Personal January 2024 Journal – New Year, same me. I’m proud of who I am, and what I’ve accomplished. I feel motivated toward my goals. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

January 3rd 2024

Work:

Going back to work this week hasn’t been too bad. I would, of course, rather still be home with my dogs but I am not dying so that’s a win.

I have some big projects I’m still working on, but I don’t feel any pressure this week.

My boss is still on vacation for the week, one of my colleagues has 1/2 the week off and our 3rd team member is retiring this week soooo she’s not going to be taking on any new work. It’ll be a pretty calm week. A great transition back to work.

Personal:

Jay and I both really enjoyed our break. He went to Louisiana twice with his family to go to casinos and we had his family over for Christmas day. We drank, played games, and had a great time.

Jay and I watched a few movies, including Leave the World Behind which was trending, and it was AWFUL 😂. It was very dramatic (in a film kind of way) which was hard for me to stick with. I got bored easily. And then the ending was just awful. It felt like they ran out of money and just ended it. The movie build-up was so slow and then the ending was 0-100 and didn’t seem to match the rest of the movie at all.

He’s currently working his way through Yellowstone which I just couldn’t get into and I’m still working my way through Ugly Betty.

I finally picked up my course textbook and got started, but only made it through chapter 1. I have a lot to do in the next couple of months to prepare for that test. I’ve created a plan to ensure I get through it before the deadline. I must read at least 40 pages a week, which is fine. I can do that.

Jay and I put up lights on our patio last night, and then we got a huge rainstorm, so I’m crossing my fingers they hold up. They’re specifically made to be outdoor lights, but they did NOT feel very heavy-duty to me so I’m hoping they last. Fingers crossed.

We’ve still got quite a bit to resolve before the backyard is complete, but we’re making progress every day.

🐕 🐕 The Dogs 🐕 🐕

It felt so good to be home with the dogs all week. We didn’t have to put Boone in his kennel at all. We took him to a friend’s house for some socialization, and Bentley of course loved the pets and belly rubs. We spent a lot of time napping on the couch.

My boyfriend’s little sister got a puppy for Christmas that we also had at our house. We introduced the puppy to our dogs, who are 5x his size, and spent time watching them play. Our dogs, despite being much larger, were excited to have him in the house.

I felt really bad putting Boone in his kennel this morning when both Jay and I headed back to work. 😢

📖 Book Club/Reading 📖 :

I love reading and I will spend all my free time reading if I could. However, I really need to focus on my studies so I decided to stop reading for a while and start focusing on my program.

That lasted about a week.

I’m off to a great start for 2024 as quite a few of the “want to read” books on my list have been available via Libby!

I started and finished Didn’t See That Coming by Rachel Hollis this past weekend and started Without Merit by Colleen Hoover.

My book goal last year was 20 books and I made it through 21 so I set the same goal for 2024. Follow my progress and set your own goal at Goodreads.com.

Book club through my work will begin again in February.

✈️ Travel ✈️:

Over the break, I was able to visit one last Texas State Park for 2023! I added Buescher State Park to my list. The park is only about an hour and a half from home and I really enjoyed my visit. I hiked about 9 miles total and camped in some of the coldest weather I’ve ever camped in. Thankfully I was prepared with all the right gear to keep me warm.

Next up on the list, is MLK weekend! Since we have MLK Day off work, I will be traveling a little farther out to visit another state park. Not yet decided, but I’m thinking San Angelo. We shall see! It’ll be another really cold camping weekend, which I’m not looking forward to. I am, however, looking forward to more time outside and more hiking.

January 10th 2024

Work:

Nothing new to report at work. I’m still feeling meh about everything, I haven’t moved into my new office, and things are pretty much the same.

Personal:

I’m trucking along. I’ve been doing well with my workouts, planning travels, and I’m feeling good.

🐕🐕 The Dogs 🐕🐕:

Luckily the first week of January provided us with good weather and I was able to take Bentley on three walks, which is fantastic. Unfortunately, though, this week has NOT been good weather. We’ve had rain, and freezing temps and I’m just not feeling that life so no walks this week.

