I Think My Duolingo Routine Is Sticking Around This Time!

 One of my goals this year was to clock over 300 days on Duolingo, particularly in Spanish. Lots of people have done that, so why can't I? I've definitely accomplished a lengthy streak before, but then shortly after accomplishing that goal, my streak usually ends for one reason or another. Now that I know I'm dealing with ADHD now, I've been able to get some insight into why this might be happening. I find that it has to do with novelty. If I manage to accomplish my goal, the novelty of having reached that goal wears off. Or I get bored with the language that I'm learning. Something like that. If it's not novelty, it's motivation failing me. I might be really motivated by having a goal, but once it's accomplished, then I'm over it and it falls by the wayside. 

But this time around, something feels different. I'm feeling more confident that this will stick around even beyond reaching 300 days in a row. Now that I've been reading up more on ADHD and how it functions, I'm more aware of what I might need to make certain habits stick around for a long time! Here's what I've found and why I think it's working:

1. I have tons of reminders. Right now, I am connected with people who are very active on Duolingo, so their progress is also my motivation. The Duolingo notifications are very dramatic and over the top, but instead of getting annoyed, I'm choosing to take this as a cue. If that fails, I have Duolingo set up as a widget on my phone. All of my apps can be found on one screen (so I don't have to scroll through anything) and Duolingo takes up a big chunk of space. 

I also have other apps that I'm active with, like Finch, and I have daily reminders to practice each of the languages. When I do practice, I can check them off the list and I get daily points for practicing those languages :) It feels really good to me that I'm not putting all of my eggs in one basket, so to speak. I think that's one major reason why I'm slipped in the past.

ADHD-Friendly Elements: Multiple reminders throughout the day, keeping the important things in sight, creating urgency

2. Flexible features within the app. Before talking about other reasons why I've been able to stick to my language practice, I want to talk about specific things that are working for me within the app itself. Varied practices even in a single language keep things interesting for me. Take Hindi, for example, since I am learning not only vocabulary, but also an entirely new-to-me alphabet: sometimes I'm translating sentences in Hindi, or "writing" sentences in Hindi characters, practicing writing out the individual characters, reviewing vocabulary, doing listening activities... there's a lot going on! It's not all the same all the time. 

Duolingo is also good about celebrating the milestones you hit. And it's not just limited to the number of days you've practiced. There's acknowledgement when you've done a lot of lessons in a day, when you've hit a certain number of perfect weeks of practice, when you've corrected a certain number of mistakes, when I go up a level in a language... lots of different achievements. That pat on the back feels really great!

When you practice enough and earn enough gems, it's really easy to save yourself if you do lapse in your practice time. As of the time I'm writing this, I have a 167 day streak on Duolingo. Is this a true streak in that I have missed literally no days? No. But I was able to freeze my streak with the gems I've earned and then the streak continued once I picked it back up the next day. It's honoring the practice I've done rather than just the number of days that good practice I've managed to keep up. Real life gets in the way sometimes. There are days I'm so exhausted I fall asleep before I've had the chance to practice. But I've never been punished for those lapses or for life taking a different turn than I've planned.

ADHD-Friendly Elements: Positive acknowledgement of achievements big and small, safety nets without guilt (well, not that I take seriously, anyway), novelty through varied activities.

3. I have multiple languages I'm practicing at once! At the moment, I have five languages that are in heavy rotation on Duolingo. I have a few languages that I have studied previously that I am working to keep up and grow in-- Spanish, French, and Dutch. I have one language that is completely new to me, which is Hindi, and takes more effort for me to practice. I also have a language that is interesting to me and in the same language family as another language I'm studying, which is German. This keeps it interesting to me because it's so varied. 

Practicing multiple languages also means I can do the practice that I have the capacity for that day. If things are going really well, I can do multiple lessons in all five languages I'm practicing. If things have been hectic, I know that I can do a lesson in Dutch (which is in the same language family as English and is therefore simpler for me to grasp over other languages) or in French (which I've had a lot more language instruction in, so it's familiar and I'm comfortable enough with the grammar). 

ADHD-Friendly Elements: Novelty through varied activities, novelty through a variety of languages, activities for a variety of energy levels.

