Leaving 2017 Open...

2017 is upon us in a few short hours. "New Year, New Me," right? Ummm, no. That's not really my style at all. I am someone who is constantly working toward goals and I certainly don't need the clock to strike midnight of a new year to light that fire inside me for change or resolve.  I am proud to say that one of my best qualities is that I am a go-getter with a lot of intrinsic motivation for most things. But with that comes the desire to achieve every goal I set for myself almost immediately and done perfectly. That's not always realistic and it can be a real downer when I fall short. Unfortunately, this happened a lot in 2015 and brings me to one of my biggest downfalls: I am too damn hard on myself and can get very demoralized when things don't go the way I planned; especially with something that I worked hard at and/or put a lot of time into. However, while 2015 was such a shit year, I vowed that 2016 wouldn't be a repeat of that. Luckily, it wasn't! I had to make some changes in my mindset and my methods on how I would go forward to have different, better outcomes. With that being said, my one major goal of 2016 was to simply be happy. Instead of my usual objective goals for the year, I decided that in order to re-find my happiness there some were steps I had to take. I wrote out ways I was going to re-discover that joy and happiness I was missing and in the progress towards that, some of my other personal goals may just fall into place.

2016: A Year in Review

December is halfway done which means that 2016 is coming to a close very shortly. This year, like any other, saw a lot of ups and down for me. It also had a lot of change for me. But it was definitely necessary change for me. I started the year as a New York Resident and am ending it an Illinois one. I started it as a teacher and coach and am ending it as a Lululemon educator and substitute teacher. I started it quite unhappy and discouraged and am ending it renewed and hopeful. Sure, some things remain the same for me (body issues and loneliness to name a few), but this year I really tried to look at the positives a lot more because I was sick of the same negatives continually bringing me down.

This Jewish Girl LOVES Christmas Time

Its December!! It's the last month of 2016 and one of the most cheerful and festive months of the year. I am usually only home in Chicago the last week of Chicago for winter break and only get downtown once or twice in that time, but now that I live here, I get to experience the holidays in the city all winter long. Some of the holiday stuff went up mid-November and now that Thanksgiving is over, most of it is up which makes me so excited. For a Jewish girl, there are few things in life that make me more excited than gaudy, bright, sparkly Christmas decorations. I make zero apologies for it. The brighter and tackier, the better. It makes me soooooo happy!!!