My “SMART” 2021

As I started initially thinking about this post (now in its fifth year!) a few weeks ago, I felt this would be an especially boring entry given what has felt like an unremarkable year. As I thought about the sights and sounds that defined 2021, I pictured the doldrums of my basement home office, my trio of dog walking routes, and the seemingly countless hours I spent rewatching exactly161 episodes of The Americans and The Sopranos.

In reality, while 2021 often felt dull, it was actually fairly monumental. Without going into an uncomfortable amount of detail, Meghan and I spent most of the first half of the year struggling with persistent fertility challenges and its accompanying physical and emotional toll (Meghan obviously endured the worst of the physical burden, though being forced to watch porn in a windowless medical masturbation suite at a urologist’s office is a surreal if not exactly “burdensome” experience). Conversely, we then spent the second half of the year celebrating and stressing over Meghan finally becoming pregnant (Meghan is pregnant, btw, which is likely news to a significant portion of the dozens of you who read this annual cry for help).

During all that, I agonized over and eventually took an exciting new job, my grandma passed away, I got attacked by a neighbor’s psychotic German Shepherd, a bunch of lunatics stormed the Capitol, Joe Biden became President, the Indians became the Guardians, I became an uncle (again), COVID went away, COVID came back, I officiated two weddings, the MyPillow guy proved that the election was stolen (but didn’t but might still?), inflation inflated, my dog had her toe amputated, a ship got stuck in the Suez Canal, I rewatched 161 episodes of The Americans and The Sopranos (this will not be the last mention I make of this).

When you’re young, everything feels monumental, though there’s rarely anything important happening. As an adult, I’ve learned, there’s really important and consequential stuff happening all the time, but it’s so shrouded by monotony and routine, the stakes rarely register. COVID has made this 100x worse. I looked back at my SMART Goals recap from 2018, a year in which I spent more than 20 out of 52 weekends traveling. This year, it feels like the only places I’ve visited have been early 1980s Washington D.C., and early 2000s Newark, N.J.. (If you think I’m going to the well too often on this Americans/Sopranos bit, please remember, I have been relegated to two comedy shows in two years — I’m working with half a deck of cards.)

For so many years, the sense of adventure associated with improv and travel made the world feel endless. Even when nothing was happening, everything was happening. Today, without the spark of improv and the expansiveness of travel, even when a lot is happening, nothing is happening. I can’t tell if this is just a feature of settling into early-middle-age, or a function of a world that suddenly pressed pause and resumed in slow motion. 2022 — with a new job, a new baby, and hopefully a pandemic in recess — will prove a lot.

So, with that prelude aside, my 2021, according to the numbers.

As a refresher, five years ago, I borrowed a common corporate goal-setting framework called “S.M.A.R.T. goals’’ to help structure my personal life. At that time, after Trump’s election and in the early days of his presidency, I had what felt like endless free time. Rather than finding this liberating, it left me constantly feeling anxious and overwhelmed. I could be doing anything, and I should be doing something good for my physical body/my mind/my spirit/my comedy/my family/my company/my clients/my community/my country/my democracy/my environment/my body/my mind/my spirit… (you get it). Paralyzed, I spent most of that time staring at Twitter, growing more and more vitriolic with each swipe of the thumb. These goals — which are intended to be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound — have proven enormously useful, and in some ways truly transformative for me. The beauty of these goals is that they reward actions that are easily within your control rather than outcomes that feel beyond the horizon. When I feel anxious, I can’t make myself lose 20 pounds by force of will. However, I can get off the couch and go to the gym. By doing so, I get the reward of checking a box on my spreadsheet, and feeling a sense of accomplishment. If I do that 175 times, my goal is achieved. It seems simple, but when I shifted my focus from forcing big outcomes to simply performing and counting better behaviors, lots of things improved.