4. I am (tentatively) planning a trip. I have a friend who moved to India with his wife nearly two years ago. India has been on my list of places to travel since my undergraduate years, but I'm usually hesitant to go somewhere where I don't know even basic things in the language spoken there. As a result, I have started learning Hindi! It's been hard to learn this language since I'm unfamiliar with any part of the language and the alphabet is different from what I'm used to, but knowing I'm working towards travel has been very motivating.

ADHD-Friendly Elements: Novelty leading to motivation!

I'm feeling really good that my practice has been relatively consistent this year! I'm proud of the things that I've figured out that have been helping too :) Send good thoughts that I'll make it to 300 days and positive vibes that I'll be able to continue my practice even beyond that goal for 2025!

Goals for 2025 (Setting + Reviewing Goals All at Once!)

I'm entirely too late to the game, but... Happy 2025! It may be June now, but when I originally typed this post, it was late December/early January. I love setting goals for the coming year! The older I've gotten, the less pressure I have felt to accomplish each and every one of my goals, but I like the act of setting intentions that this practice gives me. I find that it helps give me a focus and keeps me working towards the person I want to become. So without further ado, here are the goals that I initially set in the beginning of 2025! I'll mark how each goal is going so far too.

1. Get my nose pierced. This is one thing that I have continuously put off. I would really like it if 2025 would be the last year this goal appears on my list! I haven't accomplished this yet.

2. Get a second tattoo. I found that after getting my first tattoo, the experience wasn't nearly as intense as I thought it would be! And this is coming from someone who has anxiety in medical situations, particularly around needles. It's a very different experience. I have some ideas for what I'd like next, so it's just a matter of making a decision, saving up the money, and scheduling the appointment! I haven't done this yet and I'm not sure if it'll happen this year. I have other savings goals that have come up and that I'd like to prioritize!

3. Decorate for all of our holidays. I would really like this to include putting lights on my house, but I will likely need to emphasize non-light-related decor. I would like decorations to make it to the outside of my house, particularly in the front yard. I've done a little more of this this year!

4. Build a fairy garden. I want to create more points of interest around my yard and I think fairy gardens are so cute. This would be a fun way to get me outside but not create a ton of new responsibility for me at the same time. Maybe it would motivate me to keep my yard in order better. So far, I've gotten as far as putting a lot of things on my Amazon wishlist. This will definitely be a slow growth kind of project! I have just the spot to start this fairy garden.

5. Complete 1/2 started house projects. This is one way my ADHD manifests itself, if I'm being perfectly honest. I'm getting kind of sick of having mini-construction zones scattered about my space and having a garage filled with materials that I have acquired for the purpose of accomplishing these different projects around my house. I have a list of projects I have started but have not yet finished in my Google Keep list and I'd like to finish those projects this year if I possibly can! If I can't finish all of them, I would at least like to finish a majority of them. Finishing updating the electrical in my house is the main task that relies on another person, so I'll be flexible with that project, but I don't necessarily need someone else to help me with everything else on the list. I have what I need to put my back porch in order and I have built a tool storage space in my basement! Progress :)

6. Have regular hobby days each month and keep them sacred. Having crawled my way to winter break this school year and struggling with feeling so drained, I want to make sure I'm making time for hobbies. One way I can make sure that happens is scheduling in that time. I'm resolving to have days I mark on my calendar specifically to sit and do some of my hobbies. I haven't gone as far as to schedule entire days where I'm just focusing on hobbies, but I have definitely been finding ways to bring them to the forefront of my mind each day. Right now this looks like a standing to-do list that appears on each day of my bullet journal. So I'm at least checking in each day about my language practice, whether or not I've made time to read, journal and write my own fan fiction. It's progress :)

7. Take voice lessons and/or find an outlet for singing. My family can probably attest to this, but I have loved singing from a very young age. I was painfully shy about it as a kid if someone commented on my voice but honestly, the older I've gotten and since having a kid, I've become more open to singing in front of other people. So I want to find a way to lean into that discomfort some more and make public singing less scary for myself. I've found a glee club in my neighborhood that has 6-week sessions and I've "discovered" the community education theater that puts on musicals in the summer. Somehow I want to sing with other people and in a public way. It'll be a real challenge for me. I haven't made steps in this area yet, but I also know it's not too late to make steps!