I’m also too scared to try to walk Boone again if I’m being honest so I’ll have to work on that eventually. He deserves walks too.

📖 Book Club/Reading 📖:

I started “If He Had Been with Me” by Laura Nowlin and it’s a cute little teen angsty book. It’s not too corny.

I also received my free book club book for February’s meeting – “Lessons in Chemistry” by Bonnie Garmus. This book was on everyone’s ‘to-read’ list for a while so I feel like it’s probably a good one. I haven’t yet looked at what it’s about so it’ll be a real mystery for me.

I also made a LITTLE bit of progress on my school work! 🙌🙌 I know I need to get through 60 pages per month to be able to take the test on time so I’m still pretty far behind, but it feels good to have opened it and gotten started.

✈️ Travel ✈️:

This weekend I’m taking full advantage of having an extra day off for MLK day. I’ll be driving about 5.5 hours away from home to visit two new Texas State Parks. If all goes well, I’ll get in over 20 miles of hiking this weekend which will be awesome.
I’ll fill you in later on what parks I’m visiting (you know, gotta be safe out here).
Since it’s supposed to be a VERY cold weekend here in Texas, I’m going to opt for hotels which is something I RARELY do. I’m not about to be freezing all weekend though.

January 17th 2024

Work:

We started interviews this week for the other Project Specialist position, so that’s good!
Other than that, no real updates.

Personal:

It’s been really cold, which means I am struggling mentally DAILY to get out of bed and be productive, but I’m doing the damn thing. Thankfully we had Monday off for the holiday and on Tuesday I worked from home.
Jay and I are getting a little impatient with the weather because we want to get the backyard done. We need to get some sod/grass laid ASAP because the yard is still just a big pile of dirt from when we had the patio poured.

🐕🐕 The Dogs 🐕🐕:

Boone is doing better with the potty situation. He’s only gone once in the house in the last 2 months. We’re growing up!
He’s also gone outside a few times to go to the bathroom without running away, although that’s still terrifying because all it takes is another animal to come out of nowhere, our neighbors to step outside, or literally ANYTHING to happen and he’ll be out of there.

📖 Book Club/Reading 📖:

I have 20 pages left of “If He Had Been with Me” by Laura Nowlin. I’ll finish it this evening. It’s a cute, easy read, but nothing to write home about. It’s about teenage love and it’s cringy and stereotypical, but entertaining. I didn’t hate it, I didn’t love it. I just liked it.

I’ll start on the Book Club book – “Lessons in Chemistry” by Bonnie Garmus – this weekend. I still don’t know what it’s about.

I haven’t made any progress on my schoolwork since last week, but this weekend I’ll be home and I have plans to work on more. I’m only at about 20 of the 60 pages I need to get through this month. I’ll schedule it in this weekend though so I’m okay.

✈️ Travel ✈️:

This past weekend I roadtripped out to San Angelo, TX for a hiking weekend. I stopped at Chalk Ridge Falls and Colorado Bend State Park on the way out there and got some good hikes in.
Unfortunately, when I got to San Angelo, it was really cold and I couldn’t spend too much time outside exploring. We got a crazy cold blast through Texas this weekend. It even snowed!

San Angelo didn’t have much to look at anyway though so I don’t feel too bad. I got 5.5 miles in and drove around the park. I was hoping to see some buffalo, but I did not.

I opted for a hotel because I knew it was going to be cold this weekend and I enjoyed the opportunity to have a little weekend away. I took my yoga mat, did some stretching/yoga, read, watched football, and just relaxed.

Despite not being able to hike as much as I wanted, I enjoyed the weekend.

January 24th 2024

It’s cold and gloomy and I’m bundling up and doing nothing. Sorry, no update today. I. Just. Cant.

January 31st 2024

Work:

My boss and I have been meeting more often to push through this project I’ve been complaining about since September. Thankfully, we’ve made progress and hopefully next week I’ll present the Proof of Concept to our stakeholders and get a move on.