I started this SMART goal program on January 1, 2017, exactly five years ago today. Today, I’m in better physical shape, a healthier eater, better read, a better cook, more financially disciplined and conscientious, and more environmentally responsible. Some of this may be a forgone byproduct of natural maturation, but I know a lot of my growth over the last half decade owes to these goals. That seems obnoxious and self-congratulatory to write, but it’s the honest truth. If you suffer from anxiety and also feel overwhelmed by free time, please reach out if you think that even a scaled back version of a SMART goals program would help. I am happy to offer my thoughts. (I promise I’m not trying to start some weird side hustle as a “SMART goal” counsellor and this is not a solicitation.)

Last year, I used a framework for presenting my results called “The Good, the Bad, and the Not Applicable” (due to the many goals rendered moot by the pandemic). I think that’s generally a good way to group results. However, this year, since no goals were forced into obsolescence by the pandemic, I’ll instead categorize my results as, “The Good, The Meh, and the Ugly”. What you’ll see below are a few areas where I feel I really thrived and surpassed my own expectations; a few areas where I made consistent effort but due to some lack of focus and/or discipline, failed to achieve my goal; and worst, the three objectives where I made little or no progress at all. Now, as I round the 1,000 word threshold, I present you with my 2021.

THE GOOD

Looking at what worked well this year, there’s three clear areas of success: exercise, golf, and at last detaching from Gchat. I’ll dedicate a few paragraphs to each.

The Peloton

For years, I was a Peloton hater. A ridiculing, condescending, too-cool-for-the-yuppie-mainstream Peloton hater. I mocked the price point ($2,500 for an exercise bike with an iPad!). I mocked the marketing (for the record, this remains one of the funniest threads in Twitter history). I mocked the cult, and the scores of people who seemed all too eager to wedge the Peloton into what I perceived to be a deficit of personality.

Well, I was wrong.

The Peloton is awesome. If you, like me, mock the Peloton and the surrounding Peloverse but have entertained buying one, allow me to voice my recommendation.

It’s an awesome product. Not only is it well built and intuitive to use (I’ve never had any maintenance or connectivity issues with mine, and I am a very low-tech person), but it actually makes working out easier and more engaging. Well, it has for me. I’m a doughy, 37-year old man who views exercise as an unpleasant but necessary evil in the quest to stave off premature death. This is not a passion for me. In fact, in the past, I’d find any reason to skip working out. Hint of post-nasal drip? Ditch the elliptical. Indians down 5–2 in the 5th with a man on first? Kick off the gym shoes, we’ve got a thriller on our hands. Client’s tone a little funky in an email? Drop the weights, boil a bowl of spaghetti and let’s get to the bottom of this!

While we bought our Peloton to make working out at home easier for Meghan (a freak who, like many of you, genuinely derives pleasure from exercise), I thought maybe I’d occasionally get some value from it too. That’s been an understatement.

I totally underestimated how quickly I’d become hooked on the immediacy, quality, and volume of data that the bike provides, and the ways it allows you to experiment with strategies for performance improvement. I totally underestimated the variety of classes that Peloton offers, with a range of musical selections and workout intensities. I totally underestimated how quickly — and frankly bizarrely — the instructors themselves become known figures in your life. While they’re just as cheesy and over the top as I expected, they quickly occupy a strange amount of mental real estate. Sometimes I find myself on the bike having thoughts like, “that’s so Ally” or “Classic Jenn!”. Life takes you to some unexpected places.

Most importantly, I underestimated how much I’d enjoy talking Peloton with other Pelly People. In the midst of a pandemic that left us partially or totally homebound — I’ve loved the ability the Peloton affords me to connect with and cheer on family and friends..

After a few initial rides, I set what felt like an ambitious target: 176 rides for the year (for reference, in 2019 I set a goal of 150 gym visits and managed 77). It’s not at all an exaggeration to say that there has never been a point in my adult life in which I’ve worked out 3+ times a week for anything more than two or three months at a time. As much as I immediately liked the bike, I had minimal faith in my ability to maintain 12 months of commitment. However, the more I committed, the more I improved, and the more I improved, the more I committed. I was concerned that as golf season emerged, my focus on the bike would recede. And while I did 60 rides in Q1, I still did 39 and 38 each in Q2 and Q3 respectively (the peak of golf season), an accomplishment about which I’m especially proud.

