Resolving Realistically

Leaving NYC

Hello, 2013! I'm writing from the comfort of my childhood home and am at the tail end of what has been a lovely 2 and 1/2 week vacation home (and in SC, CT, and NYC) for the holidays. Since it's January 1st and all, I thought I would take this opportunity to revisit my resolutions from last year and see how I did. They were the following:

1) Eat less foie gras.

2) Get a full-time job.

Success on both fronts! To be fair, my list was kinda ridiculous. #1 was just silly, and #2 was pretty crucial to becoming a real person in Berlin. But now that #2 is taken care of, I can focus on more "frivolous" resolutions like going to yoga regularly, trying new recipes, or reading the news more. Though I've never been much of a resolution maker. I think it's great to be conscious of your lifestyle and try to make positive changes, but I recognize that these changes take time and believe steadily trucking along toward a goal rather than a drastic overhaul is necessary to make any change sustainable and realistic. For example, I'm happy that I now generally limit myself to one row of Ritter Sport chocolate rather than devouring the whole bar in one sitting, but that took a few years of practice, not one chocolate-less January.

It's kinda fun though, to look back and set goals, so I'll throw out a 2013 list just for kicks:

1) Travel to three places just for fun (outside of trips home to US). You'd think this was an easy one for me but since I've had my job, I've barely traveled outside of work trips. In that vein, I'll count an extension on a work trip that gives me some time to explore. Now that I have a real salary, and real European vacation time, it's time to start taking advantage of the fact that I live in Europe and can jet off to places like Stockholm or Slovenia for a long weekend. 

2) Follow through on a side project outside work that I'm not yet ready to talk about. Sorry for the secrecy, just don't want to get myself excited by sharing before the time is right.

3) Date more. Yes, I said it. Now that I have a job, I'm ready for a guy. Or a "cousin" (that was for my friend JD who is convinced all the guys I like/date look like they're related- don't worry world, I am not actually planning on dating a cousin).

4) Work on my German grammar.  Adjective endings and prepositions, I'm coming for ya.

#1 and #3 seem too fun to be resolutions (well, let's see with #3...) but again, it's all about being realistic. I'm especially interested to see how #2 turns out, and promise to report back. As for #4, well let's just say there was a reason why Mark Twain wrote about "The Awful German Language."