2020 slogan: Results may vary, 2020 goals & year review

Did you accomplishing anything last year? Did your 2020 Goals see any change? People lost jobs, became default teachers, had the opportunity to spend more time with kids. Canceled travel. Finally had time to dedicate to a hobby or new interest. Pretty much, results may vary, should be the slogan of 2020.

Making Goals for next year is an act of courage.

While we all lived through the rollercoaster of 2020 . We all had a different ride, didn’t we? Results may vary.

We traveled to California in the end of 2019 and into 2020 January, so happy for that. We got to see family right before everything fell apart.

My 2020 goals. I set them before I knew what would happen. We had just moved to the new city in November. We still didn’t know anyone locally. Mr. Roamer had just started in a new position at a new company.

A lot happened last year. March -July was especially rough with the overlap of the BLM protests and the Covid quarantine. I was emotionally spent and some relationships had to be trimmed away. It is a privilege to even be able to say that you should not watch all the wrong going on in the world. Add an election and 2020 was the horror movie no one asked for.

Even so we did the best we could and here is how my personal goal played out.

2020 (11 Goals )

1. Job 3-4 hr. /day ( preferably 12-4pm)
2. Fun PT job. Zumba Certification
3. Improve blog, Learn more about profitable blogging
4. Continue sharpening my public speaking, send pitches
5. Buy house June – August
6. Adulting _dentist & optometrist
7. Pay to consult a nutritionist
8. Pay for a workout coach
9. Attend World Domination Summit
10. Clean out Laptop
11. Outline and record capsule wardrobe course

Job 3-4 hr. /day ( preferably 12-4pm) (Progress)

In February after a few months in the new city I looked for a new job. I became an elementary school helper, another flexible job. I got hired in March worked for 2 day and then the pandemic happened. Flexible work offers so much. I still need to find a way to get work to fit into the schedule I would like to have. This one didn’t quite fit the bill when it came to the schedule I wanted. Working only 2 days then being laid off, was by far the wildest thing.

Fun PT job. Zumba Certification

I had started to attend some Zumba classes. I looked up how to get certification as someone who loves dancing. Then I could go out and teach classes. It sounds like a great idea. Getting paid to work out. I was serious about exploring this option, I had found a day in April to get certification. This was of course another thing that flew out the window. I kept an eye out for other opportunities. Jumping on the opportunity, I applied to be a paid host of a podcast. I didn’t get the position. Clearly, I should have been more aggressive, I realized after talking to the person who got it. I remember debating whether I should send some voice samples. Clearly I should have. Seeing the job posting and trying for it, was a good experience as I work to find flexible fun work that sits with my values.

Improve blog, Learn more about profitable blogging (Progress)

I decided I needed to spend some money to try and figure this one out this year. This year I have been tuning in to Pat’s Income Stream on YouTube. Pat even reviewed my website. I also paid to join the SPi pro community for a full year. Finally, created an amazon account, so that I could share affiliate links. I am a minimalist and really I don’t shop on Amazon frequently, most recommendations will be books. I have learned so much! Blogging is fine if you aren’t trying to earn an income. If you want to develop it into an income stream, there is a lot to learn on the back end.

Continue sharpening my public speaking, send pitches (Progress)

One positive about the pandemic. I had the opportunity to rejoin my Toastmaster club. They meet in Kalamazoo and I am now on the other side of the state. Since the pandemic pushed everything online I was able to rejoin my old club virtually. I was able to improve my public speaking by working on the projects and consistently giving speeches. The shift to online, did leave me lost with what and how to pitch. So I didn’t send any speaking pitches out.

Buy house (June – August) (Complete)

We bought a house during the pandemic.

I signed up for YFRP course from Paula Pant. A course teaching how to buy a home with rental property potential. I failed to buy a multi-unit ( Duplex – triplex- quadraplex). That left me really disappointed. I really wanted a rental. ( I will write a post about the whole situation but to summaries). We did lock ourselves in a mortgage on a house.

I’m a tiny house living sort of person. I don’t mind small apartments even for our family of 4. During the quarantine, we had to all be home all day. We felt the pinch and choose to still buy even during a pandemic. Fearing things would continued to be work from home. School from home. We wanted more space.

This was the one 2020 goal, that we needed to continue to pursue. Especially with the changes from the pandemic.