The longer you ride the bike, the harder it becomes to set new personal records and find marginal but meaningful improvements. Still, by this point, it’s feeling like a deeply ingrained part of my life. I can’t imagine consistently walking by the Peloton without maintaining it as a part of my schedule. Plus, if you’re dumb enough — like me — to pay $2,500 for an exercise bike, you better at least ride the thing.

Given my struggles to ever adopt a consistent workout routine, going 175 for 175 on Peloton rides — and spending nearly 100 hours on the bike — might be my single proudest SMART goal accomplishment over these five years. A+!

Here’s a live shot from yesterday’s ride #175. Shout out to Jenn Sherman’s 45 minute Grateful Dead rides, which I did about two dozen times this year.

GOLF

Knowing that a kid will be here by the time the snow melts next spring, and with so much COVID uncertainty still in the environment, my golf addiction went into overdrive this year. I played 61 rounds, which is a ton of golf for a guy who 1) lives in a big city; 2) endures a five month winter; 3) isn’t a country club member; and 4) has a job with relatively little schedule flexibility. Within those circumstances, playing two rounds of golf a week necessitates about 20 hours a week of planning. Having fun is a lot of work!

That said, this was a golf year for the ages for me. I had dozens of special, memorable days on golf courses this year. Thanks to the generosity of friends, I got to play some “bucket list courses” (in a stretch of less than a month this fall I was able to play Chicago Golf Club, Olympia Fields, Onwentsia, Rich Harvest, and Dunes Club — wow!). After a slow start to the year, I had a stretch from August thru October where I played the best, most consistent golf of my life.

Given my limited natural talent, with significantly less golf on the table in 2022 and for the foreseeable future, it’s highly possible I’ve played the best golf I ever will. I hope not, but this year gave me a lot of good memories!

As always, I set an annual birdie target. Even when I’m playing well, I am not someone who makes a lot of birdies. My target was 30, which felt like a stretch. Thankfully, I blew past that! In fact, I had 34 birdies in the bag by October 1. While I limped home a bit and struggled to put circles on the card towards the end of the season, 38 birdies is more than I expected. I’m especially proud of the last birdie, on the par 5 8th at Dunes Club, which is — in my opinion — one of the world’s most spectacular and perfect golf holes. The three birdies in a four hole stretch at Beverly in August was also a real “golfing high”.

As I do each year, I also set out with a goal to break 80 (*on courses with a 70+ rating). As I chronicled here, breaking 80 is a lifelong obsession. It’s sort of the magnetic force around which my entire golfing life centers. Despite playing better golf as the summer progressed, I still kept finding ways to turn 79s into 81s. I was especially dejected to shoot 38 on the front nine during our annual NewClub Stableford tournament, only to blow up with a 43 coming home.

Finally, a couple weeks later, I broke through. Even better, I broke through twice more!

Though I played more prestigious courses, I’ll remember the 78 at Ravisloe on 8/27 especially fondly. This was a Friday afternoon NewClub tee time — my absolute favorite of our rota — that I was able to play with three of my golfing rocks, Steve, Chris, and Huge. They absorb the lion’s share of my golf missives, complaints and frustrations, and it’s sadly rare to find times for the four of us to play together at once. To have everything come together, especially the back nine 36, on a beautiful day on a course I love with people I love: pretty much golf at its pinnacle.

Quitting Gchat

One of the main impetus for this SMART goals program was to reduce the amount of empty hours I felt I lost each year to just generally existing online. While Twitter has always been my big, screaming, glaring online hellhole (especially in 2016 and 2020), Gchat has stalked quietly in the background, sucking up just as much of me (probably more), but with less obvious toxicity. Since college ended, as I struggled with the monotony of work and general adult life, Gchat has been a place I’ve gone to just kind of wait things out. Pass the time. Find a bridge from sun’s up to sun’s down.

