Goals check in

Is it just me, or were some of those goals pretty lofty? No? They all seemed manageable, particularly for someone with very little on her plate? Well who asked you, anyway!

• Go to at least two places I haven't been before - haven't done this yet. Yesterday the boy and I went for a walk along a different route and checked out a few different shopping centers, so I guess in a pinch I could count that... but I don't think it's fair. I'm going to keep trying on this one. Tomorrow I have the day off and R will be off doing some team bonding, so (and I'm putting this in writing so I'll have to do it) I think I'll get in the car and take myself on a date somewhere. Now I just have to figure out where...
• Write something every day - this is the goal that I'm failing at. Because, frankly, I just don't have something to say every day. I'm working on it, and I'm certainly writing more than I have been since graduation, but every day? Not so much. I don't think this goal is going to be achieved, and that's ok.
• Run 30 miles - I'm working on it. As I write this, I'm waiting for it to warm up a bit outside so I can head out for hopefully something along the lines of three miles. According to my mapmyrun tracking, so far I've done 7.67 miles. Of course, this isn't counting the elliptical time I put in on Friday. According to the machine in my complex, I did almost 18 miles in 45 minutes. On another, totally unrelated note, I think the elliptical in my complex has a messed up display.

There's a reason I set a goal to run 30 miles this month. It has something to do with the pathetically short bars for every other month.

• Come up with a story to tell - I'll be honest, I haven't even thought about this yet.
• Figure out what to do about holiday gifts - I'm getting there. I've figured out gifts for my California relatives, and I'm waiting for the yarn to arrive to create them. I think I know what I'm getting for R. It's the rest of my family I'm having trouble with. I want to do something really nice for my parents, because they have been so, so great to me this year, but I really haven't got any idea what.
• Knit something and finish it - This will happen when the yarn gets here. It'd better, or I'll be woefully behind on my holiday knitting.
• Try at least 3 new recipes - 1 down. I made a truly terrible butternut squash soup the other night. It was a shame, because I was really so excited about it, but it was pretty awful. I guess technically it still is pretty awful, because it's sitting in a giant container in the fridge, neither of us wanting to eat it or to waste it. Oh well. I tried!
• Keep a positive attitude - I'm actually really proud of myself for this one. I've been trying really hard to not get myself down, and for the most part, it's paying off. I'm not saying there weren't days in the past week that I was upset, or that I was disappointed, or anything like that. But in general, I haven't been nearly as hateful toward myself in the past week as I have been since moving out here. Yay, me!

I guess I'd better figure out where I'm taking myself on that date tomorrow.

Election Night

2008 was the first election I voted in. I voted by absentee ballot from school, and only voted in the presidential election. I didn't even pay attention to the rest. Fast forward to election night, and I was on the phone with my best friend, probably crying about not having any friends, feeling homesick, etc. It was November of my freshman year and after the honeymoon period of my dream school wore off, I was starting to feel a little lost. I fell asleep around 10pm, and although my roommates tried to wake me up to celebrate the results, I slept like a rock through the night as my classmates and colleagues paraded through the city. Whoops.

Tonight, I'm on the west coast, which is making it much easier to stay awake for the results. This time around, I actually payed attention to more than just who my role models were voting for. This time around I'm feeling much more invested. This time around I'm sitting at work, watching three different news sites as they call various states seemingly at random. I'm looking at my twitter feed and my facebook newsfeed and reading my friends' reactions to just about every change.

I don't have a lot to say about the election. I feel like I should, though. I feel like this is something I should be able to talk about for hours, but I'm not. Although I paid more attention this time around, I still didn't do enough. I didn't pay enough attention to state and local elections, and I'm disappointed in myself for that. But above all, I'm proud of myself for pulling myself off the couch this morning, walking to the school down the street (in the strange and disconcerting 80 degree weather...) and casting my vote.

Some Goals

Like I mentioned last time, I've been feeling a little aimless lately. I think the start of a new month is always a good time to create some goals for myself. Some small ones, some larger ones, some that I probably have no chance of achieving. So here we go. In November, my goals are as follows:

• Go to at least 2 places I haven't been before. I haven't done much exploring of my city, and I know that's not really ok. Particularly if I'm only going to be living here for the rest of my lease, I want to be able to look back on this year and feel like I actually lived in California, not just like I stayed there for a little while and was afraid to leave my apartment. I'm not limiting this to my city in particular though, because there's so much of the Bay Area that I want to see. Probably more than I want to see much of Silicon Valley. I really want to figure out if I want to move out of CA entirely, or just leave the area I'm in now, and there's no better way to figure that out than to do some exploring...
• Write something every day. Whether that's here, in my journal, part of something creative, it doesn't matter. Just the simple act of putting words into sentences and making it all make sense has been so important to me in the past, and I've really like it slide since finishing my thesis in April. Oops!
• Run 30 miles. Not in a row, mind you. I'm not that good yet. But I have so much time on my hands, and I keep making excuses for myself to avoid getting out and exercising... I really do want to get better, I just don't feel like putting in the effort. And I need to put a stop to that.
• Come up with a story to tell. This goes along with writing, but it's a different goal for me. I can write endlessly about my thoughts and my woes and my feelings, but I want to come up with a story that has nothing to do with me, and tell it.
• Figure out what to do about holiday gifts. This is for obvious reasons.
• Knit something and finish it. I've been working on the same giant project for the past four or five months and really making no progress. Probably because I got bored with it after a couple of weeks and stopped picking it up. I'm letting myself buy new yarn, and I'm going to make something else and remember why I love knitting. Because I really do love knitting.
• Try at least 3 new recipes. For real food, not dessert, because let's be honest, I eat a lot of dessert. Bonus points if the recipes are primarily vegetable based instead of, let's say, pasta based. Or cheese based. Yum, cheese.
• Keep a positive attitude. Seriously, Becca, your life is not all that awful. Remember that.

So there are my goals. I'll check in at the end of the month and let you know how I did. And of course, I'll check in between now and then with what I'm sure will be fascinating updates about my life and job and roommates and stuff. But I'll be trying to keep it positive, per my last (and probably most important) goal.