2018 Goals & Accomplishments

The last few years I’ve started to record non-monetary goals and accomplishments (for monetary goals check out my annual State Of The Union posts at the end of the year). Despite my whining, in hindsight time seems to pass very quickly and without documenting what has changed from one year to the next I have a hard time differentiating them and seeing what progress was made and how I’m advancing as a person. So buckle in and let’s dive into what I got up to in 2018!

BRINGING RETIREMENT TO ME: MOM EDITION

I’ve been thinking a lot about what kind of life I want in retirement and the fact that I don’t want to wait years to have the life I want. So I’ve been trying to bring what I’m looking forward to in retirement into my life now in any way possible. One big driver for my retirement is my wish to spend time with my Mom. Last year I saw her for a 2 week vacation where I shared her time with 16 others in Thailand, a week where I worked from her house in Atlanta, a week she came to see me for my Birthday and a week for Christmas. 5 weeks out of 52. I’m trying to drastically increase that amount of time with her so this year she came to visit me for almost 2 weeks, I went to Atlanta to work during the summer for 2 weeks, we went to the Oregon Coast for a long weekend and I’m currently in Atlanta for 2 weeks working during the holidays. I’ve been trying to take advantage of the perks that working from home allows me and so next year I’m increasing this time even more to 8 weeks.

BRINGING RETIREMENT TO ME: TRAVEL EDITION

Another aspect of retirement that I wanted to test out now was my plan to simply explore. I want exploration and documenting my adventures to be my ‘job’ in retirement. I imagine between planning, exploring and creating I’ll be plenty busy. This year I went to Singapore for the first time and started acting like I was already retired. All I did was explore during the day and then read excitedly at night about everything I had seen and the history behind it. It was a wonderful time and I felt strangely calm the whole time (I’m a bit of an anxious person at times). It seems like this kind of lifestyle would be enough to keep me fulfilled in retirement.

BRINGING RETIREMENT TO ME: NEW HOBBIES

Another way I am trying to bring retirement to me is deciding to not wait until retirement to try the long list of new hobbies I have in mind. So I started working on a few new hobbies this year including: Watercolor and Fauxligraphy. For watercolor, I bought an intro set on Amazon and started messing around (apparently that was a bad move because a cheap brush can mess you up. I’m looking into more expensive brushes now). I got a book from the library and did their color exercises. I haven’t gotten very far in this new hobby yet, but I’m glad I’m trying it and not waiting for my life to begin in retirement.

As for fauxligraphy, I’ve always loved Calligraphy and cursive, but didn’t want to invest in the materials needed to do actual calligraphy so it was amazing when I stumbled on Fauxligraphy through the Watercolor tutorials I was watching. It’s basically a semi-cheating way to create calligraphy, but with a normal pen. It’s super fun and nice to do while watching a show.

LEARNING SPANISH

Last year I started re-learning French (I took it for 4 years in high school, but it didn’t stick). This year in anticipation for my 2 weeks in Ecuador I shifted to learning Spanish for the first time in my life (shocking I know). I originally had a pact with my partner, Mom and step-dad to learn together. They all quickly gave up unfortunately, but I was left standing! I used Duolingo every weekday for months. And it actually paid off!

No one spoke English in the tiny town we lived in in Ecuador! It was awesome and I was actually able to have (rudimentary) conversations with people despite only learning for a few months! In fact, my family members kept turning to me to help them communicate. I could order bread at the bakery, inquire when they’ll have more fresh rolls, direct a taxi to a nearby town and buy street watermelon without a problem. After our trip in May I kept up my studying until a particularly hellish workweek where I worked 70+ hours and both weekends. This was around the same time I started this blog and at that point my 5 days a week Spanish fell by the wayside, BUT that was 75% of the way through the year. So despite not making it through the whole year I’m calling this a win.

Next year I’m trying a new tactic. I want to watch 1 hour of a show or movie in another language with that language’s subtitles on (so no English). I think that approach would help me expand beyond what Duolingo can teach me and help me understand words in a full context. I may also supplement this plan with Duolingo until we go to Costa Rica in February.

BLOGGING

A big new aspect of my life is public blogging! This blog went live at the end of July 2018 after 3.5 years in the proverbial shadows. It’s been a wild ride. I wrote about how much my life changed after 1 month of public blogging and am planning to write a post about what it’s like having a blog survive 6 months (most die out before then) on my 6 month anniversary in January!

I’ve also kept up with my goal to write 1 post per week since I instituted it 2 years ago. Overall blogging publicly has been insanely rewarding and I don’t regret a second of it. The community makes all my freaking out about something I don’t understand being broken on the site worth it.