The pandemic did give us an outside reason to tighten the purchase budget. We had cash to put 20% down but we didn’t want to use up all our money for that. We felt like keeping money on hand for a potential unemployment was a must.

Adulting: Dentist & optometrist (Progress)

I took kids to the dentist. Right before everything was shut down. We had just moved here, we only got the dentist in. It’s out first year in a while not having our wellness visits. We also only had that one dental appointment. I usually try to make sure I am taking full advantage of our medical coverage. Meaning we normally do our 6 month dental visits. It was a weird year.

We became hyper sensitive to being careful. “Don’t do this, don’t do that… you know we can’t go to the doctors right now.” Phrases we repeated frequently. At one point I got a tooth ache. Searching online I found it might be stress, and clenching my jaw at night while I slept. I was attentive to try and relax before bed and after a few day the pain went away. I know it wasn’t the best thing to do. Self diagnose, but I really was limiting any people interaction. Unless absolutely necessary.

We masked. Stayed home. We made it through 2020.

Healthy and with all our teeth.

Clean out Laptop ( Progress)

Since, we were stuck at home and the kids needed to use the laptops. We decided we needed to improve its performance by cleaning it out. We compiled our old picture into a external hard drive and deleted as many thing as we could to lighted the load on our old laptop.

Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do with out.

I use thing until the very end. Even though the laptop needs to sit on top of a platform to get more ventilation its worked for us. I also didn’t want to get a Chrome book from the school because even if our stuff was old, we still had it. I wanted the people who truly needed it to have access to them.

Goals that I slashed off completely

• Pay to consult a nutritionist
• Pay for a workout coach
• Attend World Domination Summit
• Outline and record capsule wardrobe course

It was rough for me crossing out the world domination summit. I knew that with how precautions I was being, there was no way I would attend an event with so many people even if things had gotten better. As we all know things got worse. It’s supposed to be the last one. I really wanted to make it to one before the event was discontinued. Finally, WDS was postponed until 2021. Still I realized that this might just be one of those goals you just need to let go.

I haven’t traveled to see family. If I don’t feel comfortable traveling to see family. Then I am not going to travel to meet a bunch of strangers at a very crowded event. It’s just not going to happen.

Special Note: WDS has been postponed until 2022. Which I am very happy about. Now there is a sliver of a chance I might still go in the future. Back in 2020, it was clear to me that I would not attend even in 2021.

2020 was the year I was finally going to pay to speak with a nutritionist and a workout coach. The worst effect of the pandemic was on my physical and mental health. Personal time and space disappeared. Instead, I was constantly surrounded in our small apt. It was rough.

Lets be honest, nutrition took a bit of a hit too.

Finally the Capsule wardrobe outline was my last ditch effort to make sure I was being productive with all this “extra time”. I added it in September. I didn’t record a capsule wardrobe course. Even so I saw progress in planning a webinar on the same topic.

The unexpected good

Things that were not on the Goal list this year, but that I have started and found as really good things.

Taking pictures of food. Food in Quarantine. When the lockdown started I mentally prepared for the worst. I though we would be eating: rice and beans, pasta and sauce , and other long term storage foods. Due to the pandemic we chose to shop every 3 weeks. At the start fresh foods like veggies and fruits did drop into a rotation of feast and famine. We did figure out which foods held best and bought frozen fruits and veggies too. The limits exploded our creativity and we had lots of new food combinations. So I started behaving like a true millennial and took lots of food pics.

Watching pat Flynn the income stream Daily since the pandemic started and becoming part of the SPI pro paid community to learn from so many awesome people. I’ve know about Pat for a long time. Having him show up daily on Youtube really helped me feel connected to other adults and creators.

Starting a podcast. We discussing this for a long time. In the beginning it was too much stress. Some people sounded committed and in the end turn out not to be. A small group of us pushed forward. So this year I learned how to record and edit podcasts on Audacity. I also decided to recommit to Toastmasters and even decided to take on an officer role.

Reflection is so important.

Even with the unpredictable year of 2020. Take time and look back on what went well and what did not.

Ciao,

Melissa

Tell me in the Comments Below how you are feeling after the reflection. Did you have the courage to plan goals for 2021? Usually I do them in December. This year I waited until March to finalize them. Share with me what your goals are for this year.