I have an application process going live tomorrow which I’m ready for, but I’m not ready for the Phase II roll out of that project and it’s only 2 weeks away so I really need to get on it.

Tomorrow we’ll be getting new projects assigned to us so I’m excited because the only I think I’ll be getting won’t be too hard or time consuming so I will feel good about my name actually being on a completed project list coming soon!

Also, we finally hired my counterpart! WHOOP. I know it’ll be a while before they can start helping me with any thing because there’s a lot to learn, but it will feel good to have someone finally learning and can potentially help me out with the workload.

Personal:

Last week was tough because it rained for about 5 days straight. We didn’t see any sun and the grey was really bringing me down. I lost all motivation and binge watched a lot of TV. Thankfully the sun came back out this week and I was able to reset.

Jay and I had a company come out and give us an estimate on getting the yard done and it was over $5,000 😲 Of course that’s not something we can afford so we’re now looking into getting a few other estimates and starting to do research on how to do the yard ourselves. I don’t think it’ll be too hard to actually prep the soil and seed the lawn, but leveling it has been the main reason we’ve wanted to hire someone. Trying to level the ground for the patio was a serious task. It took a lot of time and effort on our parts and we didn’t want to repeat the process.

I guess we’ll see what happens.

🐕🐕 The Dogs 🐕🐕:

Bentley and Boone both had a hard time with all that rain last week. They hate going outside when it’s raining because there’s no where for them to go and not get wet. I followed them around the yard on a leash with an umbrella, but it was still not a good time for either of them. This week, I’ve been able to take Bentley on walks again and he’s been enjoying that very much.
I’m still scared to take Boone on walks because he’s still pulling really hard and I’m terrified he’ll see a squirrel or something and break my arm off or get lost. I really want to look into official dog training but I know it’s a couple thousand and I just don’t have it. I can’t even afford an extra $100 a month to get them dog insurance sooo that’s still lingering.

I know one of my previous goals was to get Bentley microchipped, I haven’t done that yet. I am excited though because he has another grooming appointment coming up! The boy is a furball right now 😂

📖 Book Club/Reading 📖:

I finished three books in January, which is a great start to my year. I also finished writing reviews for them all and my post about them will come out tomorrow!

I started the book club book of the month – Lessons in Chemistry- and I’m about halfway through it. It’s just okay so far. It’s not great, but it’s not at all bad. I’m just waiting for something to happen.

I don’t have another book picked out to read next, but I did get lucky earlier this month and get some books I’ve been wanting to read at Goodwill! Maybe I’ve read Verity and The Gifts of Imperfection, I loved both of them so I’m happy to add them to the collection. I haven’t read the other two yet though.

I made a little progress on my coursework and I’m 5 pages away from my required 60 pages a month to get through by the due date so that feels good. I do know I’ll be gone two weekends in February though so I need to plan accordingly. It feels good to have at least gotten started though!

✈️ Travel ✈️:

I am making all kinds of plans! Real ones, and some that’ll never happen 😂 This weekend we’ll be celebrating Jay’s birthday at a friend’s house in Houston. I’ll be coming home Saturday morning and Jay will be heading to Louisiana with his family to hit up the casino.

While he’s gone I’m hoping to spend some time writing about my MLK weekend trip to Colorado Bend and San Angelo State Parks!

I’ll also be making a plan for when my mom visits in a few weeks. I’ve already decided we’ll head to San Antonio since I haven’t been there in years and she’s never been at all! I wanted to go to Austin, but I decided we’d save Austin for when she visits in the warmer months in the future.

I found us a cute little Airbnb for a night and so far I know we’ll be visiting Natural Bridge Caverns, The Japanese Tea Garden, The Botanical Gardens, The Riverwalk, The Alamo, The Pearl, a few breweries, and a few museums. That should keep us busy for our one-night stay. I’m excited for her to come visit and for the opportunity to get out of town for a little mini-vacation!

That’s all for January!