8. Take up piano again. I was one of those weird kids that actually asked to take piano lessons when I was in... I believe high school. The problem is, even though I asked for them, I really hated practicing. I don't necessarily want to sign up for lessons again for fear of the same outcome happening (where I don't practice), but I do want to brush up on what I did learn and maybe even create some kind of regular practice on my own. I have been practicing music on Duolingo, which has been fun and has been good practice reading music again! But ultimately, it's not the same. So I will need to adjust my tactic somewhat.

9. Make writing retreats a regular practice. My cooperating teacher when I was doing my stint of student teaching is an awesome writer and researcher. I really look up to her and one of the things she does is go on writing retreats. Sometimes they're with other people who are also writers and sometimes they're alone, but she always makes a point to get away and just focus on her writing. I want to give this a try and make this something that I do. I already do retreats for scrapbooking, so why not extend this to weekends away to focus on writing? I think it would be good for me as I work to better cultivate this part of myself. I haven't made this a regular practice yet, but I still have half a year to make this happen! Even doing this once would be really nice.

10. Create a teaching portfolio. I have been putting this out into the universe more the longer I've been a teacher: I'm not going to be teaching at my same school forever. At the time of this writing, I have been teaching 9th grade for 8 years (if you include my semester of student teaching) and I've worked at my current school (small community, charter, Title I) for 7 1/2 years. Small communities make it really easy to jump in and work to make a noticeable difference, if you're willing to put in the work, and I pride myself on being as involved as I am in my school community. So I want to pull together the units I have planned as the sole 9th grade language arts teacher and showcase the projects I have brought to my community in the form of a portfolio that can be shared with schools I may approach in the future. That way they can see what I'm all about and show them what I'm like as an educator through the different experiences I've had and cultivated since my initial licensure. I will need to make a post about changing teaching positions at some point this year. I have had to recount a lot of my teaching experience verbally, but I have yet to create a digital space (even adding on to what I created in grad school) where I am sharing student work and things I've created over the years. I definitely want to start this sooner rather than later though. Once summer is over, it'll be harder to make time to do this little project.

11. Visit every small/local coffee shop in my area. I've already made a list and I'm so excited for this :) We moved into our house in 2022 and since then, I really haven't ventured out and around our neighborhood beyond where we get our necessities for the week. So I want to prioritize exploring! I like coffee and coffee shop environments, so why not start here and find my new favorite places? Some progress has been made! But realistically, I would be shocked if I finished this goal in one year.

12. Clock 300+ days on Duolingo (specifically in Spanish). I really fell off the Duolingo train/Spanish practice at the end of last year, but I want to keep learning and growing in this area. I have an opportunity with students who at the moment speak mostly Spanish and are getting used to being educated in English, so they are receiving instruction bilingually. I'm doing really well with this goal! I'll talk about it more in a separate post :)

13. Schedule regular dates with my wife and stick to them! We definitely don't have a routine with this. Dates have been rather far and few between. I think we need to find what works for us. Since the beginning of the year though, she planned and executed a date for us and that was really lovely :)

14. Create a cleaning routine that is manageable on a weekly basis. I have found a tool that makes tracking this easier, but a routine remains elusive so far.

Reflecting on My 2024 Goals

It's that time of year again! Time to look back on the goals I set for myself at the beginning of 2024 and then wax reflective about each of them and how my attempts to accomplish each one went :)

✅ Get a tattoo.  I did this!! After years of saying I would like to get a tattoo, I finally followed through and got one that I loved :) My artist was a former neighbor of mine and he now has a shop just a short ways away from where I live. He was so easy to work with and honestly, as a very anxious and needle-averse person, it was so not a big deal. I was glad I brought a friend with me, but in the future when I get more tattoos (because there WILL be more tattoos!), I would be fine to go alone if it came down to it.

🤏 Create a rhythm for blogging.  I became a little more regular with my blog posts, but I definitely didn't hit a rhythm like I had hoped. I think this year was more about trying to answer the question, "So if I'm not writing book reviews anymore, what AM I writing about?" I spent a good amount of the time I did publish just following my interests and writing about the things that were weighing on my mind. So I think good steps were made, but I didn't identify the right goal for where I'm at in this process. I'll keep trying though!

❌ Get my nose pierced.  Didn't happen yet, but once again, I'm pushing this forward into my 2025 goals. Maybe this year will be the year!

