Resolutionizing – February

Two months have already poofed in the blink of an eye, and it’s exhilarating to see the world slowly returning to alive. Both in the sense of the color green finding its way back onto the plants around us – but also in the sense of the COVID lockdown being screwed back and life normalizing a little more. But it’s been crazy, to say the least.

February has brought me dating. A week of sitting on the sidelines of life. Disney pubquizzing and visits with friends within the allowed restrictions and the first dose of the long awaited vaccine for my grandparents, much yay!
It’s also brought me a lot less blogging than expected, followed work courses that I can say nothing kinder about than ‘they were totally useless‘ and a wholly terribly streak of not feeling good in my skin. Can’t have it all, I suppose.
February also contained a casually dropped ‘oh, btw, your baby sister is gonna get married‘ and ‘Ps, I’m moving to Bolivia for love‘ from unexpected corners. Guess my dating victories are outshone by those people ACTUALLY making love happen. Dammit.

All in all – I can say the winter blues are still going strong here. February might be my least favorite month of the year, actually. I need some D. The vitamin kind. Sun. And lots of it. But hey, we’re still looking back on those resolutions, as promised. Because that’s still going to show some progress – right?

Need a refresh?
Find it here:
– The original list
– The January overview

Outside of commenting on the ones I feel need some backstory – I am going to keep it simple: Green are the resolutions I’ve (already) checked off the list. Fingers crossed you’re going to scroll and find some greens, right?!
Orange are the ones I’ve totally started on, attempted, am working on or have otherwise made some progress on. The unmarked ones…well. They shall not be mentioned. Until they’re mentioned. If they’re ever mentioned. Who knows!
And red. Well. Red are the ones that I’ve already failed. In month one. BUT (there’s always a BUT) will probably still be (re-)attempting for the remainder of the year ;).

ONWARDS – to full green! (Who am I kidding)

WORK-O-LUTIONS:

• Land (at least) 5 >10m. deals successfully.
  ^{Two deals are currently still pending for results (damn people taking forever). Three more are in the works. Odds are, we’re bound to win some of ’em, right?}
• Get three additional certificates on relevant topics OR
  ^{(Started the first certification this week)}
• Follow six non-certificate-yielding relevant work courses.
  ^{(Three down, regardless of how useless they turned out to be – the rest is on the agenda)}
• Do whatever is necessary (and actively check this with management) to get the needed functional grade for the 175% bonus in 2022.
  ^{Pretty much ties in to my success on item number one of this list, so that’s pretty damn easy.}
• Wear a costume in a Teams-call on Carnaval. And Christmas. And possibly Easter (I’d totally look awesome in bunny ears).
• Donate the 2021 Christmas package to charity.
• Don’t get a burnout. Or fired. Or in a fight with colleagues for no other reasons than them sucking (luckily, so far, all of them are pretty damn awesome).
  ^{(Nope, doing good here. February underlined how kind my colleagues are once more. Loving work!)}
• Start writing a book. Or collect blogs to add into a column-bundle. Or do something anything whateverything to get published work in book-form out into the world.
  ^{Yes. Erotica counts. Totally. Get yourself hired at Harlequin or summin’}

BLOG-O-LUTIONS:

• Keep. Blogging. In. 2021. (as in: the entire year!)
• Write (at least) 200 posts
  ^{44 down – 156 to go! Numbers aren’t even TOO dramatic, even with the horrendous February score!}
• Find a way to ALSO make sure old content gets some luvvin’ every now and then.
• Get to 5.000 followers. Yes. Really. Gotta be ambitious, right?
  _{I’m pretty sure everyone that’s currently actively blogging already found my blog at some point or other, this is pretty stagnant these days. Stuck at 2078 (which is only up a little over a 100 since january, autsch!)}
• Get to 500 unique visitors in 1 day at least once.
  _{Not even close yet – highest I’ve hit is 273 (I think)}
• Make a person laugh hysterically with a post. Or cry. Either works.
  _{If comments are to be believed: SUCCESS. Yay. I truly do revel in the knowledge that my words might actually affect someone to this extent. MOAR, MOAR!}
• Do a monthly Resolutionized-update so I don’t ‘forget‘ that I’m supposed to be doing this.
  _{Two times is better than 0 times, right?}

DATE-O-LUTIONS:

