First, thank you to everyone who has read my little blog this year. This has been such a fun journey and I have met so many incredible people. I’m looking forward to an exciting 2011!

For many, many years I refused to make New Year’s Resolutions, for reasons I still don’t quite understand. This year I’ve decided to stop being a negative Nancy and come up with 11 semi-measurable goals for 2011. Are you ready? Here we go!

1. Cook from a cookbook 1x a week. I do most of my cooking from recipes that I find on blogs or other online sources, but I have a lot of really lovely cookbooks that have been given to me as gifts that I want to cook from more often. To this end, I am going to set a goal to cook at least 1 meal a week from a cookbook that I currently own.

2. Run my second half marathon. My first half marathon was hard, but I know that if I can complete a trail half marathon, I can definitely do a road race. I am thinking about running either the AT&T Giant Race, the Jungle Run, or the SF Half Marathon. I would like to run as a Girls on the Run Solemate. B might even race with me!

3. Run a sub-55 minute 10K. Measurable goal – 8:51min/mile. I know I can do this, I just haven’t yet.

4. Learn to take better pictures. I have no desire to be a food photographer. I don’t want to spend 15 minutes taking pictures of my meals and I don’t want to lug around a massive dSLR all the time. But I do want to take good pictures. And maybe build a light box.

5. Do yoga at least 1x a week. I am going to build yoga into my training plan for the next half marathon, so I have no excuse. I think I like yoga, but I honestly haven’t done enough to really form a solid opinion. I do know it’s good for my body though, so I’ll commit to doing it more often.

6. Blog regularly. As in, come up with some sort of posting schedule and/or do less “last minute” posting.

7. Read more. Since I started blogging, I have read fewer books. This is a travesty that must be remedied. I’ll be honest, I like reading more than I like blogging so something is going to have to be done here.

8. Bring less work home. I have 2 hours of prep time each day at school that somehow gets eaten up by a lot of pointless things. I want to do more of my grading at school so I can bring less of it home and have more time to read, work out, and spend time with B in the evenings and on weekends.

9. Implement Tuesday Questions (or something similar). B and I have a good marriage, but we want to have a great marriage. I am super inspired by Emily and Tim’s commitment to making their marriage awesome.

10. Run 1000 miles. OK, so I did the math and if I run every single day in 2011, I can meet this goal by just running 2.8 miles a day! Now, I know I won’t actually run every day, but if I run consistently (and train for races), I can totally do this. I’d also like to run at least 300 of those miles in VFFs!

11. Save money. This is the big one. When B and I got married, we opened a 403b that deducts a specific amount from each of our paychecks each month. This is technically a retirement fund, but we can also take a loan out of our 403b if we need to (like for a downpayment on a house). In addition to the 403b, we have a high-yield savings account with Ally. At the beginning of the month, the designated amount of money goes into the 403b (we never even see it). At the end of the month, we just dump whatever money we have left in our checking account into the savings account. It’s basically our “whatever we want to save money for account,” which includes vacations, big purchases, emergencies, and other stuff. We try really hard not to take money out of this account but sometimes, like when I have a filling fall out and need a replacement crown, we have to. We were really good about putting in a few hundred dollars each month for the first year of our marriage, but lately we have been spending more and more and saving less and less. We still have the 403b, but I like having something of a slush fund that is constantly growing. I signed up for Mint and am going to track our spending in January and then B and I are going to sit down, make a loose budget, and make some plans for saving even more.

BONUS! This isn’t so much a resolution as a reminder: DO WHAT YOU LOVE. I am so lucky to have a job that I am passionate about. It brings me joy, makes me laugh, and I look forward to working every day (not that I haven’t thoroughly enjoyed this break!). I didn’t choose to be a teacher because I would get summers off or because I would make lots of money (HA!), I chose to be a teacher because I knew it would make me happy. When I got pink-slipped last spring and I thought I might not find another teaching job, I panicked. I couldn’t think of any other career that would bring me as much happiness as teaching does. I know the economy sucks right now and many people are lucky to have any work at all, but if 2011 finds you dreading the return to work because you despise your job, make this the year that you find something that makes your soul sing.

“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” -Howard Thurman

What are your goals for 2011?