Alright 2020 is done! I wasn’t going to do a Personal year end review because I didn’t really know what to talk about. In fact, I had actually started one but scrapped it. But it’s the final day of 2020 and I got inspired! So I want to share my Highs and Lows of this year with your guys, girls and non binaries.
Lows
Vacation Cancelled.
The year of Covid cancelled our vacation to Italy. In fact, it was three weeks before we were set to go (Spring Break) when Italy closed its borders. So that sucked. Plus side to it is that we get more time to really plan what we’re going to do and save more, but it was a pain getting all of our refunds back from the airlines. For big companies like that, its a shame that you can’t trust them to be honest and straight with you about money and refunds.
Anxiety and Insomnia
This didn’t really have to do with Covid shut downs, but I had anxiety that led to insomnia. I am very hard on myself about my job and have tons of things to keep account and juggle. I always worry about missing a deadline and worry about not finishing something quickly enough. This has led to many nights having me almost fall asleep, only to have my heart race and I feel like I’m falling upward back into my body and wakefulness. My mind is racing, and I cant get back to sleep for the life of me. Weirdly enough, the shut downs of the schools and the switch to Distance learning has allowed me to really step back, reorient, and come back stronger with less stress.
Foster parenting
My husband and I got qualified to be Foster parents and actually did two emergency placements. This means that the kids only stay with us for a few days until a more permanent placement could be found. They were both newborns, which we were not equipped for, and we used a lot of our adoption fund just for start up things for the newborns. We spent close to $1000 that was meant for adoption. Not only that, the family community that I had expected to rely on to help take care of our future adopted kids was not so open to helping out with foster kids. For me, I think I went into being a foster parent not only to help kids in need, but also as a substitute for adopted kids. The problem with that is, I found out that I really wanted the family celebration experience. The baby showers the first birthdays, the excitement of adding to the overall family. But we didn’t get that experience with Foster kids. We didn’t feel like we had our family grow, that we were just babysitting. And it bothered the hell out of me, and made me angry that the money meant for our kids was going to something…not our kids. I wasn’t angry that we were helping these babies. I was glad to be there for them, to have someone in their lives even for a brief moment caring for them. But I felt my ability to adopt slipping away from me because our money was being drained for kids not our own. Yes, these kids need help and a place to be safe, but I realized I can’t be that place yet. I wanted something else, went into foster parenting with a heart not meant for it at the time. That’s ok. I learned a lot from this experience though. I learned what’s really important to me. The connection with the community that comes with having kids is important to me. The ability, the idea that a kid is mine, my actual family. I also learned that babies are hard work. I really got an appreciation, even if for a brief time, of how hard it is for single parents. That not only has helped me with my own parenting skills and expectations, it’s changed my political views. Single parents and families really need to be invested in by our country with childcare and family stipends. Single parents need that help and I would put my vote and time into making that happen.
Sudden Allergies: Seriously WTF.
Yeah, this one sucks. I started having an allergic reaction to something. I would break out in hives that were so itchy and my whole body was covered in them. I had to return my new Tempurpedic bed, the one I’ve been saving up for a long time to get, because we thought it might be the bed that I was allergic to. Even with the bed gone, though, I still get hives, if only on a lighter scale. I’ve been taking allergy medication and its been helping, but I have found it necessary to schedule an appointment with the allergist to see what I am allergic to before I try to get my Tempurpedic bed back.
Highs
Despite all the Lows, this year has actually been very prosperous for my husband and I.
An excuse to let my introverted side have fun
We haven’t had to go to any events or parties! I don’t know about you all, but not having to deal with or interact with people in person has been a blessing. It takes a lot of energy for me to do social things with people, even if I am close with them. Its not that I am lazy and don’t want to go out, it’s that the whole experience of socializing is anxiety filled for me. I feel like I’m trapped in that situation and can’t get away. I also worry about if I run out of things to say.
Improved my work
Though it sucks to teach kids and help them through a computer, this year has been very good for me to work on things that I didn’t have time to do when we were in the brick and mortar. I was able to really work on my administrative tools/tracking systems for my job as a Special education teacher. Because of that, I can go into the brick and mortar and have less stress and anxiety about the administrative side of my job. In fact, this was the reason for my anxiety and insomnia.
Got a raise and met my financial goals
This area was actually unexpected. My husband and I took advantage of the financial climate and refinanced our house. It allowed us to get a lower interest rate and a lower monthly mortgage payment. This allowed us to start putting more towards our adoption fund. Filling out our emergency fund also allowed us to start sending more towards the adoption fund. Along with that, I managed to finally save up for an AC and had most of my big purchase wish list items fulfilled. This allowed me to finally increase my charitable giving and my contributions to my Roth IRA. In fact, I can now start maxing it out, something that I have dreamed about since I was 21 years old (now I’m 30). All of this wouldn’t have been possible without finally filling out some things we were saving up for, the refinance, and my raise. I not only earned enough college credits to get into the final column of my pay scale (most teachers will understand this), I finished my Masters program and am now receiving a stipend for that.
