At the beginning of the year, I decided to craft some resolutions and for the first 3 months I did a good job of reflecting and providing updates.
The next three, not so much. I missed recapping April before leaving for our big vacation in May and since May was mostly spent on travel, there was nothing to say about my goals. I decided to skip June too and craft a midyear review article. It took me longer to get around to this than I wanted, but such is life.
Rather than concentrate on my progress, I want to talk about my goals at a macro level. I think its time to reevaluate them.
Ever since proposing and talking wedding, Rachel and I have started to budget together. I tried really hard to track my individual spending but it became really difficult though vacation and in a way, it doesn’t matter. As much as I want to track my own habits, our budget is now a team sport. So long as we get to where we want to be by the end of the year, I’ll consider it a success. This weekend we had a nice conversation about our budget and the next 18 months or so and I am really happy with our progress thus far.
Cooking for myself has been fine, but I have been eating out more for lunch lately as I create more work friends who want to eat out. I like to think of these outings as professional development and again – as long as I stay within the budget, I suppose its not the end of the world. The key is to not get lazy in the kitchen both in what I prepare and how often I make things.
Weight loss has been an interesting one. Looking back at March I remembered that I went under 230 that month. Well, vacation wasn’t kind despite walking 9+ miles a day. Luckily I have been hovering around 228 the last week. While in London, I was consistently filling my rings due to all of the walking. At that time, Federico posted about his health journey and I felt inspired to try and do the same. According to Activity++ (which allows for the 2 “rest” days in there) I have a 62 day streak of closing my rings. I’m really happy about that, particularly since my move ring is set for 750 calories. I have to work up a sweat and be intentional to break that. Like Federico, I have decided to put my health first and I recommend everyone give it a try. Its one of the best ways you can treat yourself.
iOS development is another interesting one. With grad school and work, I feel like I have no programming left in me. I’m done with this goal for this year, and frankly, for a while. Luckily, I am scratching my iOS itch in a much nicer way – I recently got the go ahead to try and do some ARKit work. I have been watching WWDC sessions and working in Xcode at my day job. Hard to beat that! I’m really excited and mildly terrified of this opportunity. I hope I am able to deliver something useful.
Finally, I am looking forward to finally getting this podcast out. It’s already up if you know where to look for it, but we haven’t officially launched because of our summer travel making it hard to get in a rhythm. We should be good now. Episode 4 is recorded, and 3 is 95% edited. With some work to the website and a submission to iTunes, we’ll be a real show. Though still green, I think the show has potential and it’s a lot of fun to make something with a friend again.