Martin Luther King, Jr. provided my children and husband a lovely day off work and school. But much more importantly, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. introduced the possibility of change to this world. He has always been a hero of mine and I even get choked up writing about him. Dr. King had the courage to ask the hard questions when no one else would and face absolute horrors with true love and peace. I have read many of his sermons and highly recommend you check them out online or at the library as they are full of wisdom and insights on a range of topics. Reading them will want you to be a better person. I promise. But let’s talk about his most famous speech (please read the whole thing if you haven’t recently), and more specifically, one of the most famous quotations:
I got a bit trigger-happy this morning and published TWO posts, so be sure to also check out What I Learned at the Holiday Bazaar and we’ll hopefully back to our regular posting schedule on Monday! 🙂
Every January, after the holiday treat-eating, Mr. T and I go on a two-week food cleanse. Don’t worry, we’re not crazy. Let me explain what that means for us. We don’t juice. We don’t starve. Mainly, we focus on eating just fruits and vegetables. We condense Whole Living’s 28-day cleanses (there are several years available online, so we use all those resources for recipes) into just two weeks. We mainly do it to jumpstart our bodies. We eat so much wheat and so many carbs (cracked 7-grain oatmeal for breakfast, sandwich with homemade whole wheat bread for lunch, rice or pasta for dinner, etc.), so we take two weeks to give our body a break from processing the usual stuff. We cut out all meat, dairy, grains, eggs etc. After the first five days, we add back eggs and gluten-free grains. Also in January, we go on a spending cleanse. We pay for our cleanse produce and other food for the month and nothing more at the grocery store.
Mr. T and I made our first foray into attempting to sell his art by signing up for a holiday bazaar downtown Anchorage the Saturday before Christmas. We hated it. But it did get us creating, we sold a few cards and ornaments, and we learned a lot from the experience. Here are a few of the things we learned:
I’ve mentioned that I love New Year’s resolutions and I’ve shared our financial goals for 2016. I don’t like to make typical, vague goals or tie myself in to doing something I can’t achieve. With that in mind, here are my 2016 non-financial goals:
I turned 30 this past year and it wasn’t life-changing. Here’s why:
For the few years leading up to my 30th birthday, I watched several friends hit 30 first. A surprising amount of them wrote up a whole bucket list of things they wanted to accomplish before the big birthday. For most of them, the 29th year meant racing to finish a made-up list by an arbitrary deadline: the 30th birthday. I watched one friend successfully finish all 30 things on her list (which involved a lot of frantic racing the few weeks leading up to her birthday and a few all-nighters). Another friend even started a blog about the 30 things she planned to accomplish before she turned 30. I think she blogged twice that whole year. On her 30th birthday, she wrote about how she remembered how much she hated doing new things. When she turned 30, she felt bad about not hitting her goals for about ten minutes, and then she realized that was dumb. Being 30 meant she was free from the “decade of decision” and she could own who she was. Her goal after that was to have no adventures and fully enjoy what she actually likes to do.
It’s not even one full week into the New Year and already several people have abandoned their resolutions. The statistics on New Year’s resolutions are bleak. Over 80% of New Year’s Resolutions fail. In order to avoid this, some people don’t make any resolutions at all. I’m a huge fan of New Year’s and the accompanying resolutions. I love the chance to look back on the previous year and see what I was able to accomplish and look ahead to a clear calendar and figure out where I want to be in a year. Spending a week in Hawaii with my family made me realize not everyone is like me. When asked where he wants to be in a year, my brother-in-law responded: “I have plans for in 5 years and 10 years, but 1 year is hard to define.” My sister said: “Oh no. Is this about hopes and dreams? I hate talking about those!” And my dad and husband said “I don’t know!”
December was another lovely month and so very eventful. I finished up my semester-long ice skating class at the local university with my awesome skating performance (spoiler: I fell in the first two seconds). We finished up our largest project of the year: The Alaska State Energy Rebate Program and are looking forward to our $7700+ rebate check arriving sometime in February. I can honestly say that the thing I’m most excited about 2016 is that we are done with all the DIY home projects with a deadline! Mr. T and I attempted to sell some art at a holiday bazaar and hated it (upcoming post). But we weren’t too down because then we all got to get on a plane to Hawaii to celebrate my dad’s retirement in Hawaii for Christmas!
We’re spending the Christmas holiday in Hawaii, so we will be taking a virtual break until the New Year when we will return on Monday, January 4 with a December plan update. We hope you have a wonderful holiday season with family and friends and spend time on what is the most important. Also, I had another post planned about some little-known facts about reindeer, but Mental Floss beat me to it, so I recommend checking that out. Also, we were interviewed over at Even Steven Money so go check us out there!
Yesterday, my dad drove up to his office with his briefcase in hand, went in through the back door, met with clients as usual, and when the day was done, he walked away forever. He hadn’t planned to retire for another 5 years, but someone offered to buy his small business earlier this year, so he did some calculations. He realized that if he carried the loan on the business and charged a low interest rate, the person buying the business would be happy with the low rate, and my dad could use the loan payments to retire five years earlier than planned. I’ve known about this for nearly six months and have had several thoughts since hearing the news. Here are a few of those thoughts:
2015 was the year of the Energy-improving house updates. I’m happy to tell you that WE’RE DONE with the Alaska Energy Rebate Program! It was an exhausting year doing nearly all of the work ourselves, but we’re proud of how much work it was. The hot water heater was the biggest project, but we managed to not blow up the house while rerouting gas piping, so that’s a major bonus! The windows were an ordeal as well, but not nearly as difficult as we thought they would be. Blowing insulation into the attic was the quickest and easiest of all the projects.