Things I’ll Do Differently This Year

Oh hey guys. How are ya?

Welcome to the new year, we’ve been through a lot together recently, and so far it doesn’t look like stuff is slowing down. Despite the craziness, there’s room for hope, I think.

I wrote a bit about pagan rituals recently when I was looking for a way to close out last year’s insanity. New year’s resolutions as we know them actually seem to have roots in those pagan traditions, where you acknowledge the past but make plans for the coming year.

I’ve never been much of a new year’s resolution person, but there are some things I would like to do this year. Such as…

I want to have a real Christmas tree.

This is kinda a random thing I decided I wanted after once again wrestling with the fake tree that has graced my living room for several years. I want to look at things like sustainability in relation to Christmas trees too, because I’ve heard that real trees can be an issue, but really have no details yet on why or how to best go about having a real tree for Christmas.

I just kinda want live plants around. I’m getting really tired of plastic stuff. More on that below…

Pick media content more purposefully.

The 24/7 media cycle is cool, but I think most people would also agree it can be pretty damaging if you let it control you instead of you controlling it. So this year I want to make a conscious effort to select what I media content I let into my life more carefully.

This means news stories, the dreaded comments sections, feeds of all shapes and sizes, and even movies and tv shows. I want to see if I can tangibly improve my mind and life by putting some guard rails up around the ever-present content wheel that is modern life.

I’m thinking in practical terms this is going to mean some heavy filtering of the content feeds I’m subscribed to and limiting the amount of time I spend scrolling. Maybe even setting specific times of day for scrolling so isn’t a thing ALL. THE. TIME.

The internet is awesome. I really do love technology, but it’s about us controlling it and making sure it doesn’t control us.

There’s a non-stop cycle of awful if you want it. I don’t. But I also don’t want to be uninformed. So I think for filtering more real-world content I’ll be looking to limit what I pay attention to to things that have a problem/solution focus. I’ve gotten pretty fed up watching politicians (and others) use the internet to throw out sound-bite bombs, aimed to do nothing more than explode and get a reaction.

It isn’t helpful and quite frankly I think a lot of it is downright irresponsible. It’s like our leaders are trying to be social media influencers, getting as many likes as possible instead of actually finding and implementing solutions to real problems.

Sorry, that got a little rant-y.

Avoid buying plastic anything.

Basically, if there’s a biodegradable alternative to something I’m thinking about buying, I’m going to get that. That might mean the stuff I end up buying with be a little more expensive, but hopefully that’ll just help keep me from buying stuff I don’t actually need.

I’ve just gotten pretty tired of plastic stuff. I can’t help imagining the plastic cracking, breaking, and shards ending up in the dump somewhere, never fully breaking down. It just kinda makes me itch.

So, when possible… metal, wood, stone, glass, fabric, etc.

This also means looking at the packaging companies use for anything and everything, and if there’s a product that has less plastic packaging, I’m going with that as much as possible.

Starting to think of fitness as long-term with no expiration date.

I’ve never done like fad-diets or anything. I go through spurts of lots of physical exercise, then months of almost nothing. Fitness isn’t something I’ve really put much thought into aside from “yeah, it’s a good thing to do.”

I think it might be helpful if I force myself to actually subscribe to some sort of fitness belief system. Nothing drastic, just less passive than it’s been.

So pretty much, reminding myself that fitness is just a long term activity that has no expiration date.

There might be short-term goals, sure, but I don’t want to just hyper focus on a short-term fitness goal, then once I reach it go into another lull. I’d like to start thinking of physical fitness as just a part of my life.

I really like hiking and exploring the outdoors, so I think that’s a good activity to keep up with on the regular.

I don’t plan to have a regime (at least in the gym) for a while. Thanks, Covid. But I think just asking myself what I’ve done today… this week… this month, etc. that counts as physical exercise, with no pressure to reach or maintain a particular look, could be a good way to create long-term fitness habits.

Grow Things

The pandemic really brought out the homesteader in everyone. Mostly we made bread, but some actually gardened too. Maybe that was driven somewhat by the fear that the world was going to collapse and grocery stores would cease to exist and we’d all have to figure out how to feed ourselves.

Still, I like the idea.

I actually tried gardening a little and got a small bell pepper plant and a wannabe potato plant out of it. Nothing to eat. But it was fun.

I really enjoyed watching gardening content online, if nothing else.

This is one of the channels I really like – the guy that runs it just seems like a solid dude with a positive attitude and lots of useful info. Plus an Aussie accent. Can’t go wrong.

This year I’d like to actually garden, grow, and maybe even eat something from my own garden. Since it seems like a lot of things are better planted in early spring, now seems like the right time to start thinking and planning.

U.S. Roadtrip

I would really like to do a road trip around the whole U.S.

Road trips are maybe my favorite way of travel. I think because I just really enjoy the visuals of everyplace you pass on a road trip, whether or not it’s particularly “pretty” every place has personality.

Check out this list I made of 50 great road trip apps here.

I have an idea of places I want to hit at certain times of the year. There are still so many places in the U.S. that I want to see. I think with this past year being truly travel-free I’m extra ambitious about what I want to do.

Really, any road trip would be great, but I’d really, really like to do a long one around the states. Who knows if that’ll actually happen this year, but here’s to hoping.

Take more photos

I feel like I haven’t gotten out on adventures for the purpose of taking photos nearly as much as I would like to. Granted, some of that is due to the whole worldwide pandemic irreparably shifting life as we know it, but that’s beside the point.

I’ve taken a few hikes recently where my main goal was to just take some photos. Just because. I really enjoyed it and it’s made me realize how much I missed experimenting with photography. You can see some of those on the good ol’ Instagram if you want.

Cook

I actually like cooking. I’m not always great at it, but I like it. I post a lot of my food adventures to my Instagram stories in real time. Sometimes they’re great, sometimes they go a little sideways.

I recently made this pizza:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Hannah (@heyhanlaroux)

And it turned out really well, but the process definitely had its questionable moments.

I would like to learn how to cook some new stuff this year, including things to be made in a cast iron pot or dutch oven since that’s one of the things I received for Christmas. I’ve already made a couple things in it, but I definitely feel like I’m not doing the cast iron gods justice yet.