I think we resent most the things we just can’t seem to quit. That sense of internal resentment made things worse. The self-loathing aspect of wallowing in Gchat brought out my worst qualities. Sinking so much time into something that left me feeling anxious and unfulfilled finally reached a breaking point. So one day, I quit. I remember very clearly getting off the Peloton one day during March Madness and reflexively reaching to open my Hangouts app. Except this time I didn’t. It just struck me, I was finally done.

For me, cold turkey was the only way. There’s no sneaking cigarettes for addicts. For about a month, my twitchy thumb still reflexively reached to open the app when my mind wandered. There were several times I nearly dove back in (I know, the tone of these paragraphs seems melodramatic, but for me it was real!).

I am glad I at last detached myself from Gchat. I still spend way, way, way too much time on my phone, especially texting. But the ability to quit Gchat has proven to me that I can control and direct my brain more than I think. Now, it’s just a matter of redirecting my energy in a more productive way. (Starting with less texting…)

THE MEH

I had several areas this year that felt like neither successes or failures. I made efforts to achieve them but in each case felt like there was some missing element or core personal deficiency that caused me to come up significantly short of my goal.

Reading

I set out this year to read 20 books, which is the exact number I read last year. While I read a lot this year, for whatever reason, it felt like a labor more often than usual. While I read a handful of books that I loved (one especially), I started but didn’t finish books more frequently than I have in the past. I probably started more than 25 books, but only finished 15. Regardless, I maintained a consistent reading habit (and read a lot of journalism too). This is a “meh” with a hint of good.

If I could recommend just one book I read this year, it would be…

• Homeland Elegies by Ayad Akhtar. This book utterly blew me away. I had never read anything by Ayad Akhtar before, and his ability to parse human thought processes and emotional reasoning surpassed anything I’ve ever read before. The book — a novel which reads like a memoir & family history — creates a psychological profile that’s about as textured as you’ll ever find. Plus, the political-cultural subtext and half-outsider view of both American, Pakistani, and immigrant culture is as astute as anything you can find in a magazine. The book feels like an amazing composite of Dreams from My Father, The Corrections, and an article from The Atlantic. It should honestly be mandatory reading for every incoming college student.

Other books I read that I’d recommend wholeheartedly…

• American Pastoral by Philip Roth. This is a book I’ve intended to read for many years and always put off. It lived up to the hype. Harrowing is an overused word, but it’s the best one I can think to describe this novel. This book feels unrelenting, as the tension and sense of pending tragedy is unending. I thoroughly recommend it, if you have a stomach for unhappy events.
• Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr. I am biased to love Anthony Doerr’s writing since he graduated from my high school, and I can’t help but feel that sense of connection whenever I read his work. While this didn’t quite rise to the level of All the Light We Cannot See (one of my absolute favorite books), this is a similarly impressive work of imagination literally spanning centuries. Plus, he writes with a simple eloquence. His pages are easy to read, without ever feeling dumbed down. I thoroughly recommend it, especially if you don’t have a stomach for tragedy.
• Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu & Hell of a Book by Jason Mott. These are two of the most surreal and unique novels I’ve ever read. There’s no way I can describe them in a couple of paragraphs, but both are incredibly funny and at times really sad and poignant looks at racial justice issues. I thoroughly recommend them, especially if you like novels that bend and experiment with form. Even if you’re not always sure what’s what or who’s who in these novels, there are scenes and moments that just blast you in your gut and burn a hole in your brain.
• The Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead. This is just a really fun, easy read with a lighter tone than most of his work. If you want to read Colson Whitehead but don’t want to feel deeply shook before bed each night, try this. Someone should — and probably will — make a movie out of it.

Other books I read this year (many of which I enjoyed a lot)…

• Pappyland by Wright Thompson
• The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead
• Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe
• White Teeth by Zadie Smith
• The Moviegoer by Walker Percy
• Cuyahoga by Pete Beatty
• Our Country Friends by Gary Shteyngart
• Wow, No Thank You by Sam Irby
• Frankly, We Did Win this Election by Michael Bender

Reducing Meat Consumption

A few years ago, I decided I wanted to make some simple lifestyle changes to reduce my personal carbon footprint. While I know these kids of changes are fairly cosmetic — and amount to pissing in the wind when you look at the totality of our climate crisis — my attitude is that there’s no path to sustainability without pervasive individual behavior change. For instance, we’re all going to have to eat less meat eventually. Why not start now?

Now in year four of this journey, I have successfully proven to myself that I can eat less meat. And I believe that even without the goal and the tedium of tracking my activity, I will. So, while I didn’t quite hit my marks this year, my feeling is that once a SMART goal begins to feel tedious, it’s either no longer relevant, or no longer necessary. I think in this case it’s the latter. Just as I have stopped setting financial and cooking goals as better behaviors have become habitual, I think this will be the last year I set a formal goal in this category. Rather, I’ll just keep trying to adhere to my original intent: avoiding mindless meat consumption at breakfast and lunch (I truly hope I’ve had my last mediocre turkey sandwich) and to reserve meat-based dinners to recipes I truly want to cook or order.

In that spirit, here’s a couple vegetarian recipes I leaned on hard this year:

• Farro and cauliflower parmesan
• Shakshuka with feta
• Beyond Beef bolognese

My Weight

Now that I’ve complimented myself ad nauseum about my workout diligence in 2021, the other side of the coin is: despite 100 hours on the bike, I’m not sure I lost any weight. At the very least, I didn’t come especially close to finishing the year below 200 pounds.

There’s a number of reasons for this. First, I have no discipline. I eat compulsively and with little thought. Sometimes at the end of the day, I’ll think back on what I’ve eaten, and on first blush, I’ll feel good about what I had for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. A few minutes later, I’ll remember the tub of leftover refried beans I finished from last night’s Mexican takeout. Then I’ll remember the pack of Twizzlers I absentmindedly walked to 7-Eleven and bought between meetings. Then I’ll remember the six huge handfuls of nuts I ate for no reason other than that they adjoined the path from my bedroom to my office. This impulsive/compulsive/absentminded eating is a killer.

Second, I’ve way, way, way over indexed on “workout rewards”. Because I’ve never worked out as much as I did in 2021, I’ve also never rewarded myself quite so liberally. A 45 minute Peloton ride is objectively great. Counteracting it with three glasses of wine and a pint of ice cream is not so great. Food as a reward is a debilitating line of thinking — and one I can’t easily shake. Food is my first instinct as both an antidote to stress and a reward for productivity. One of my main goals in 2022 will be to de-program this thinking. I haven’t figured out how to frame this as a SMART goal, but if you have ideas, I am all ears. This will be the tallest mountain I’ve tried to climb.

THE UGLY

Sadly, there were some obvious areas where I just totally failed this year. This is the case every year, and my attitude remains: when you set SMART goals, a certain amount of failure is inevitable. However, the progress the goals inspire is likely to exceed whatever you would’ve accomplished without them. For instance, there is NO WAY I’d have kept getting on my bike this year if the number 175 wasn’t always on my mind.

While I don’t want to dwell on the failures, they cut deeper this year than they have in the past, in part because it feels like I came up shortest in the areas that are hardest and most meaningful. A few words on each.

One Major Creative Endeavor

My SMART goal program started at just about the same time that I began to really dial back my creative projects, especially written ones. While I continued to perform a lot of improv right up until COVID’s arrival, after six or seven years of near constant writing projects — sketch shows, solo bits, live lit, writing for the web, etc… — when I dialed the faucet back just a bit, it ran dry.

SMART goals are helpful, but they have limitations. Putting a number on a spreadsheet can’t solve the ambiguity and ambivalence of what a creative life means as I get older, as I assume more family and financial responsibilities, and as I cultivate and maintain other interests.

At the same time, I still take more pride in how even a minor creative endeavor registers than anything I can do at work, on a bike, on a golf course, in a kitchen, etc… When I think about the things I’ve done in my life that have created the greatest sense of satisfaction, outside of personal relationships, they’re all creative moments and projects.