FRIENDSHIP

Since being funemployed for the summer 2 years ago I’ve been more serious about maintaining the awesome relationships I have in my life. I learned during my time off that these connections are what I truly value and didn’t want them to take a back seat to work any longer. I’ve been scheduling a monthly happy hour with friends for over a year now. It happens on the first Monday of each month and makes slogging through a Monday at work a lot easier. I know that at the end of the day I’ll get a hug and a cheap, delicious drink while I spend time with my friends.

I have also kept up my weekly video chats with my ex-roommate who lives in Argentina. We’ve been doing this for 2 years now. We used to talk maybe once a year and now it’s at least 52 times ‘face’ to ‘face’ and it’s made me a lot happier. I’m super excited to visit her for a month or more in retirement, but for now this is a great way to tide me over. Just because someone is far away doesn’t mean I have to wait to be close to them.

Something else I love is making and eating dinner with friends. So a year ago we create a weekly Supper Club with a friend (and now neighbor!) of mine. Each week we rotate who hosts and cook something new together. Afterwards we relax with some wine and talk or watch a show together. It’s something I look forward to every week, it helps me work on my cooking skills and not fall back into re-watching the same show a million times like I usually do.

And last but not least, FIRE meetups! Prior to this year I had been to ONE yes ONE meet up in all my years on this journey. It just felt so intimidating and awkward, but this year I decided to go for it and I wish I had sooner! It was actually meeting a blogger at one of these meet ups and then being asked to coffee later that was the impetus for me taking this blog public. Meeting people at these gatherings and through blogging have (dare I say it) created actual friendships. And they feel deeper than how new friendships usually are. I suspect that’s because we have this huge goal binding us together. It’s really amazing and I wish I had reached out to the community ‘IRL’ sooner.

FINANCE

Now I know I said I wouldn’t talk about finance, but I meant MY finances. One of my greatest joys is helping other people with theirs (after they ask me that is…) This year a few people approached me for financial advice. One was actually my colleague who somehow put 2 and 2 together that I probably wanted to retire early (I probably need to stop encouraging people about putting money into their 401ks…) I sat down with him and we came up with a plan for him to retire in 6 years and he’s only 28. We’ll see if he actually goes down this path, but I was extremely excited to give him the tools to do so. He even invited his partner to come into the office for our meeting so it seems like he’s serious. In addition to that we finally got a 401k match at work! I guess my hounding finally paid off? It’s only $50 a month, but that’s more than nothing. I’ve been bothering our finance lead for a true-up because apparently I wasn’t originally elible for the match this year since I had already maxed my contributions (Laaaaame). Am I bothering a woman over $150? You better believe I am. That’s a month of groceries.

COOKING

I’ve become a sous vide queen! After telling my partner we don’t need a $100+ piece of cooking equipment since we used to rarely cook I am happy to eat my hat on this one. I absolutely love sous viding and this year we branched out from our usual roster of on sale steak and pork tenderloins to include Pork Chops, Scallops, Shrimp, Chicken, T-Bone Steak, Alaska Salmon (from TJs – it’s the best salmon I’ve ever had and it’s only $10/lbs). I also challenged myself to cook 1 new recipe every month since I usually stick to just my tried and true favorites. I’m happy to report that I met that goal! This year I cooked for the first time: Herb butter scallops, Shrimp Alfredo, Cauliflower Fried Rice, Pork Chops, Brie Chips, Sauteed Kale (yes that counts!), Stir Fry, Beef Stroganoff, Potato Puffs, Kabobs, An NYC style omelette, Chicken A La King, Tuna Melt ‘Muffins’, Cauliflower Mash and Keto Gravy.

KETO & WEIGHT MAINTENANCE

After losing 50 lbs last year eating keto (I lost 5 more lbs after I wrote that post) my goal this year was to maintain my new low weight. In the past I’ve literally never been able to maintain weight loss because the loss itself was based on starving myself. That’s not sustainable obviously. Originally I only started eating keto to lose the weight, but the insane amount of other benefits have made me decide to be keto for life! And I’ve kept it up all year with only short breaks to try previously unknown delicacies in Singapore and Ecuador, but I haven’t gained any of my weight back and feel awesome!