✅ 52 weeks of gratitude.  I did it! Doing this in a weekly format as opposed to the daily format that I tried to pull off in 2023 was much more achievable. It was nice to sit down at the end of the week and think about things that I was grateful for, no matter what the week had been like. In fact, it was especially nice to do when it had been an exceptionally hard week. When things at work felt like they were falling apart around me, when my grandpa passed away, when my son was having a really hard time at school and needed more support than anyone thought he would need... it was a really good mental health practice to look for the good. The ways I was supported. The distractions that came at a good time and provided a reprieve. Whatever those glints of gold looked like for the week.

⚠️ Find a side-hustle.   I ended up taking this goal off of my list because it fell off the list of importance for me. I have this habit and history of only doing things if I know I will get paid for doing them. It's easier to justify taking on more things and trying new things if I'm getting paid to do them. But this realization hit me this year that... my time is precious? And my hobbies don't have to be monetized in order to enjoy them. So instead of stressing myself out trying to find more work to fill the time I don't necessarily have on a regular basis, I decided that it felt better to let this goal go. Temporary work has still presented itself at times through my full-time teaching job and my summer work and those have been greatly appreciated without feeling too overwhelming!

✅ Write for the purpose of publication.  This goal was at the forefront of my mind all year, but ended up getting accomplished in a way I didn't expect! I started out the year with the idea that I would submit smaller bits of work (like poems, for example) and slowly pick at a novel project of my own creation. And I did pick at a novel project of my own creation. But my interest in that project fizzled out after a while. Where I found some traction and modest success was in writing Harry Potter fan fiction and publishing it on Archive of Our Own. After months and months of reading every bit of Harry Potter fan fiction I could get my hands on, I decided to make the leap and write my own fan fiction pieces. In 2024, I finish one short work (27,000+ words over 8 chapters, which was 7 more chapters than I planned on writing) and I have a work in progress that is, as of this writing, 19,000+ words over four chapters with more in the works. It has been so fun to have a regular writing practice, projects that I'm constantly working on, and I also have the urgency of knowing that people are reading what I write, whether it's finished or not. I am trying to keep myself in check and not overly concern myself with the numbers side of things. Mostly, I'm proud of myself for taking pride in my own writing and actually having fun again :)

🤏 Decorate for all of the holidays.  When I wrote this goal, I had it in my head that decorations would be visible from the street and would be very obvious on the front of my house. Due to an electrical issue that is minor but I don't have the skills to fix, we couldn't (safely) put up lights on our house and that just kind of took the excitement out of decorating for me. Some decoration happened inside my house. I want to make an effort to make more of a holiday decorating effort outside of my house in 2025, but until we fix the electrical issue, I'll have to think of ways that don't involve lights (at least the kind that plug in).

✅ Understand my ADHD brain better.  I didn't read as many books on this subject as I wanted, but I had a good, quality book that I was steadily working my way through this year. And I've learned a ton about how my brain works!

⚠️ Learn to identify agates.   Plain and simple: this goal just wasn't interesting to me anymore, so I let it go. No worries. It happens.

✅ Find/rediscover mobile hobbies.  2024 was the year that I got into embroidery and upped my sewing game a little bit :) I ended up taking embroidery hoops and just the thread I needed for the project I was currently working on when I went away from home for a few days. If I was working on sewing a plush, I would bring what I needed in order to keep the project moving 

❌ Go through the junk boxes I've been avoiding.  I continued to avoid the doom boxes. But they will make a comeback on my 2025 goals.

❌ Create an indoor storage system for tools.  I acquired most of the needed materials, but that's about it. I'll have to execute at the beginning of 2025 in order to make my projects easier to accomplish once it starts warming up outside again.

✅ Create a savings.  Success!

🤏 Learn basic electrical.  This is something I started, but due to my father-in-law's schedule and professional demands, it's been hard to be consistent with this. We'll continue to make progress in 2025.

✅ Physical and Digital Book No-Buy Year. This was a moderate success! Did I still acquire books? Yes... but in a way that fit my rules with very few exceptions. Now I just need to read more of my digital books that I've acquired over time. I don't plan to go nuts with books now that my no-buy year is over.

I'm proud of the things I've gotten to check off this list this year! I've met people who are into setting resolutions and others who think resolutions are lame and pointless. But I find that they help me create focus points in my life. I can always evaluate when my priorities change. Goals like these help me work towards becoming the person I want to be. We're all works in progress.

2025 goals will be coming soon as well as other non-goal-related posts!

