“What's the minimum success?" - Feb. 2025 Life Recap

Monthly check-in for people who, like me, like to snoop on others' lives.

Mar 04, 2025

Towards the start of every month, I share a look back at the previous one. It’s a fun way to share behind the scenes of my goals while staying accountable to reflection!

February’s Recap ✍️

February’s theme was: “What's the minimum success?” (lowering the bar for myself and my expectations during a big travel month)

Big wins: A 2 week trip to Taiwan and southern Japan (with a buffer day on each end to not rush in/out of normal life, LOVED that), still managing 5 ski days around the trip, getting on the cover of Mountaineer Magazine, one of the strongest storytelling nights I’ve hosted, launching a podcast for a client🎙️

Challenges: Prepping in advance for 2 weeks mostly not working (airplane WIFI and buffer days helped a lot), coming home to a very moldy car (thanks PNW rain and Subie leaks)

February’s experiment: Determining what the minimum success would look like during a busy month. 🚲 E.g., for my bike race training, there are 3 lifting workouts a week. For February, I decided that if I could hit a total of 8 strength workouts (average of 2/week but distributed however), and let bodyweight workouts count (so no weights needed), that would be enough. I had a similar attitude around deadlines I set at work. Lowering my expectations (i.e., my self-imposed pressure) helped me relax way more while traveling.

Core 4 and Angie 3.0 progress: I didn’t track my 4 behaviors or qualities while traveling, but I did keep them rolling in the back of my mind! It’s becoming more habitual (less forced) for me to eat breakfast earlier, and I’m frequently finding opportunities to remind myself that I have time to be calm. ;) However, I’m excited to track daily in March, since taking that minute at the end of every day truly helps me follow through.

Bike race training progress: I got over my fear of being clipped in! Finally, I’m using my cool pink bike shoes. On nice gravel, it felt great. On chunky snowy muddy steep awful gravel, it was mildly terrifying. 😱 But I’ll keep forcing myself to try, since I know I gotta work my butt off to make the cut-off for the route they just released.

Best thing I spent money on: OMG, new thrift store in The Dalles, OR. I popped inside after a bike ride and it happened to be their winter clear-out day, so everything I got was either $1 or $5. Obsessed with a couple fun sweaters and great pairs of jeans I got. They replaced some worn-out pieces in my closet and kept the money local!

Worst thing I spent money on: My Ellevest subscription. I’m new to everything finances and money strategy. So when I decided to start, you know, having a retirement account and stuff, I used Ellevest ($12/month) to manage my investments. The primary draw was that they’re financial education by women, for women. But, they recently emailed all their customers to say they’re auto-moving everyone to a less feminist company and only keeping financial services for their wealthiest customers (plus they turned off comments on the IG post announcing it, which is a bad look). After mulling on options, I’m deciding that I’m going to educate myself and learn how to invest my own money. It’s not something I’m naturally interested in at this point, but it feels empowering to know I can learn to not need outside help.

Newly released:

💪 From Underfueled to 100-Mile Finisher: How This Athlete Regained Trust in her Body | Eat for Endurance Podcast (I guested)
How to Be an Advocate for your Community while Choosing Difficult Pursuits | See Her Outside Podcast (I hosted)
What You Need to Know About Getting Your Period Outdoors | Sex Outside Podcast (I guested)
What Athletes Need to Know about Periods and Talking to Teens About Them | Tarin It Up Podcast (I guested)
Breaking Down Barriers to Nature for the Latino Community with Vivianette Ortiz Caraballo | For The Love Of Podcast (I hosted)

March’s Focus

March’s theme is: “Spring clean my life.”

I’m excited for: Cooking and baking new recipes. Being mindful to buy less and buy local. Refreshing my work packages and using new software to make it seamless to onboard clients. Two in person paid talks that I don’t need to build from scratch. Two bachelorette parties (Florida and Sedona). Maybe squeezing in a bike training ride in both those sunny spots?! ☀️

I’m looking for:

Brands who want to support the Wild Woman Trail Runs (yes, I’m now co-directing a race)! Tell a running or other biz you love to reach out!
Podcast hosts who want to have me on as a guest. Connect me with your fave outdoor and period pods!
Recommendations for learning about personal finance management, retirement, ethical investing, etc!

Work together: