my resolutions. We'll just have to see.

Hope you'll stick around for our stories this year.

I look forward to yours.