During the past week, I’ve done a lot of reflective introspection. Following Shelby at LittleFoxCoffee, I asked myself a number of questions and here are the answers that I’m sharing today.

Memories: It was a year of great memories: hiking in the Arizona desert, celebrating our 25th anniversary with an amazing two-week European vacation, spending time with The Prophet and experiencing Dolby for the first time.

My Successes: As far as this category is concerned, the successes can be divided into work and personal. For work, we launched: a successful brand marketing campaign, our re-designed website that didn’t miss a step with regard to our metrics, and our email marketing newsletter to go above and beyond our operational initiatives for the year. For personal, I hit my goal of making it to my Peloton century ride (hoping to hit 125 before the ball drops), read 62 books for my GoodReads 2017 challenge, and launched my new blog. Additionally, I finally read books that were truly worth reading…a banner year for me to rate books that merited five stars.

If I could change anything, it would be the following:  more realistic in finishing the Modern Mrs. Darcy 2017 Reading Challenge, journaling on our anniversary trip, completing more knitting projects and spinning more bumps.

What worked: Discovering PrepDish to shop and meal plan; using the Peloton app for both spin classes and Beyond the Ride content; listening to podcasts to broaden my reading selections and staying up to date on news, politics and pop culture; and time management of tasks in my bullet journal. At work for the blog and in this space, I created editorial calendars so I had a rough sketch of what I wanted to write, which could be altered as needed.

What didn’t work: taking on  too much  of everything. Knitting challenges than I couldn’t handle, which led to a very lackluster project completion (fewest in quite a number of years); as I mentioned some of my selections for the Modern Mrs. Darcy Reading Challenge felt too much like school work; and daily bullet journal entries, which I did for about half the year but often days after the fact. Plus the entries became to rote and very lackluster without any creative flare.

How can I make 2018 better? I knew exactly how I wanted to make 2018 better…it would be a #DoMe year. I will continue taking my Peloton rides followed by stretching, but add more weight training into the mix (not just the Intervals & Arms). And taking rides with my favorite instructors: Alex Toussaint, Denis Morton, Christine D’Ercole and Emma Lovewell. I’m starting 2018 getting my bullet journal ready by way of borrowing what I have seen around and about on YouTube, Pinterest and Instagram. And definitely, going with a simple month future log and then weekly spreads. I also wanted to get back to creating with paint, which I haven’t in years. I thought that using my bullet journal as my creative outlet would be a match made in heaven.

On the knitting front, I decided to jump back into Box O Socks and knit a pair of socks for myself each month. I have patterns to be knit up set aside in a binder and yarn in a bin. Some of the patterns have been on my “want to knit” list for a very long time, and many were in the various yarn clubs I was a member of close to 10 years ago. I also wanted to knit more sweaters for myself…again patterns that I have been hankering to ‘take a go at’ for many moons. My spinning also needs to get back on track…I was doing so well at the beginning of the year to spin up my Spunky Eclectic Club bumps so that I can create a memory blanket.

At brunch today, I discovered that The Prophet and I have a very similar goal for 2018: choose even more healthy food options. We are going to incorporate more plant-based food into our diets and get back to sticking to weekly meal prep and plans (holidays and house remodeling veered us off course).

Lastly, my reading life for 2018 will include the Modern Mrs. Darcy Reading Challenge and this time, there are only 12 categories, which I can definitely handle. It will still allow me to read some of the books that I wanted to read this year, but never got around to reading. Plus I will have ample opportunity to read as many suspense, mystery and thrilling books as I want. And for GoodReads, I will up my challenge number to 68.

Happy and healthy new year to all and hope that all of your desires and wishes come true in 2018!