Making resolutions can sometimes feel ridiculous, mostly because mine generally stay the same year after year. Regardless, I’m diving into making 2024 a year of growth for me with a few resolutions:

Pre-homeownership

I’m old enough and secure enough in my current relationship that I’m starting to think about homeownership seriously. I’m also lucky, I have some savings available to me but also have parents willing to help out. I don’t think I’ll get a home in 2024, but I’m making it my goal to save more for that possibility or eventuality.

Realistically I want to stay as close to a city as possible and Zach and I have already talked about being completely cool in a condo, townhome, or even apartment. Anyway, it feels like something eventually achievable, which is a goal in itself.

I do get nervous thinking seriously about homeownership though because it means not moving somewhere and, tbh I really don’t want to spend the rest of my life in Austin. I’d rather move somewhere north or cold.

Building better friendships

I’m pretty terrible at building or maintaining friendships.1 I’m not a full introvert, I do get recharged from seeing or talking to people, but I have a lot of anxiety that impacts how I engage with my friends.

I want to get better at that in 2024 by actively reaching out to my current friends more and doing more to build new friendships. Making friends in your 30s is hard though you have to be sort of pathetic unless you’re naturally charismatic, and I am not naturally charismatic.

Get debt free

This is less of a goal and more of an eventuality, provided I don’t get some random major medical expense. But by the end of the year, I should be officially free of any major debts, which honestly will be a godsend because my health insurance premiums are going up!

Weight loss

I’m Maintenance Phase pilled so not really going to pretend that by weight loss I mean anything more than like maybe 10 pounds of weight or that I really even need to lose weight. I’ve also been in a weird body image state lately because on one hand, I’ve gotten more attention from men being fat than I ever did as a twink, but on the other hand, you really shouldn’t base your body image or satisfaction on attention from men2!

Regardless I’d really like to just get back to more of a workout routine in general. I’ve been a lot less active in 2023 than any other period in my life and kinda don’t like it. If I could lose weight without going on Ozempic that would be great too! I’ll also be fine with just having more muscle, so IDK, check in with me in about 6 months.

Working out again / Being more active

I’ve been thinking a lot about how I want to be more active and how much of my current life sort of traps me into a more sedentary lifestyle than I’m used to. Before the pandemic I had somewhat of an active routine and then that all vanished and it has been particularly hard to get it started again.

But, I did like doing active stuff before. I miss going on hikes and riding my bike places so I think I might try and pick those two back up too. I’d also like to start weightlifting again, even if it’s not continual muscle growth.3 I’d love to get back into squatting but my knees are so bad now it just terrifies me to try and fuck them up. I also don’t want to fight for a squat rack.

Keep reading

I’m going to roll over 2023’s resolution to read 12 books, but realistically I read 18 this year so could challenge myself to read 24, or two books a month. Mostly I want to focus on reading more modern literary fiction while also genre-hopping a bit. A great way to get through books faster, that I used in 2023: buying/checking out at the library the audio book and the actual book. It’s a big help getting through the slog that is the Wheel of Time series.4

Travel to at least one new city

Going to Boston this year reminded me how nice it is to just travel to a new city without any plans and spend the whole day wandering around. Zach and I have been thinking about going to Chicago during spring break, so hoping that happens.

I’d also like to visit more cities to find one I like more than Austin…5

Staying at a job for a year

I’ve had a lot of job change stuff these last couple of years so I’d personally like to just stay at this one place for a year or longer and not have to worry about the whole job hunting thing again.

Finish a new short story

Now that I’m super close to being debt-free I’m immediately thinking about ways to go into debt again. So I’ve been looking up part-time MFA programs or short-story workshops. I’d like to put more of an active focus on writing in my life and maybe the baby steps to that is just finishing a new short story…