Goals for 2024!

Happy New Year!  Welcome to 2024!

It's the time of year where lots of people are setting goals for the year and I'm no exception to this.  I really like putting to paper (or the internet) the things that I would like to do in a year.  I think it helps guide my adventures and keeps my values at the forefront of my mind.  I don't think it sets a path my how my year is going to go or what I do-- there's still plenty of room for adventures and spontaneity!

Without further ado, here are my goals for 2024!

Recycled Goals From 2023:

1. Get a tattoo.  I think I'll be more likely to do this if I reach out to an artist right away at the beginning of this year/month.
   
   
2. Create a rhythm for blogging.  I have taken up blogging again!  But none of that matters if I don't have a schedule or workflow of some kind.  That's my mission this year.
   
   
3. Get my nose pierced.  This is something I've probably been thinking about too much and I just need to do too.  Same thing, I will find a place and make an appointment early this year, even if it's months in advance.
   
   
4. 52 weeks of gratitude.  I tried to do a version of this last year that was meant to become a daily thing, but it quickly fizzled out in March (which, hey, that's still like, 90 posts...).  I think posting once a week will help me be more successful.

New Goals for 2024:

1. Find a side-hustle.  I have big dreams.  I want to travel.  I want to do things around the house.  These are things that, without going into too much detail about my family's financial situation, would stretch our budget too much without some kind of change or boost.  So I'm in search of a way to make extra money without being away from my family.  We'll see if it's a pipe dream.
   
   
2. Write for the purpose of publication.  One of my big goals in life is to become a published author.  I took a class last year about writing fiction and part of that class was my professor, who is a published author herself, talking about the world of publication and bringing in writers to talk to us about their work and how they got to be where they are today.  So many of the writers were writing in the early morning or into the evenings when their kids were asleep, just plugging away at their stories.  More importantly, doing it consistently.  So part of this goal is to build a routine for writing on a regular basis.  
   
   
3. Decorate for all of the holidays.  Whenever holidays come up, my house looks so sad.  I want to be able to put up decorative lights and some other decorations to get into the holiday spirit, whether that's Halloween, Christmas, Thanksgiving, or Valentine's Day.
   
   
4. Understand my ADHD brain better.  Towards the end of 2023, I received an ADHD diagnosis.  It's taken a little bit to figure out what this means for me and what I want to do about it.  But in December, I started taking concrete steps.  I want to keep learning about brains like mine so that I can better do the things that I want to do while not working against my own mind.
   
   
5. Learn to identify agates.  I have a rock tumbler that I've been using on cool rocks I find in my backyard or on camping trips.  But agates look so neat!  I'd love to be able to find some out in the wild, but I need to learn what to look for first.  Then I can worry about polishing them up.
   
   
6. Find/rediscover mobile hobbies.  This is part of my "discovering myself outside of my job" mission.  I feel like when I talk to people in real life and they ask me, "How are you doing?  What have you been up to?" I don't have anything to talk about other than my job.  I don't want to be that person anymore.  I want to be the person that says, "I've been great!  I just finished a new embroidery project!" or even, "Not so great, I couldn't get the electrical on my mini-build to work.  How frustrating..."  Like, ANYTHING other than talking about my job all the time!  And it's a bonus if I can take it with me in my bag without dragging a ton of stuff around!
   
   
7. Go through the junk boxes I've been avoiding.  I think a lot of us have "doom boxes," or boxes that we feel acute dread or doom when we think about dealing with them.  I don't think that's just an ADHD thing, but I could be wrong.  Well, I want to slowly but surely deal with them.  I'm trying to keep my basement fairly organized and junk-free and dealing with these boxes is paramount to reaching this goal.
   
   
8. Create an indoor storage system for tools.  I have collected some tools since moving into my house, but I do not have any real organization to them.  I'd like to fix that!  Even if it's temporary-- the garage won't be a great storage place for a little while probably.
   
   
9. Create a savings.  When my wife and I combined our money after marriage, the account that was my savings account became our savings account.  But she still has an account that is just hers.  I want to have an account that is just mine.  This will let me keep our finances on lock a little bit better.
   
   
10. Learn basic electrical.  I'm very lucky that my father-in-law has a background in electrical work.  I want to learn how to install new outlets and fix basic electrical issues from him!  
    
