Only now do I look to my sidebar and realize that I put a spot to track 2019 achievements as they happened! Well, that went nowhere, but I did achieve quite a bit this year, so hopefully I can remember all the highlights without having kept track.

These were my "intentions" for 2019:
- Make healthy choices.
- Deepen friendships.
- Do creative things.
- Chase pleasure.
- Build my career.
- Be flexible when life throws things at me.

I'll start with "Do creative things," because I'm most proud of the work I did in that category.

- In February, I completed one year of guitar lessons. I'm closing in on my second full year with no signs of slowing down! I'm a pretty good basic rhythm guitarist now and am working on learning more complicated stuff too.

- From February to August, I off and on helped a musician work on his bio to be used in promotional materials. It sort of went nowhere, mainly because he seemed to give up promoting himself, but I'm still proud of the work I did to try and learn a new type of writing I'd never done before.

- In June, I self-published a book I originally wrote for NaNoWriMo in 2014! I, much like my musician friend, have sort of slacked off on promoting it and haven't made back the money it took to publish it and print 50 copies. But a couple dozen people have read it and I've gotten some positive reviews (from friends and friends of friends, but still!). I started editing a few others but haven't made significant enough progress on any one manuscript to be able to say when I'll be ready to publish it. But I definitely intend to publish more books at some point! And, yes, try to market them a bit better than I did this one.

- In November, I completed NaNoWriMo for the seventh year in a row!

OK, on to "make healthy choices":

- Healthwise, I kept up pretty well on walking and daily strength training -- until about November when everything got really busy and several sicknesses passed through our household. But I did do a good job with healthy lunches the second half of the year, and overall my weight decreased around 6 or 7 lbs.

"Deepen friendships" and "chase pleasure" got somewhat intertwined (and even dovetailed with "do creative things"!) because I used going to music shows, creative writing and playing guitar as ways to hang out with existing friends and make new ones.

- I befriended people I met on Instagram through music posts, got to know musicians I went to see perform, and got closer to people I already knew because of music and/or writing. One or two friendships faltered this year, but I'm trying to see that relationships ebb and flow, so as long as I'm continuing to connect with most people, I don't need to stress out about a few friendships not becoming as close as I thought they would.

- Overall I went to 88 live music shows in 2019! This is by far a record for me. Most of them were small local shows that were free or didn't cost much, so although I did spend most of my personal fun money on shows, it wasn't nearly as expensive as it may sound! I did travel for a few of them, but that was budgeted through our vacation savings.

Similarly, "build my career" and "be flexible" dovetailed this year. My company went through several rounds of layoffs and I feel its future is far less certain, though things have stabilized somewhat in recent months. So I took the opportunity to update my resume, start making networking connections, and apply for a few jobs. I assisted AS with her freelance business too, and discussed the possibility of joining her instead of having a salaried position. I also applied for an internal promotion, so I'm currently exploring all angles. So my career hasn't necessarily moved in terms of title or salary, but I'm proud of the steps I'm taking to round out my personal brand while staying flexible to whatever may come.

That's it for my intentions! Now for the financial progress my household made in 2019.

Debt decreased from $437,178 to $425,085
Retirement values increased from $406,280 to $541,036 (taking our asset values from $1,046,061 to $1,180,817)
Overall net worth increased from $608,883 to $755,732

We paid off our credit cards in full each month and continue to be debt-free except mortgages! Not too bad for a year where saving and debt payment took a bit more of a backseat to other financial priorities (such as saving for our kitchen renovation, which is currently stalled in the planning phase, but we do have over $30K saved up for it, not reflected in our assets above).

I guess that was my year! Honestly I didn't even think about goals or intentions for the new year, we were so busy/sick/etc. the last two months of 2019. My instinct is to keep going with everything I listed above, because it's all stuff without a definite end point, and it's all things I feel have enriched my life!

There have been tons of challenges over the past year, but looking at my cumulative results, I feel happy, lucky and proud.