Oh hello there! It’s been a minute, but I’m finally back to work and back to reality after a long road trip and some adventures down south for a few weeks.

I spent the end of 2020 in Greenville, South Carolina with my parents for the holidays, and then did a trip down to Charleston and then the Smoky Mountains, and then to Nashville for a few days before heading back to Chicago (finally!). After 2020, I definitely needed a longer break from work and the realities of everyday life, so I’m thankful I got an extra week or so off before officially kicking 2021.

But now I am kicking things into high gear (!!!), and I’m motivated to get back into a routine with work, and life and everything in between. 2020 was clearly a shit show of a year, so I’m hoping that I can have a good attitude to start fresh with work, this little blog, my health (and diet…that went down hill fast on vacation), and getting back into the groove of working out and seeing a therapist a few times a month to work through some of the anxiety that’s justifiably crept up in the past year.  I’ve been a big proponent of therapy over the years, but I’m really hoping to get back into the swing of things and consistently go to help get me in a more positive, healthy mindset for the year to come.

The last few months, I’ve definitely let my personal health and happiness fall by the wayside, and getting a puppy was amazing (still is!), but totally changed my life in some good (and slightly less productive) ways. I’m also hoping signing Milo up for puppy classes and training will help both of us get into a better routine – and work on our manners 😉 My boyfriend and I are also attempting to be accountability buddies and start eating better, cutting back on drinking (which breaks my wine loving heart), and working out more. I usually start the every year with similar goals, but I’m hoping that this year I can keep the healthy habits going for a little longer. We’re trying to make it 75 days (since it takes on average 66 days to actually form a habit), with some minor exceptions of birthdays and some long weekend trips coming up. As long as I can cut back on my random Wendy’s stops and my love of daily week-night drinking, I’m going to call that a success!

I’m also in desperate need of learning how to wake up earlier to squeeze a bit more into my day, and making sure little Milo has a long walk before I dive into meetings at 8AM every day. If you have any tips on how to magically make yourself a morning person, I could desperately use them since the last 31 years have proved that I’m really not great in the morning – so much so that it’s a running joke with a few of my friends who’ve lived/traveled with me and have seen my less than stellar early morning performance. Any help in advance is equally appreciated by me, and anyone else who has to witness me in the morning!  I’m also hoping to be a little more consistent with the blog this year, but also not kill myself in the process. For a long time I was forcing myself to write 3-4 posts a week, and I quickly ran out of steam balancing life and a demanding full time job – so much so that I basically took all of last year off in an attempt to find a little more balance. While I’m not going to hold myself accountable to write a specific amount of posts each week, I am going to try to push myself to write more to stay motivated, and share more of what’s making me happy and inspired these days. Crossing my fingers I’m able to follow through on that – I guess we’ll both see how that goes 😉