22 for 22

My intentions for 2022

Last year, I started following Gretchen Rubin’s practice of setting goals for the upcoming year. I created my 21 for 21 list and then kept myself accountable by reflecting on it at the halfway mark. To keep up with this, I am now posting my 22 for 2022 list of things I’d like to get done and habits I’d like to form.

I like to have a theme word for the year to help ground me. So this year’s theme is to build: I want to build good habits, build a healthy and thriving team at work, build a strong product culture on my team, and build my skills as a leader, parent, mother, and friend. While this post focused on what I am doing to build and strengthen my personal life habits in 2022, I plan to do a post on my professional growth goals in a later newsletter. So stay tuned.

So, here is my list - in no priority order, focusing on themes across building a great family dynamic, healthy habits, and improving my wellbeing.

1. Get kids’ passports - I successfully renewed my passport (which was on my 21 for 21 list), and it’s time to get the kids set up for travel. First on the list is England/Ireland/Scotland - to see our friends out there and show our kids a new land. Since I am writing this in the week when Omicron is peaking in the US, it is hard to imagine international travel, but I know it will return and our family will be ready.

2. Get my Enhanced Drivers License (EDL) - This has been a procrastination item for me and the requirement to have this for travel has been delayed until 2023, however, I want to get ahead of it and finally go through the steps to get my EDL so this task can stop occupying mental space.

3. Redesign our coat closet - I want to organize our coat closet to become more functional by our front door. This is a stretch for me, as I don’t really enjoy house building projects, but I am passionate about this prime space being poorly used to store our vacuum and basically nothing else.

4. Move for 20+ minutes every day - I plan to continue making time to stay active. I am loving the Peloton bike as well as strength classes and I have gone back to F45 gym for excellent crossbody training.

5. Monthly date night - Building and maintaing a healthy marriage is a big part of what makes our family successful. To that end, I plan to make an effort to have a date night without kids at least once a month with Adam.

6. Take a trip as a family - I am excited to plan a trip for our family to go on vacation. We did manage two trips in 2021 to see our family, so hoping that in 2022, we can take a trip to a tropical destination for some R&R.

7. Ski - In February, I tore my ACL which brought my ski season to a halt. I’ve been in physical therapy and recovery since March and my goal is to get on skis this season. I don’t care if it will be cross country to downhill - but I will get on the skis on and take a run. This is important for me to feel that I have beat my injury and persevered.

8. Family photoshoot - The days are long and the years are short rings truer and truer as our kids are getting older. While we take 100s of pictures a year, it is a challenge to get family photos so I treasure the opportunity to do a family photoshoot to capture us at least once a year.

9. Make the Book of Now - While seeing what we look like over the years is great, it is also interesting to see what life is like in retrospect. To accomplish that, I want to make a book composed of photos of everyday life. So things like a picture of a gas station, of food in our refrigerator, a grocery store aisle, a clothing store - to really capture the day-to-day life. It will be fascinating to look back on it in 20 years and see just how much life has changed. Thanks Gretch Rubin for the suggestion!

10. Organize holiday cards - A great way to organize holiday cards is to hole punch them and attach to a ring, then add a cover with a year, thus creating an annual compilation. A college friend shared this hack last year and I am so happy to be able to adopt this for the second year in a row. I already completed this for 2021, so one item is checked off the list!

11. Celebrate Adam’s milestone birthday - Adam has a big birthday this year and I want to make sure it doesn’t pass us by so I want to plan and do something special.

12. Read every day for 22 minutes - My homage to 22 is to have one item on this list that reflects this number. Our oldest daughter reads for 15 minutes a day for school, so I want to join her, raise the time to 22 minutes and do it together a few times a week.

13. Try to reverse my PCOS - I am among 5-10% of women diagonesed with PCOS (Polycystic Ovary Syndrome) and I have been medicated for it since I was in college with the only technique known at the time - the birth control pill. But now, two decades later, I want to explore changes in diet as well as some homeopathic approaches to try to reduce/get rid of this. This is a big stretch project for me, but it has been on my list to tackle.

14. Build healthy eating habits - If I am going to work on my PCOS, I will most definitely need to work on healthy eating habits. So to make this more tangible, I plan to do a dry month for 30 days (no alcohol) as well as take a 12-hour eating break (stop eating at 7pm and not eat breakfast at least until 7am the next morning). I am also always on the journey of finding the balance of eating good food (and cake) with healthy living.

15. Take a baking class and bake something new - While eating more vegetables, I do plan to continue to make more cakes (check out my top 9 baked goods of 2021 post). Because my friends and familysupport my hobby, I now have two gift cards, one for a Wilton class and one for Arlos Cookies so my goal is to make time to take at least one of these this year. As a consequence, I hope I will be inspired to make a new creation - whether it is a new type of decorating technique or perhaps I’ll tackle learning how to work with fondant.

16. Prioritize a girls trip - My business school classmate has already kicked off planning a girls trip for later this year, and I am so excited to make time for it and take a trip with the amazing women I became friends with in business school. We live all over the country and world at this point so making a deliberate point to get together is an exciting prospect for me.

17. Make mood music lists - In 2021, I started a pre-meeting playlist that I use before the beginning of big meetings to set the mood. This made me think that I want to have more purpose-specific music lists. In addition to the pre-meeting list, I also have a running list, but I also want to make a mood booster list, productivity music list, chores list, and so on.

18. Be in bed by 10pm - There is so much research that supports going to bed at the same time and getting up at the same time is really good for quality sleep, so I plan to try to be in bed by 10pm every day and up at 6am.  

19. Plan a volunteer event for our family - The kids are getting old enough and while we talk about our donations, I am excited to research and find some good opportunities for us to volunteer as a family at least once this year, but I’m hoping we can make a habit out of it.

20. Go to a tea house with my daughters - I love tea, dress up and desserts. Lucky for me, I have two daughters who like two out of the three. So I want to plan a mother/daughter date and take the girls to high tea. We will dress up and have a fancy afternoon together.

21. Try a new tea a month - And to continue on the tea topic, this year, I want to revamp my tea box and have it be filled with delightful teas that I have tried. Send me your favorite tea places and teas so I can try them. My big discovery of 2021 was Harney and Sons Black Tea which I’ve added to my regular Amazon Subscribe and Save subscription and I plan to add more teas that bring me joy.

22. Create a Memories jar - My friend (@carrots_and_spice) introduced me to the idea of writing down memories throughout the year and putting them in a jar and then reading them together on December 31. We have started a Memories Jar for 2022 and I can’t wait to recap the year and reflect.

    carrots_and_spice

    

    A post shared by Ewa | Carrotsandspice.com (@carrots_and_spice)

    I’m glad that I was able to come up with a good mix of doable and aspirational things on my 22 for 2022 list. I am looking forward to most of them and will report back on my progress. Thank you for joining me on this journey and I hope you all have a healthy, happy and fruitful 2022.