Margaux Rhymes with Fargo

Publishing a post about new year’s resolutions or even just goals in general is admittedly cliché, but there’s compelling research out there that suggests that public accountability is a good way to stick to new habits and actually accomplish your goals. With some caveats of course, because science is messy. Anyways, case in point is the fact that I blogged only a single time in all of 2023 (on the very last day of the year) compared to twice a month in 2022, since I publicly declared that to be my goal and didn’t want to be a failure. So without further ado, here are some silly things I’d like to accomplish this year.

1. This year is a milestone for me, as I turn 30 years old in February and enter my fourth (!!) decade of life. About five years ago I read somewhere that people’s preferences and tastes don’t tend to change as much after age 30, and since then I’ve been on a crusade to try as many new foods as I can before I hit the wall and my tastebuds refuse any further adaptation. For example, I used to be very against raw fish and any sort of Indian food but now I genuinely enjoy sashimi and tikka masala. Going along with that theme, this year I want to try a new food or recipe at least once every month to make sure I’m not (yet) getting old and crusty and set in my ways. (Feel free to send along any fun and/or exotic recipes that you like!)

2. Climbing is currently a big part of my life, and I have a handful of goals related to my skill progression there.
   • Last year I finally took the jump to aid climbing bigger routes and sleeping for a night on the wall. The next step is to climb El Capitan in Yosemite National Park, a classic big wall climb that takes about 4 days if you’re a newbie like me or 2 hours if you’re Alex Honnold and Tommy Caldwell breaking the speed record.
   • I’ve done the 10-pitch route East Buttress on Middle Cathedral in Yosemite three times now, but always with climbers that are better than me so they can lead the harder pitches. The one time I tried to lead the whole thing, I immediately came down crying after the first pitch (the first roof is hard and scary, I punctured the bladder in my backpack on a tree and lost most of my water, we had already started late because we got lost on the approach, etc). My goal is to get stronger both mentally and physically and be able to lead the full route later this year.
   • I’ve been training at a small climbing gym near my house in Tahoe for about a year now, and it’s been awesome. The main thing we train on is a kilter board, which connects to an app on your phone and lights up different holds based on what route you pick. Bouldering grades are generally numbered starting at V0 for beginners, and professional climbers can boulder V15 or so. The hardest climbs I’ve done on the kilter are one V6 and one V7, but I mostly hover around V4/V5, so this year I’d like to tick off six more V6’s and at least one more V7.

3. I’m very grateful for the opportunity I’ve had to learn Spanish while living in Chile, and at this point I’d consider myself quite fluent. The only problem is, I used to speak French and now I … don’t. I can still understand most things but I really struggle to generate language quickly enough to speak it myself. I would like to work on that this year but I haven’t quite decided how yet.

4. I took piano lessons for three or four years when I was younger (ages 7 through 10 or so) and I can still read sheet music and pick out songs very slowly but it’s not at all a smooth process. I would like to get better at piano this year by practicing for at least an hour every week. I mean, I flew my Casio electric piano all the way back from Chile in a ski bag at the end of last year and it was a quite lot of effort to pack it up carefully enough to be checked baggage so now I have to use it. I’m not necessarily trying to get to the level where I can sight read sheet music, but it would be fun to expand my repertoire from always playing Love Song by Sara Bareilles and My Heart Will Go On by Celine Dion.

5. Finally and predictably, I’d like to get back into the swing of blogging twice a month, on average. I’m clearly giving myself leeway here but based on my lack of posts in 2023, I need some external motivation to write even though I theoretically enjoy it. With this post published, that’s a check for January already!

*Cover photo taken by me in January 2023 in Seattle.