New Year, New Goals (and a few old ones)

Happy New Year dear ones! I hope everyone enjoyed the holiday season and indulged in plenty of baked goods. Here’s a quick recap of my December and early January. I started training for my new job in early December and am now working it full-time. It’s a real adult job with benefits, projects, and responsibilities. Plus, I get to work in a beautiful place with passionate and amazing people!

Matt and I spent most of December in South Dakota where is was absolutely freezing but we were surrounded by some of our favorite people which was well worth the snow and the cold. My grandmother was also visiting so I got the extra gift of spending lots of time with her. Other highlights included a Harry Potter Yule Party, my 30th birthday, and a frozen trip up to Mt. Rushmore.

 

Over the past few weeks I’ve been contemplating what I would like to accomplish in 2017. Last year, I set 29 goals on my 29th birthday. Then 2016 devolved into a dumpster fire and all but six of them went out the window. This year, I’m focusing on five projects. Some of these I’ve carried over from last year and a few are entirely new for 2017.

1. Expand my feminism and make it more intersectional
   • Read more books on feminism by POC, queer, and nonbinary authors.
   • Become more involve as an activist at the local and national level – We have so much work to do and so much to protect.
2.  Begin learning Italian
3. Learn to knit and make something for myself.
4. Develop my cooking and homesteading skills
   • This includes participating in the Minimalist Foodie Challenge that my cousin Danielle and her husband Cameron developed for the new year. I’ll be exploring this more in another post.
5. Sort out our living situation.
   • Ideally, we want to buy a house but if that’s not possible we need to find a rental that we can make a home out of.
   • Start downsizing and do some minimalist projects.

So there they are. Five ambitions for 2017. What are yours?

Feminist Fight Club

Throughout 2016 I’ve been reading books on feminism and modern gender relations. I highly recommend Bad Feminist by Roxanne Gay and Lindy West’s Shrill.

I’m about halfway through Feminist Fight Club: An Office Survival Manual for a Sexist Workplace.  The work is an interesting combination of social science research, suggestions for ways to combat subtle sexism, and personal examples. Reading this book has made me especially thankful for all the women in my life who taught me to sit at the table and take no shit.

I’ve been delighted to realize that the countless evenings my friends and I spent sharing frustrations and accomplishments were the seeds of our own feminist fight club. Being a member of their group is an honor and great pleasure. Over the years I’ve watched these women build careers while fighting for recognition of their work and accomplishments. They work hard. They change lives and make their communities better bit by bit. They do this while battling the subtle sexism of the modern workplace. They stand up and claim credit for their ideas, their work, and their accomplishments and taught me how to do the same. They support and advocate for their female colleagues. They adhere the first rule of feminist fight club: we fight the patriarchy not each other.

I have big plans for my Feminist Fight Club in 2017. We’re going to get stronger, more confident, and more fierce. I want to build connections and have consistent contact with these women I adore. I’m going to start by developing an international feminist book club. It’s going to be great and I can’t wait.