2020 was a wild ride. Between the pandemic, the social unrest, and the overall uncertainty of life, I can’t say I did much to focus on my resolutions. Rather, I just tried to live life to the best of my ability without going insane. I will say however, I think that overall I did end up sticking to my resolutions fairly well considering my lack of focus. I’ll recap that here briefly:

Resolution #1 was Dry January and Better Health – I did complete a Dry January, but my healthy eating habits were pretty sporadic. With the California lockdowns spanning most of the year, many of our meals were take out and not always the healthiest options. You can tell from my blog posts that my vegan meal prepping was going strong until about April – which is when the pandemic really started to ramp up. However, I did workout and practice yoga more frequently than ever in 2020 which somewhat counterbalanced my less than stellar food choices.

Resolutions #2 and #3 were to Go Outside and to Grow that Garden – both of these I accomplished without any problem. Having more time at home made it easy to maintain my garden and be outside as much as possible. My garden this year flourished with tomatoes, eggplants, squash, carrots, beets and so much more. It was really, really nice to be able to water every morning and actually watch things grow day by day. Plus, the lockdown made the urge to be outside greater than ever. I spent much of my year outside whether I was in my inflatable pool in my backyard, or walking the trails by the river.

Resolution #4 was to Shop Less, Fair and Small – this was another fairly easy one to accomplish. Not having anywhere to be made it easy to not shop, especially since many of the thrift stores were closed for most of the middle of the year. Shopping fair and small was also fairly easy since when it did come time to purchase things I really took the time to think about who or what I was supporting with my purchase. My main large purchases this year were jeans from Madewell’s fair trade line and a VR set for our Playstation.

Resolutions #5 and #6 were to Create Everyday and to Try New Things – creating every day was easy at first, but this seemed to get significantly more challenging the longer the lockdown went on. Bouts of depression, boredom and general unease made it difficult to find a creative mindset on certain days. Trying new things, at least the new things I outline in my resolution was nearly impossible since everything was closed. The first three months of the year I did go gung-ho and tried a few new classes including TRX, yoga, Pilates and tactical pistol shooting class, but once April hit it wasn’t as easy to find new things to go do. I thought about taking classes online, but again, some days it was just difficult to find the motivation.

2021 New Year Resolution

I only have one resolution this year – be more intentional. This encompasses so many things for me across my life including the food I eat, what I buy, the choices I make day-to-day and the people I surround myself with. Sure, 2020 was crazy, but it taught me alot – alot about myself, about my life and about the life I want to live. So for 2021 I want to put those lessons into action and make sure that everything I do is done with intention and is done in a way to make my life and myself better. Here’s to 2021!