2017 is breathing its last, and as it comes to a close I look back on the goals I set for this year. Goals that were met and surpassed encourage and motivate me to aim higher in 2018. Goals that were left unmet give me cause to evaluate my habits, decisions, and personal routines in order to determine where things went awry and where I can grow further in the coming year.
At the end of the post I also reflect on some of the biggest highlights that fell completely outside of my goal-setting and made 2017 a memorable year.
Financial
✓ Goal: Earn at least $1,200 in supplementary (side hustle) income. This goal was easily achieved by selling collectibles and currency coins on eBay. I expect this to continue through 2018.
✘ Goal: Sell 365+ items online. Even though I listed as many as 10 items in a single day, the average of one listed item per day was just too difficult to sustain this year. I’ll be downgrading or eliminating this goal entirely in 2018.
✘ Goal: Reduce HELOC balance by $300/month or $3,600. My wife and I have held a balance on our HELOC ever since buying our home in 2015. Unfortunately, our balance on this account went the wrong direction this year. The biggest culprits were new hardware tools, three weeks of summer camps for the boys, a week for us at a luxury resort in Vernon, a family weekend in Whistler, a new hot water tank, a semester’s worth of tuition for my Master’s degree, and flights for the family to Winnipeg at Christmas. Some of these expenditures were justified but many were not. The good news on this front is that we’ve successfully tightened our budget for the last four months of 2017 and actually saved more than we earned during that period. I’m confident we can do a lot better in 2018, even though I’ll be paying out another $6,000 in tuition.
Marital
✓ Goal: Make weekly Connect Times happen more consistently. We were able to turn this around well in the last few months of 2017 by conducting our weekly ‘Connect Time’ meetings on Saturday mornings instead of trying to pull them off in the evenings. Reviewing all of our budget areas and comparing calendars for the week ahead really helped keep us on the same page and helped us manage our money more efficiently.
✘ Goal: Plan at least one memorable date per month. I’m sad to say that this didn’t happen. Thankfully, Date Nights did happen regularly, but typically we made it up as we went. I can do better here, but it will require scheduling some planning time into my week.
Paternal
✓ Goal: Read with the boys before bed on a weekly basis. This has gone really well. I’m currently reading to both boys on Tuesday evenings: The Hobbit with Michael and This Present Darkness with Joshua.
✓ Goal: Continue monthly stepdad-stepson meetings. Our monthly dinners at Tim Hortons continued faithfully. Topics included school, friendships, finances, goals, plans, purity, and gaming. I started keeping a journal of notes from these meetings.
✓ Goal: Find more connecting points with the boys. This goal is difficult to quantify, but I think I achieved it. One fun development is that the boys are finally old enough now to handle watching more interesting movies with me. We’re also mutual fans of a growing number of YouTube channels, and we plan to do some vlogging together in 2018.
✘ Goal: Make a baby. Good news here: it wasn’t for lack of trying.
Physical
✓ Goal: Complete 12+ reps of 135 lbs. on the bench press at our annual July 1st fitness challenge. I completed 13.
✓ Goal: Bring weight down from 192 lbs. to 180. By fasting completely from chips, fries, and sugary drinks from spring break forward, I actually saw 179 on the scale one day this fall. As of this writing my weight is back in the low 180s.
✓ Goal: Work out 104+ times in 2017. I broke 104 recorded workouts, most of them taking place at Anytime Fitness locations.
✘ Goal: Do 42 pushups in one set. My max this year was 35. Two shoulder dislocations in March didn’t help, but that’s no excuse. To elevate this number further, I think I need to start doing push-ups before bed every day.
✘ Goal: Complete the Vancouver Sun Run in <50 minutes. I didn’t run it at all, thanks largely to two shoulder dislocations the month before.
✘ Goal: Reduce meat intake by 14% or more with Meatless Mondays. This started well in the first months of the year but eventually fell by the wayside. I’d like to try to get back on it in 2018.
✘ Goal: Run 3+ km an average of once/week. I only ran more than 3 km a total of six times in 2017. This has got to improve in 2018. Running at 8:00 a.m. on Sundays is the key. Clearly I’m conflicted when it comes to running.
Professional
✓ Goal: Begin a M. Ed. program or other certification. I began a MEdL program at VIU which is going very well.
✓ Goal: Record at least 1+ set of assessments per day during the school year. At the time of this writing, I’ve managed to record an average of at least one set of class assessments per day through the last three months of 2017.
