We made it! 2017 is here!

Happy New Year!

It is crazy to think that this is the second time I am posting my New Year’s Resolutions on FromBrownEyes! I cannot believe how many things have changed and how many of you check in with me every Wednesday to see how the happiness hunt is going.

I am pleased to say that I am extremely happy, but still trying to figure out exactly what I want to do in life. I have an idea of opening a career consulting firm, but with the added twist of servicing people living with movement disorders, like my dad. If you read this post, you will know that Parkinson’s Disease has been in my life for over a decade, and it has shaped my aspirations. I’m still working through this idea, and am hoping that my MBA program will provide me with some business clarity. In the mean time, I have a few other things to focus on.

Here are my 2017 New Year’s Resolutions:

1. Meditate – I have long heard the benefits of meditation, and with the stress and busyness of being a full-time MBA student, a part-time employee, and an all-the-time go-go-goer, I figured now was a good time to start. I signed up for a meditation class taught on my college campus and will be meditating twice a week for an hour each time. Hopefully I can learn to quiet this brain of mine.
2. Keep Up the Travel – It is no secret: I love to travel. I have been on many adventures during my life time (you can read about the ones from the past year here), but I am still not satisfied. While I understand that going on a trip every month as I was doing for the past year is not feasible for a student, I still want to keep a consistent habit. During my five months in Oregon, I have traveled to New York, New Jersey, North Dakota, and a few spots in Oregon (Portland, Bend, Florence, Ashland, and Medford). Honestly, I am pretty stoked on the amount of travel I have done while in school and I want to keep that momentum moving forward. Next up for me is a week in Seattle, Washington.
3. Backpack – I need to attempt this one again. Backpacking was on my 2016 New Year’s Resolutions and I definitely thought that I was going to achieve it. But alas, I did not and you can read about that here. So I am putting it on the list again and will not let myself down. Although the funds are even tighter this year, I have my many more resources. Tons of the people in my MBA program love backpacking and have the gear for it already, and my university offers cheap equipment rentals. Watch out, trails, I’m coming for ya!
4. Don’t Waste Time – I am a stickler for completing the things on my list. While this is a great quality to have, it can also force anxieties on my. For instance, if I have a list of books to read, I will feel panicked to finish them all. But when I come across a book that just doesn’t interest me that much, I am hard-pressed to just close it mid-sentence and move on. I hold onto this idea that I will come back to finish it. Often, though, I find that I, of course, never finish the book and take a break from reading all together. So this year, no more. I will not waste my time with books that don’t interest me.
5. Submit an Op-Ed to the New York Times – This has been a goal of mine since reading When Breath Becomes Air and Why We Write About Ourselves. In both books, many memoirists are discovered through their article submissions to the New York Times. Being that I would like to write a memoir some day (although this blog might already take its place), I figured this is a good goal to start with. A short and sweet essay about a very specific topic. Now just to make the time for it…

I hope you enjoyed reading about my 2017 New Year’s Resolutions. May they inspire you to share your resolutions with the FromBrownEyes community (all 4,000 of us in over 75 countries across the world!) to form a sense of togetherness and accountability to reach our goals, both now and in the coming year.

-TM

What are your 2017 New Year’s Resolutions? Let us know below.