• Fuck dating altogether for the entire year and take a Zoë-year OR
• Do NOT ‘date’ any of the old-stale-already-done-douchebags EVER again.
  AND (if I do end up dating)
• No beards. Seriously. Just. No negotiating – no beards.
  ^{The current delicious morsel I’m dating definitely sports no beard. And I love it!}
• Stop downdating AND/OR downplaying myself just to appear acceptable and not-be-lonely.
  ^{(Starting on an honesty and straightforward basis – new but exciting. I’m just being me atm, and it’s still great. So fingers crossed!)}
• Stop settling for soul-crushing limitations or demands and instead go for compromise-less loving.
  ^{(Apparently this DOES appear to exist. Who knew! Now only to discover if it lasts!)}
• Don’t opt for an imaginary boyfriend for lack of actual people potential. Pillows do not count.
  ^{(I might even have an official update at some point or other. LE GASP.)}
• Don’t drunk-booty-call any of the old-stale-already-done-douchebags. Really. Don’t be that girl.
  _{(Even though I failed this in January – I’ve been perfectly well-behaved in February. Huzzah!}

SOCIAL-O-LUTIONS:

• Make a new (group of) friends that DON’T all live at least an hour away.
• Spend more time with the far-away-bunch of friends.
  _{Check check double check! Saw awesome people AND got to show of my Disney Skills. Winwin!}
• See actual people IN PERSON at least once a month. No hermitting.
• Write a letter to a friend telling them how much they mean to me. Try not to include swearwords too much.
• Post something non-selfie-related to Instagram every now and again.
  ^{Oh. Right. Instagram exists. Whoops!}
• Host a dinnerparty and actually COOK.
  ^{Technically I DID cook for someone this month. And though it was a fun night, I can’t officially call it a dinner party. Work in progress! Didn’t kill the guy though. Success!}
• Do something wine-knowledge related (a workshop, or tasting or high wine) so you’re not just downing bottles but actually know something about their contents.
• Do NOT. I repeat: do NOT install Snapchat. Or Pinterest. Ever. AND
  _{Still going strong!}
• Do not start Tiktokking. In any way, shape or form. You’re too old Zoë. Really. You are. Resist the temptation.
  _{I don’t even think I opened the app this month. So far so good!}

LIFE-O-LUTIONS:

• No more alcohol (during weekdays, and in the weekends only when in company).
  ^{_{I’m pretty sure I only had this one lonely Monday night with a leftover bottle from the weekend that made me break this one. But judging from the last month – total progress!}}
• Lose an additional 9.1 kilos to finally end up at a healthy 22.6 BMI.
  _{Fail-ure. Food is just too. Good. Meh!}
• Get a ton of exercise. Or at least – a bunch. Or you know – try to go walking for an hour at least once a week.
  ^{With the lockdown extended we’re still not back on the softball field. Much sads. And I can’t get my lazy ass to do anything without the pressure of a team expecting me to show up. Drat! Although – I did get new curtains that aren’t seethrough…I might have to hook up the Kinect for some home workouts…}
• Get my account balance/savings up to that number I internally discussed and at least stop spending fortunes on Thuisbezorgd.
  ^{I. am. horrible. Ordering curtains, new bedding and god knows what else. This is NOT going well whatsoever. Especially with AGAIN 7 order-ins this month. HOW. I can’t even remember eating that much trash. Sigh. No wonder I wanna bash the mirror.}
• Don’t start smoking. Or get 12 cats. Or take up skydiving. Or become a vegan. Seriously. Don’t.
  ^{-Flex- Owning this one!}
• Actually finish watching Arrow.
  _{Started on 89 at the start of January. Still need to watch 85 more episodes now. Yes. That’s right. I only watched 4 episodes in the entire month. I blame Outlander and Shadowhunters. I binged three seasons each of those. Whoops! Going to see if I can get down to 70 this month!}
• Keep the Christmas tree up year round. IT’S HAPPENING! Gotta make it to August!
  ^{It’s hilarious how much of a topic this is on first dates as well. EVERYONE HAS to say something about it. Love it!}
• Learn a new language
  ^{(or yaknow, get my Spanish up to a decent level seeing as the whole world’ll speak it at some point, apparently)}
• Play Zelda Breath of the Wild. Whether it’s at a friends or whether I manage to convince myself that I deserve a Switch. It must be played.
  ^{(As if being an awesome person wasn’t enough – the new date actually owns Zelda AND created a game for me to play. WHOOSH! Even more reason to keep going back!)}

I suppose there’s worse ways to end a month, but I really do need to get my ass back into gear on some of these. But..I dun wanna!
Fine. I’m installing DuoLingo later. Promise. Really. Spanish, here I come!