Self-Improvement
✓ Goal: Write and publish 12+ blog posts. As of mid-December I had published 18 and counting. I’m dreaming big in terms of how and where to grow my writing in 2018.
✓ Goal: Discard at least one item of clothing per week. I’ve surpassed this one, but the scary thing is that it hardly feels like I’ve made a dent.
✓ Goal: Read 3,650+ book pages. This turned out to be a difficult goal to quantify and track, but I think I’ve achieved it. I purchased a Kindle in the fall, and it’s become a go-to before bed on a daily basis. My Master’s program has certainly pushed me in this regard.
Social/Relational
✓ Goal: Go on at least one double date per month. We’ve easily surpassed this, and it’s been great.
✓ Goal: Visit the Cavey families in Winnipeg. After three years away, we made our first family trip to Winnipeg as a married couple in December.
✓ Goal: Connect with neighbours over a meal. In mid-December we finally went on a double date with our next door neighbours. It was great to get to know them and share life stories. It turns out we have a lot in common.
Spiritual
✓ Goal: Read through the New Testament 2x, Psalms 2x, and Proverbs 12x. I was able to follow these reading plans pretty consistently by listening to the audio tracks on these reading plans using the YouVersion app each morning.
✓ Goal: Complete the Freedom Session course. This was a long course, but some valuable healing and introspection took place along the way.
✘ Goal: Complete 12+ prayer journal entries. These are page-long reflections that I write out as prayers and meditations on the state of my life. As of December 18, I had only completed eight on the year.
Home Projects
✓ Goal: Clean vinyl siding on the exterior of our house. We bought a telescopic wand/brush at the home show just for this purpose. It happened.
✓ Goal: Paint the back patio. This was done over 2-3 hot days in the summer. The colour is a bit lighter than I wanted, but our patio looks cleaner, brighter, and better-maintained than it did before.
Other Victories to Celebrate from 2017
✫ No phone at bedtime. For a range of reasons, I decided to ban my phone from the bedroom at bedtimes, leaving it on our main floor. It’s been a great experience. I now read more, engage more with my wife, and go to sleep sooner. What started as a 2-week experiment has become a permanent lifestyle change. See my Medium post about my decision to ban my phone from the bedroom.
✫ A successful change to the diet. Concerned over my rising weight and blood pressure, in the spring I decided to completely fast from my three worst vices: chips, fries, and sugary drinks. I’ve managed to keep to those rules pretty strictly and lost 12 bad pounds in the process.
✫ A new morning routine. In the spring I decided to start waking up at 4:30 a.m. every workday morning. Although there have been times where exhaustion, stress, or poor health has taken me off this routine, I’ve managed to keep it pretty consistently for the balance of the calendar year. My morning hour spent at Starbucks gives me amazing creativity and productivity, and this routine also ensures I get 20-30 minutes in at Anytime Fitness before returning home around 6:35 a.m. to officially start preparing for the day. I hope this will remain a life habit.
✫ A bedtime journal. I started doing some handwritten journaling and reflecting before bed, using the Tim Ferriss 5-minute journal as a guide. Although I’ve only used it about a dozen times, it gives me a starting point for 2018. Eventually I would like this to become an every-night ritual. It’s so good for the mind and spirit.
✫ A new canoe. Our family got an amazing deal on a good canoe, and we enjoyed some quality canoe adventures at Widgeon Creek and English Bay. Watching the Celebration of Light fireworks display from nearby on the ocean surface was an awesome experience.
✫ Three days of paddleboarding. While the boys were away at a camp on Vancouver Island, my wife and I spent days paddleboarding at Ambleside Beach, Alouette Lake, and the Burrard Inlet. My favourite experience was paddling down the Indian Arm, exploring islands together and enjoying a still day on the ocean.
✫ Best hike ever. In August I hiked Panorama Ridge in Garibaldi Provincial Park (near Whistler, BC), producing some of the most beautiful views of any hike I’ve ever done.
✫ The ISTE conference in San Antonio, TX. At the end of June, I and two colleagues were privileged to spend about six days in San Antonio at the largest education technology conference in the world. It was an awesome experience and I hope to visit the conference again some time.
✫ Books completed in 2017:
- Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (Carol Dweck)
- The Tech-Wise Family (Andy Crouch)
- The Reason You Walk (Wab Kinew)
- Cold, Hard Truth (Kevin O’Leary)
- Classroom Management in the Digital Age: Effective Practices for Technology-Rich Learning Spaces (Heather Dowd)
Tim Cavey 