Hello friends! Happy February! I don't know about you, but I am so excited for it to be March and then April and finally warm again! We are feeling very cooped up, but don't you worry! Being cooped up gives me a lot of opportunity to work on my 101 list - when I'm not re-watching Survivor, hahaha.
Completed:
43. subscribe to 5 art magazines for a year
- I guess this one is done! I've subscribed to 5, but not gotten the full year for some, but it's the subscription that matters! I've done Bound and Lettered, Letter Arts Review, American Craft, and Calligraphy Crush x2 years. Such great resources and I'm so happy to support them with $$$.
95. healthy food plan for 3 months
- So this one is technically done? I tried my best to follow the principles of Intuitive Eating and wrapped up my three months Valentine's weekend: a weekend in which I definitely overindulged and ended up making myself sick. I think it's fitting to end my experience that way, almost, just to remind me of how far I still have to go. I think intuitive eating isn't something I can just pick up and say I did it for the three months. It definitely takes trial and error and changing your mindset completely about food. I have to work very hard to overcome the scarcity mindset - the idea that if I don't eat something I'm missing out on my chance to enjoy it. I'm reminding myself that I can always have more and there's no need to overeat the things I enjoy. I actually enjoy them more if I stretch them out over more meals, and I can always get them again later if there's not much to start with. I've also realized I eat a lot when I'm bored - I am learning to examine my hunger and find something else to do if I'm not actually hungry enough to eat something. I really like the principles of Intuitive Eating, and I feel like it's helped me in these three months. This is definitely something I'll keep working on!
Updates:
2. digitally transcribe my journals
- Okay, so I'm about halfway done with these, but I'm going to have to work everyday in very steady chunks if I want to keep being on track. I'm feeling a little bit daunted by this one, not gonna lie.
3. study daily routines, develop one that works for me, and keep it for at least 6 months
- Still going strong, but I've added more time in the morning to organize my day and work on 101 List things - there's still plenty of art time after that. I am so very distractible, though - I might need to implement some things to help keep me more on track.
8. pick me up list/Sara canon
- I've put together a list of possible candidates, so I need to narrow and memorialize them somehow, haha. I think it would be cute to put them in bullet journal pages or make a poster or something. I'll think on it!
10. create a personal cookbook
- Here's another one where I've done a lot of legwork - collecting recipes from Pinterest and various locations that I love. Now I need to decide how to put them together! Only the hard parts left, haha.
11. study 12 famous chefs and cook 5 of their recipes each (3/12)
- For Black History Month, I chose Toni Tipton-Martin who is actually more of a food writer/critic? but I'm totally counting her. She has collected recipes from African-American history since its inception and has published two books regarding her collection. I cooked from one of them, Jubilee, this month. We made sweet potato biscuits, island banana bread, ginger punch, West African groundnut (peanut) stew, and gingerbread with lemon sauce. It was really fascinating to just read the cookbook and see the history of the recipes. She included original recipes next to her updated ones, which were very entertaining reads. I also appreciated learning about the different influences and outcomes of Black cooking - it's not all soul food.
22. read 30 new Caldecott award or honor books (3/30)
- Getting serious on this one now! I read two this month - Black and White by David Macaulay and Hello Lighthouse by Sophie Blackall. Black and White was really interesting - it's like 4 stories in 1, but they're all connected. But are they?? Hello Lighthouse was gorgeous - beautiful watercolor illustrations and a look inside a lighthouse and its keeper's life. Time to go get a big stack from the library and read some more!
30. see 30 new international films (9/30)
- This month I watched Sorry We Missed You, from the UK. It's kind of a depressing look at the gig economy. Yeesh.
34. curate saved links
- I put a lot of work into this this month, but I'm nowhere near done. I've got saved links everywhere I can have them - Pinterest (which is becoming my main repository but still needs culling), Feedly, Facebook, Reddit, Instagram, etc. I think it comforts me to save something knowing I can go back and find it later, but I haven't really done that so far. It's really like reading all these things for the first time. I'm hoping by going back through I can actually take action on them instead of just having them sit in the ether. Maybe I'm happier just knowing they're saved somewhere. We'll see. I just want to remember everything and never lose anything good.
35. watch 10 anime series (7/10)
- I re-watched the beginning of and finally finished March Comes in Like a Lion - super cute, great cats, would recommend. It's very chill, it's about shogi, but not. Very character-driven, not very action. Very different from Haikyuu! I like different things.
38. recover last.fm songs
- If you're not familiar with last.fm, it's a website that tracks all of your music listening and it's wonderful. You connect it to your music player of choice and it just keeps track of everything. And once upon a time there was a wonderful music service called Grooveshark - I was such a fan I ordered merch. One day it suddenly disappeared and I lost all of my playlists. Luckily I had already been using last.fm, so now my only job is to go through the backlog, day-by-day and recollect my favorite songs. It has been a slog so far, but a joyful slog, nonetheless. I've rediscovered some real gems. I figure I have about 5 years to work through before Spotify took over, and even after then, I don't feel like I invested completely in Spotify, so I'll be working through that backlog, too. Yay for good music!
40. knit a year-long line-a-day scarf
- You were promised pictures. Here they are!
Adventure scarf! The light blue is every day I've stayed home all day. Whoops! Pink is up to 1 mile from home (aka I went for a walk), teal is up to 5 miles (I ran an errand in town), and purple is up to 25 miles, AKA we visited the bakery in the next little town over. I am trying to weave in ends, but it's hard because there's no back side - I'll worry about those loose ends later. :)
Fries scarf! I think this one's pretty easy to decode - a yellow row = I had fries :D
41. make a 24 hour comic each year
- I decided to follow actual Hourly Comic Day this year, and I tried digital for the first time. You can see it here! https://www.instagram.com/p/CK0I_JZjZMI/
96. wikipedia cooking challenge
- Dumplings continue! For C I make cilok - an Indonesian tapioca scallion dumpling with peanut sauce, and for D I made ducana - a Caribbean sweet potato dumpling that got wrapped up in foil and boiled.
Well, two things done this month puts me at 40 total! What a nice, round number. I've just got a year left now, as my list is set to end on Tuesday, 2/22/22. I'm recommitting to working hard and also thinking about how I can cut myself some slack and modify these impossible ones that are left, haha. I'd like to continue my pattern of increasing goals completed for each list, if I can. COVID put a wrench in a few of my plans, and a few others may need some changes, too. I think I'll take this next month to really examine and figure out my game plan.
Thanks for reading and your support, as always! Here's to sunnier days!