    
11. Physical and Digital Book No-Buy Year.  This is a big one and probably worth digging into more in a separate post.  I've heard of people doing a no-buy year in all areas of their life and I think that's wonderful.  I'm proud of them for being able to do that and accomplish that task.  I don't think I'm quite at that level of having a no-buy year for all areas of my life and even then, I think I would need to get my family on board with this.  But I do have control over my own belongings and books.  I have really slowed down on buying physical books, but I still have a lot of books that are on my shelves that I haven't read.  I have even more books on my iPad that are much more hidden, but I still haven't read them.  I want to do this to clear out my personal collection of books.

I feel like this year, compared to other years, my list of goals is so eclectic.  But they're all meaningful to me and aimed at improving my life in very specific-to-me ways.  I'm really looking forward to seeing how this year goes!

2023 Goal Reflection

What a year 2023 was.  I met some cool milestones and went through many a challenge.  But this post isn't entirely about that.  At the start of this year, I set some goals for myself and I'm taking a moment to check back on how accomplishing those goals went!

✅ Learn how to do something new around the house.  I feel like when you move into a house, you can't help but learn something new.  In my case, we moved into a house that is over 120 years old and was most recently a rental property before we bought it.  There's plenty to do around here!  I learned how to do a board and batten wall in my entry way and I learned a lot about fitting doors into older properties (and just how difficult this actually is).  I'm excited to learn more going forward!

❌ 365 days of gratitude.  This was a very big goal.  It's not that it was hard to do, but the amount of time was a huge barrier.  I think I made it to March before I had too much of a backlog of gratitude.  Then it felt like a chore to do.  I don't want to 100% let this go, but I think I need to adjust my goal.  Maybe 52 weekly posts rather than 365 daily posts, if that makes sense.  That might be more do-able.

✅ Successfully cultivate a sourdough starter.  I managed to do this!  The problem is, it didn't last more than a month.  Cultivating sour dough starter is kind of a full-time job.  You can't let it go for too long or the starter goes bad.  I'd like to try it again in the future, but perhaps at a time when I'm better able to put more attention on it.

🤏 Complete 5 exercise programs through Beach Body.  I, like many others out there I'm sure, have a complicated relationship with exercise.  It's not enough for me to simply set a goal and then accomplish it.  I completed more programs than I have in the past, but I need more supports that I thought in order to do this.  Next time, I don't want to tie my success to just one program.  But I'm still looking for ways to stay active and find interest in what I'm doing rather than it just becoming a chore.  So this is a complicated success.

❌ Get my first tattoo.  This is still important to me to do.  There was just an issue with finding an artist, finding the time, and having the money available to do this.

✅ Learn how to preserve food.  I did this!  I now know how to make tomato sauce, fruit jam, and pickles!  I also have some fun new tools to make this job easier.  Immersion blenders are amazing :). I'm looking to expand my garden even more this year so that I can use more of what I grow!  Especially towards the end of the season, I wanted to keep canning things, so I relied on what I could find at the grocery store.  Maybe next year I'll have enough where I don't have to worry about that so much.

✅ Learn how to make food items I would normally buy out of convenience at the grocery store.  This is related to number 6.  I have ketchup and pasta sauce in mind.  This could help us save money, use what we grow in our garden, and make healthier convenience food.

❌ Find the best farmer's market in my area.  To be honest, this one ceased to be important to me.  That happens with goals sometimes.  I'm gracefully letting go of this

✅ Take up blogging again.  Technically, yes, I did take up blogging again.  Was I consistent though?  Not in the least.  I'll be extending this in my 2024 goals-- I'll elaborate in a future post.

🤏 Explore 10 places in my neighborhood and around Minnesota that I've never visited before.  I'll call this one partially accomplished.  I don't know that I visited 10 new places (unless I count individual places, not just new towns... then maybe...), but I did get to visit some new places around Minnesota!  We crossed off a few state parks when we went camping (blogs incoming this January/early February)

❌ Get my nose pierced.  Again, time and money didn't align for this goal, but I still want to do it!  I'll be moving this over to my 2024 goals.

While I didn't accomplish all of my goals this year, I'm really proud of what I did get to do.  Some of these goals will stop here and others will be let go of, which is also okay, especially if I don't find importance in them anymore.  Just because I set a goal does not mean I can't re-examine my priorities and values in the moment.  

Stay tuned for 2024 goals!