hello 2016

2016 started with epic shrimp tacos and about four days of binge-watching World Junior Hockey (RIP tiny Slovakian hopes and dreams), which was not at all a bad time (I also can’t stop playing Undertale either; RIP my productivity).

I did a resolutions/goals post last year, and it actually did a pretty good job of grounding me to a lot of habits & behaviors that made the year a pretty damn solid one.  I’m not sure I have quite as much of a list of specific goals going into 2016, because I’ve decided in lieu of setting goals, I’m just going to make some shit happen, and that shit is:

• I’m going back to school!  I enrolled in a brewing & distillation technology program beginning Winter semester (next Wednesday!), and I’m mega stoked.  I hemmed and hawed about it for a while because while I’ve missed formal education terribly since I graduated from Western, really, am I positive I’m going to use a 24-credit certificate in brewing? Do I know for sure that I’m going to parlay that into a useful experience? Should I spend money on something so unrelated to the career I’m actually in?  But from the second I heard about it, a part of me strangely knew I was going to do it. I’ve seen a lot of brewing/fermentation programs pop up, but the thing I really like about this one is that it’s completely doable for someone in a position like mine (AKA not some full undergrad degree that requires selling my soul to a college), and it’s not JUST brewing – it touches on everything related to owning/operating a brewery, from the actual science behind beer, to brewhouse operations & equipment, to stuff like cellaring and marketing.  AND I’M STOKED, did I say that?

• I’m doing some new programming at my gym – I’ve been involved in some small group boot camp training for a couple months now, which I LOVE (probably because it feeds in to both my love of competition & being held individually accountable), but I’ve started working a little harder on monitoring progress. One of my huge goals for 2016 is to be able to hit some benchmarks & track a LOT more about where I am vs where I’ve been.  We’re starting off the year with monthly fitness tests and a 90-day challenge that I’ve done a couple times, but haven’t taken REALLY seriously since I first joined Life Time.  This time around I’m throwing down for real. 20% body fat, huge lifts & lots of being upside-down, here I come.  (ALSO a thing I’m considering: yoga teacher training.)

• I’m going to travel all the fuck over the place.  The only thing I really have set in stone right now is New York in March (Rangers game, arena #12, what what!), but I went on a slew of pretty big and totally amazing trips in 2015 and I’m going to be extremely disappointed if I don’t keep that up.  I forgot how much I love discovery.  At LEAST one other NHL arena & hopefully a whole shit ton of breweries.

I would also like to train myself to stop pretending to be too busy to do things like take the goddamn cats to the vet while somehow finding the time in between work and the gym to go to Target & buy eleven thousand pounds of unnecessary trail mix, but that’s another story.

AND ON THAT NOTE, happy 2016, babes!