TRAVEL

This year I traveled to the below places:

• Singapore (10 days)
• Ecuador (2 weeks)
• Oregon Coast for Birthday (Long weekend)
• Portland (1 week WFH)
• Atlanta (4 weeks WFH)
• Upstate New York (1 week WFH)

Camping
We had a goal to go camping every month during the summer season and we reached that goal! This year we camped in these locations:

• Dosewallips
• Lake Wenatchee
• Lake Easton
• Bowman Bay
• Deception Pass

FIRSTS

Firsts this year included:

• Started doing Stairway Walks around Seattle (they take you to hidden stairways and provide the history of the area: fun, learning and exercise all in one!)
• Hanging out on a Brew Cruise that went through Lake Union and Lake Washington on a gorgeous Seattle day
• Visiting a Christmas Tree Farm (I have no idea how I’ve gotten so old without visiting one, but here we are)
• Attended the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival in Washington
• Went Bouldering and shockingly didn’t harm myself or others
• Ate Waygu beef (it was delicious)

READING

Another goal of mine this year was to read one non-fiction book a month and I’m happy to say I hit that goal! This year I read:

1. The Wizard of Lies (5/5 Rating)
2. The Thin Green Line: The Secrets of the Super Wealthy (1/5)
3. The Smartest Guys In The Room (5/5)
4. The 4 Hour Work Week (5/5)
5. Meet the Frugalwoods (3/5)
6. Alien Covenant: The Novelization (5/5)
7. Astrophysics for People In A Hurry (5/5)
8. Towards Rational Exuberance (5/5)
9. YNAB (3/5)
10. Happy Money (5/5)
11. Your Money or Your Life (2018 Edition) (5/5)
12. Sapiens (5/5)
13. The Hacking Of The American Mind (5/5)
14. The Year Of Less (5/5)
15. Stop Acting Rich: And Start Living Like A Real Millionaire (5/5)

MUSIC

I got into some great tunes this year (according to Spotify I listened to over 600 hours of music this year. I thought it would be more…) Anyway, standouts this year included:

• Black Panther Soundtrack
• Sam Smith, The Thrill Of It All (I apparently spent 69 hours listening to his music this year…I may have a problem…)
• Years & Years
• Khalid
• Shawn Mendes
• Westworld Original Score (I love original scores and this one was easily top 5 ever)

PLAYED

This year I played the below games:

• Age of Empires (I bought it when it was 75% off!)
• Sims 4 Cats & Dogs (I bought it when it was 50% off!)
• Gone Home (5/5)
• Tacoma (4/5)
• City Skyline (5/5)

WATCHED

And here’s what I watched. I’ll be coming out with quick reviews of each of them on my Instagram in the coming weeks if you’re interested.

In Theaters
Black Panther (5/5 – Review here)
Incredibles 2 (4/5)
Deadpool 2 (4/5)
Pacific Rim 2 (0/5)
Finché c’è Prosecco c’è Speranza (4/5 – Review here)

At Home
Coco (4/5)
Get Out (5/5 – Review here)
Shape of Water (5/5)
Wizard of Lies (5/5 – Review here)
Blade Runner 2049 (3/5)
War of the Planet of the Apes (4/5)
Murder On The Orient Express (3/5)
Avengers: Age of Ultron (1/5)
Captain America: Civil War (1/5)
Jumanji (2018) (0/5)
The Psych Movie (1/5)
The Magic Pill (3/5)
The Hitman’s Bodyguard (5/5)
A Quiet Place (5/5 – Review here)
Avengers: Infinity War (0/5)
I, Tonya (5/5)
Crazy Rich Asians (5/5 – Review here)
Mission Impossible: Fallout (4/5)
It Follows (3/5)
Obvious Child (4/5)

Bad Movies

(Yes I intentionally watch bad movies. They’re hilarious to make fun of – especially if they’re self aware. And no they don’t get ratings. We know what they are…bad 🙂 )
Kong: Skull Island
Bad Mom Christmas
Central Intelligence
Rampage
The Meg (Review here)

Shows
American Vandal (5/5)
Westworld (5/5)
Black Mirror (5/5)
The Wire (5/5)
The Good Place (5/5)
Arrested Development S4 Remix (5/5)
Always Sunny Season 13 (5/5)
Broad City (5/5)
A.P. Bio (4/5)
Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (4/5)
Counterpart (3/5)
Dirty Money (2/5)
Queer Eye (5/5)
You’re The Worst (3/5)
Riverdale (1/5)
Pink Collar Crimes (2/5)
Gordon Ramsey’s To Hell And Back (2/5)
Community (5/5)

Good, New Stand Up
John Mulaney: Kid Gorgeous
Ali Wong: Hard Knock Wife
Hari Kondabolu: Warn Your Relatives
Hasan Minhaj: Homecoming King
Tig Nataro: Happy To Be Here

So that’s it: my 2018 in a long, long nutshell. It’s been a wild year and I’m excited to see what 2019 brings. To the new year!

How was your 2018? Did you achieve all of your non-monetary goals?