Goals For the New Year

I'll make a post about my New Years in Prague soon, but before then I wanted to jot down a list of my goals for the New Year. I'm not usually a fan of New Years Resolutions per se, in fact, I think this is the first year I've even considered them. These are all smaller, more attainable things I'm planning on doing whether or not they're resolutions, so why not?

1. Cook 2 recipes from my cookbooks or internet bookmarks per month.

I have a habit of accumulating cookbooks and bookmarks, looking at them and then filing them away forever. There's actually some good stuff in there! Now that I'm more settled I need to get more serious about my food blog, as well.

2. Buy a bike and use it.

Berlin is the most bike-friendly place I've ever lived and relatively flat at that. Also, I hate being trapped underground on the U-bahn. With bike lanes almost everywhere I can't really say no and while my lack of knowledge about how to fix ANYTHING on a bike or what to look for when purchasing one (they were always something just sitting in the garage!) makes this somewhat intimidating to me, I'm doing it! Not to mention it's like getting paid to exercise as I won't spend as much on public transportation once it's warmer.

3. Make traditions in Berlin.

In other places I've lived my friends and I have always developed "traditions", or things we did every week/month like quiz nights, that served as a meeting place and really made it feel like "home". Now that my life is a little less hectic and I finally have an apartment, I need to get on the social aspect of things. There's an English-language bookstore near me with a quiz night I want to build a "team" for and I'd love to get back into rock-climbing if I decide it's affordable or maybe even find a gym near me. Why did I leave my rock-climbing gear in America again?

4. Study my German flash cards for 10 minutes at least a few nights a week.

I've gotten really lazy with this. Now that I can speak pretty good German I sort of just use the same words all the time and just ignore things when I don't perfectly understand them. I need to get back into writing down new words I hear and plugging them into Anki, my flashcard program. Plus, ten minutes isn't really that long!

5. Don't work with children.

Most of the drama I've experienced since I've been in Berlin has been from taking jobs that involve working with children. I think I can safely say now such jobs are not for me. Though there are 5000 jobs when children are involved...RESIST.


Attainable?