Lost weight
This year has allowed me to actually break through my years long weight loss plateau. I’ve talked about this in a previous blog, so I will be brief in this one. I started with restricting myself to only two days of being able to eat sweets, and I built a tracking system that gamified it. I also put visual reminders of not to break the no sugar streak. This, along with my fit bit encouraged me to increase my athletic activity as well. Being focused on hitting 10k steps, doing daily push ups and other physical activities, and tracking my calories and food really helped to let me not only break the 200Lb barrier, I drop-kicked the struggle into being below 190Lb’s as well, an unthinkable feat for me.
Raised my confidence in my job
This one was huge for me. For a long time, I always felt inadequate in my job and almost quit quite a few times. This was generally due to the administrative side of my work (progress monitoring of skills for the students, IEP paperwork, etc). I am great with the kids and controlling my class; I just sucked at the paperwork side of my job. With that in mind, it not only kept me up at night, it made me doubt my abilities as a teacher. But with the chance to actually work on my administrative abilities and earning my masters degree, I no longer feel inadequate. In fact, I feel confident that I would be a competitive hire wherever I decided to apply if I decided to move school districts.
This year has been full of highs and lows. While this year may have been really bad for many people, we shouldn’t feel ashamed if it’s actually been good for us. Our pre-Covid life was slowly eating away at me, leading me to anxiety, insomnia and depression. I’m just grateful for the chance to take a step back and breathe. It allowed me to reorient myself and improve. I’m hopeful that even if we do go back to in-person teaching, I will be better equipped to handle everything.
Now let’s talk about goals. We all set them every New Years, and I personally like to think about what I want to accomplish in the new year.
1.Learn Spanish
This one is big for me. I have a large population of Spanish-speaking students and parents and I would love to not have to wait for an interpreter. I’ve taken classes in the past, but as the saying goes, if you don’t use it you lose it. This year, my husband got me Rosetta Stone to learn Spanish. I started using a habit tracker to reinforce my consistent use of it. I plan on using Rosetta stone 5 out of 7 days of the week. I also plan on reading in Spanish and watching one episode of my favorite shows once a week in Spanish.
2.Max out my retirement fund
As I talked about earlier in this blog, I finally gained the earning ability to max out my Roth IRA. That, my dears, is my plan for this year. Its a priority, and I built it into my budget.
3.Increase my charitable contributions
My overall goal with charitable giving, is to give 15% of my net income. My mom put that percentage into my head. She got that number from her faith journey in Christianity. Though I don’t necessarily have a faith-reason for getting my charitable giving up to 15%, it’s always been a dream of mine to be able to do so. Within the past two months, I had upped it to $200 a month but 15% of my earnings would be $640. But progress is progress. My goal for this year is to get it up to $300 a month. I plan on doing that by trying to take on more from work by going to paid trainings, more substitute work, and doing more collaboration work. My strategy is to earn more by doing what I already planned on doing: improving my teaching skills and improving the school altogether.
4.Deepen my faith
This year, I have read a lot of books that have deepened my faith in God. The three key books to that are Marcus Borg’s Heart of Christianity, Rachel Held Evans’ Inspired A. Helwa’s Secrets of Divine Love; a Spritual Journey into the Heart of Islam. So in order to deepen my faith, my plan is to do acts of service. Unfortunately this involves being somewhat social, but COVID-19 gives me the excuse to be a little distant from people. My husband and I have begun to volunteer with city clean up. I plan on doing more of that as a starting point. I would have succeeded in this goal if I can do this throughout the whole year at least once a month. I also plan on creating more meditative practices. To do this, I will be meditating once a day, and pausing once a day to give thanks to God for everything using a rosary. I will also be doing meditative breaths before praying the 5 prayers a day and having moments of stillness.
5.Expressing more of my thoughts
For this goal, I will be using Medium for my medium of expressing my thoughts. I started blogging recently because number one, its been on my list of things I wanted to do and number two, I find that when I write down my thoughts, concepts, beliefs and opinions, it helps me to work through some of the kinks and expand on them. This is a self development endeavor and I plan on posting once a week on sundays. Hopefully, I get more readers who will engage with me and help me to expand on my opinions and point of view.
These are some of the Goals that I have planned for this year. What are your Highs and Lows? What are your goals for this upcoming year? And how are you going to achieve those goals?