My biggest regret from 2021 was my failure to adhere to The Artist’s Way. My friend Ollie, whose thoughtfulness and discipline with all of his creative undertakings I admire a lot, started The Artist’s Way this year and recommended it wholeheartedly. I decided to try it myself, in hopes that even if it didn’t directly yield a project, it might resolve the fogginess and tension I’ve been feeling as it has related to creativity over the last 2–3 years.

Unfortunately, after two weeks, I lost my momentum. I started making excuses (needing to take the dog out, wanting to get an early jump on work, etc…) for why I couldn’t complete my “morning pages” on any given day. Then I paused my efforts entirely, promising myself I’d resume once my schedule eased up a little. That was seven months ago.

In 2022, I don’t think I can or should frame a creative goal until I gain clarity as to why a creative goal exists in the first place. Maybe I’ll even try The Artist’s Way.

Joining a Satisfying Board

While I’ve never found a non-profit or advocacy that felt like a real home, prior to COVID, I was involved with several community-based volunteer initiatives that I liked and found worthwhile. I was especially attached to the work we were doing with The Nature Conservancy to clean up, enhance and improve Chicago Public Parks.

When COVID shut these down, I decided it was time to pivot from just the kind of “show up & help” volunteer days to becoming more deeply involved with an organization in a strategic capacity (specifically via a board). That was 20 months ago with little to show for since.

This year, I did take the initiative to do some moderate networking in order to get myself in touch with two small(ish) non-profits where I felt I might be able to provide some real support. In both cases, my overtures were received enthusiastically. We even had some exploratory conversations on ways I might get involved. Then…things stagnated.

Having grown up around non-profits via my mom’s work in Cleveland, I know that these organizations are stretched thin and resource-strapped. If you want to be involved as a board member, just because you’re volunteering your time, you can’t expect customer service. You have to take initiative and move things forward on your own. This is, sadly (and to say the least), not my strength. I am way too sensitive to any lack of responsiveness (I assume it’s a tacit way of people saying you’re annoying, don’t email me) and I am way too afraid of seeming presumptuous, self-important or overbearing. More than anything, I loathe and utterly fear conflict. So, as a consequence, I rarely ask for what I want. In this case, there’s no subtle way of getting there. If I want a board position with a non-profit that I feel can serve as something of a community “home”, I’m going to have to just ask for it…and ask for it…and ask for it. This spirit will probably help me in other aspects of my life too.

Visit 50 Chicago Parks

This was a great idea in concept. In 2020, during the height of shutdowns and social distancing, Winnemac Park played such a critical role in our lives, I decided I wanted to double down on my commitment to the Chicago Park District (especially given the work at Columbus Park mentioned above). After 15 years living in Chicago, I’ve also always wanted to better explore my own city, as it strikes me as insane that there’s so many neighborhoods I’ve rarely or never seen. What better way than via parks?

My plan was to dedicate one afternoon a month to visiting four parks with Thome. We successfully did this last January. Then, the polar vortex made driving around the city with the dog onerous come February. Then golf season started to peek through the curtains come March. Then I just lost the thread.

So, I dropped this goal. I still like it, but I’m not sure I’m as committed to the time and effort this would require as I am smitten with the notion. Perhaps I’ll revisit (though 2022 with an infant may not be the right year).

So that’s The Good, The Meh, and The Ugly of my 2021. As I said, it was the longest, shortest, happiest, saddest, most chaotic, most mundane, most gut wrenching, most joyous, most surprising, most predictable, most successful, least successful year of my life. It made no sense. There were times I thought it might kill me (specifically once that neighbor dog got me on the ground and had my calf in his jaws). There where many other where I felt I’d reached the summit. With time, maybe I’ll be able to characterize 2021 more definitively. Regardless, as I said, it has ended on an exciting note with a new job and a very pregnant wife. While my central thesis is that life is boring as an adult, if any year will test that theory for me, it should be 2022. I don’t know what the next 12 months will have in store before my next update. But I’m excited and grateful for all of you that continue to follow these massive, cathartic word dumps each new year. Thanks for reading and good luck getting SMART!