12 Ways to Go For Your New Years Goals in 2022

Photo via Tanyasid/Getty Images

The Resolution: Eat less meat.

The Solution: Satisfy your cravings for comfort foods at PlantPub. Iron Chef alum Mary Dumont has partnered with vegan influencer Pat McAuley to launch the new Cambridge eatery, which is focused on plant-based renditions of Buffalo wings, ice cream, ramen, and other favorites for dine-in, takeout, and delivery. There’s even boozy pressed juice, if you want a light buzz with your kimchi-aioli-topped Impossible burger.

Photo courtesy of PlantPub

The Resolution: Get in shape (without buying a gym membership).

The Solution: Join all of those once-committed gym bunnies who took to the workout-from-home era like ducks to water—and sent sales of Hydrow, produced by the Cambridge company of the same name, skyrocketing 500 percent in 2020. Even celeb investors such as Justin Timberlake and Lizzo are now touting the benefits of the high-tech machine, which has been likened to the Peloton of rowing for its live virtual classes and anytime-videos recorded on waterways including the Charles.

Photo courtesy of Hydrow

The Resolution: Cash in on all of your cobweb-collecting collectibles.

The Solution: Bring those dusty boxes of abandoned baseball, football, and other sports cards you’ve unearthed from the attic to CardVault. With its live DJs spinning in the lounge and walk-in steel safe filled with some of the world’s rarest and highest-valued athlete souvenirs, this new dealer at Patriot Place can appraise your finds—and help you sell, buy, or swap your way into the world of an increasingly popular side investment.

Photo by Conor Olmsted/CardVault

The Resolution: Finally pull off your passion project.

The Solution: Book some time at Red 13 Studios, a pair of music studios in Framingham (which also boasts a video editing room) and Lawrence. Founded by a team of industry vets with Billboard-charting tunes to their name, the budding operation helps talented amateurs make any overdue creative dream come true. There’s no time like the present to launch the podcast you’ve been talking about for months, or professionally record that original song you’ve been humming in the shower for years.

Photo courtesy of Red 13 Studios/Chris Kennedy

The Resolution: Flex a stronger green thumb.

The Solution: Sprout a network of tip- and technique-sharing  fellow plant parents at Emerald City Plant Shop. The Norwood menagerie of lush botanicals and accessories, which happens to be New England’s first Black-owned plant shop, regularly hosts events—from Plant Care 101 classes to terrarium-making workshops to propagation tutorials that’ll help the leafy living room landscape you sowed during quarantine to flourish. Emerald City even offers private consultations and house calls, if you’d rather the experts get their hands dirty.

Photo courtesy of S’More

The Resolution: Find Mr. or Mrs. or Mx. Right.

The Solution: Download S’More, a Harvard grad-founded, not-quite-blind dating app that was beta tested in Boston just before the pandemic. Designed for singles looking for “something more” than superficial connections, it rewards meaningful conversations by progressively revealing parts of profile photos. S’More also offers Something More as a binary-busting option for gender identification, an inclusive approach that helped the startup double its membership and seal the deal on $2.1 million in seed funding within its first year.

Photo courtesy of Swet Studio

The Resolution: Start meditating regularly.

The Solution: Float on over to South End fitness facility Swet Studio. It’s not easy to find consistent time to clear a cluttered brain, but you can set your watch to Swet’s twice-weekly Aerial Restore + Meditate courses, where you’ll experience a guided, 50-minute mindfulness session while suspended in a cocoon-like hammock. The stretchy fabric is also used for aerial yoga, Pilates, and ab-centric classes when you’re in the mood to strike a more active pose.

Photo by Three Twelve Photography

The Resolution: Cut back on booze.

The Solution: Keep “Dry January” rolling all year long with
Melrose-based Raising the Bar, a monthly subscription service that delivers surprise ingredients, garnishes, and bar tools for
making inventive mocktail recipes at home. The wintry Wanderlust, for example, mixes Wilderton Earthen—a woodsy, smoky, “alcohol-free spirit”—with tea, maple syrup, and more for a sip that’s flavorful, fun, and free of hangovers.

Photo courtesy of Susan Medoff

The Resolution: Land the job you always wanted.

The Solution: Listen to Bay State–based executive coach Nancy Medoff, author of the recent book Unmute Yourself: Speak Up to Stand Out and Get Your Seat at the Table. It focuses on helping women find the perfect position, negotiate stronger salaries, and generally overcome gender bias in the workplace. Anyone, though, can find plenty of smart advice in Medoff’s new digital career-counseling course, “How to Land Your Dream Job in 90 Days or Less,” which kicks off this month.

Photo via Chor Muang/Getty Images

The Resolution: Build a wallet of cryptocurrency.

The Solution: Invest some time in learning about Circle, a rapidly growing, Boston-based addition to the long list of blockchain-focused financial service companies hitting the market. Unlike volatile Bitcoin, which sees its price rise and fall fast, Circle’s USD Coin is a so-called “stablecoin,” an actual-cash-backed form of crypto that maintains a fixed value, so it’s a safer-feeling entry point for those joining the digital-currency future. Feeling bullish about its prospects? Ante up: Circle is poised to go public in 2022.

Photo courtesy of Shiso Kitchen

The Resolution: Become a gourmet-level home chef.

The Solution: Step behind the stove with chef Jessica Roy at Shiso Kitchen in Somerville. The former Le Cordon Bleu instructor offers a syllabus of three-hour-long, global-cuisine-hopping cooking classes with themes like an Evening in Paris, Moroccan Dinner Party, and Thai Style Favorites, all in a private, restaurant-style setting. Book the space exclusively for your squad, or just grab your honey and jump into one of Shiso’s scheduled group classes.

Photo by Carlie Febo

The Resolution: Read more interesting books (while sipping better wine).

The Solution: Join the club—that is, the monthly “Book & Bottle Club” at Wild Child, Somerville’s new shop selling small-batch wines as well as tomes by BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and other historically underrepresented writers. With bookshelves organized by social-issues-oriented categories such as “Disability Justice,” Wild Child is stocked with page-turners that make for satisfyingly woke bedtime reading.