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2 min read

Celebrating at the end of March

Celebrating at the end of March
Photo by Jason Dent / Unsplash

With wedding planning behind me, I've been thinking about new personal projects outside of work. Drawing inspiration from Ali Abdaal's 12 Month Celebration method of goal-setting, I have been asking myself:

What would I like to be celebrating at the end of March, while enjoying every step along the way?

Here's my anticipated celebration list:

  1. Running 8 miles: I'm signed up to run the NYC marathon this November. As a stepping stone, I registered for the NYC Runs Brooklyn Half-Marathon on April 28th, which is approaching fast! I really need to start training. I love running with other people who run around the same pace, so I'm planning to join the Badass Lady Gang on Tuesdays after work and find a second running group for long runs on Saturdays. My trainer Genaro also relocated to St John's Terminal while I was on vacation. While this is inconvenient, I'm using this change as an opportunity to fit in a run before our Monday morning workouts.
  2. Completing the Your Money or Your Life 9 step program: After reading Your Money or Your Life on vacation, I feel inspired to declutter, find my point of "enough", and create a plan for financial independence. The past few days, I spent several hours writing a program to analyze my finances. I'm not sure how much better I understand my spending habits, but I had a lot of fun writing code. I aim to spend every morning to continue working through this 9 step program.
  3. Cooking twice a week: I failed to make any of the recipes I initially planned for this weekend. Instead, I resorted to ordering takeout my first day back and pasta with marinara sauce on the subsequent days. However, even having a batch of pasta in the fridge simplified meals considerably. For me, it is a step up over frozen meals or takeout. My new plan is to aim for cooking two recipes a week. This way, I will always have something ready to eat in the fridge.
  4. Framing my wedding photos and sending thank you notes: We have 200 polaroids from our wedding that I want to frame and display. We also received incredibly generous gifts, and I'm excited to express our gratitude by sending thank you cards. Even though our wedding is over, I'm looking forward to relieving the joy through these tasks.
  5. Publishing a total of 91 posts on the View from JQ: I plan to continue writing and hitting that publish button every day!