1. Complete the Tough Mudder in May. Late last year, five friends and I had the brilliant slightly insane idea to register for the Tough Mudder, a crazy hardcore 15-20KM Obstacle Course designed by the British Special Forces, raising money for the Wounded Warrior Project. If you don’t know what it is, check out the website. Obstacles include swimming through a pool of ice cubs, crawling through a tiny pipe buried in the dirt and filled with water, running through fire, swinging across greased up monkey bars, and running through a block of live electrical wires. Yup. Call me crazy, but I’ve already registered and paid with my team, the Mudder F#&%ers! It’s May 11, which means I have just over 4 months to a) learn to run more than 1K without falling over and b) get physically fit enough to complete the majority of the obstacles.
2. Finally launch Souch Creativity Media. I bought this domain name quite a few months ago now, and have been slowly plodding away at getting it up and running. My old computer, with it’s infinite slowness (15 minutes to process one photo in Lightroom) and ability to crash without me even turning it on made doing freelance work near impossible. It also made it hella frustrating, and web designing and creating graphics was just as bad.
3. Finish my Instagram 365 project. In 2010, I tried Project 52, but failed ended up stopping in the Spring. My biggest two problems keeping up with it were a) I tried to do a self-portrait project, and b) well, see above re: my computer and photo processing times. I’ve always wanted to do a 365, and am finally giving it a whirl this year. I’ve decided to do it on Instagram, though, instead of with my DSLR: my iPhone is always with me, and I use Instagram multiple times a week already. My user name is @laurensouch if you want to follow along, or I also will be doing a monthly round-up here as well as cross posting to my Tumblr and Twitter.
4. Try one new recipe a week. Recently, I haven’t been eating the greatest and one of the biggest reasons is that I’m bored with everything I know how to make, and I hate cooking new recipes because it takes sooo long. So I want to try one new recipe a week – some might be long (aka this week’s mushroom risotto), some might be easy (from my “Just 5 Things” cookbook), and some might end up gross… but I want to try to find some new recipes.
5. Avoid chain restaurants. I have this really bad habit of always choosing chains to eat at. My go-to right now tends to be the Pickle Barrel – tasty, I know there’s GF options, and it’s close. However, I feel like it’s ridiculous to always go to the same old chains now that I’m living in Toronto, which is filled with amazing, independent restaurants, bakeries, and cafes. There’s so many amazing options here, especially in my area (Yonge/Eglinton) that are at a similar (or better) price point than the chains. I’ve been exploring them more recently, and have been blown away by the food at a number of them (and many of the servers are really knowledgable about gluten intolerances, and so helpful as I work to select appropriate GF options)… so I want to keep this up in 2013, and avoid the chains. Fast food restaurants will be the exception. Also, I’ll still be frequenting Starbucks/Tims/Second Cup because damnit, they’re close to work and I’m addicted – but on the weekends, or when I’m out, I want to try to stick with other, more local options (sidenote: Bulldog’s Toasted Marshmallow Latte is AMAZING)
