About Those Resolutions...

Earlier this week, I mentioned that my goal for the coming year is to work, every day, at being the person I want to be, the person I want to become.  There are many different aspects to that (obviously), but for the sake of some brevity, the primary five recurring aspects, for me:

I want to work every day at being healthier - making decisions to exercise, eat right, avoid over indulging (especially with sweets, which are awful for me for two reasons - I have the infamous "sweet tooth," and I can eat them without ever really feeling full; very bad combination), and including more activity.  Much of this centers on losing weight, which is my primary issue and concern, but also in being more balanced in what I eat, getting more sleep, avoid stress, etc.  Each day I am confronted with many forks in the road, so to speak, and I want to succeed at picking the right options day in and day out - whether it be as important as walking in the morning or avoiding fast food, or stopping the snacking habits and getting up more frequently in my office to avoid long periods of sitting down, or avoiding that late night watching sports.

I want to work every day at being smarter with our money.  This is always an issue, and it seems we always have something that pop up that limits our ability to make leaps forward in addressing debt and savings (case in point- the last two weeks of having to fix the washing machine and incurring some vet costs because Ellie decided to see if we were paying attention or not (long story)).  But there are opportunities - avoiding take out for dinner (see also, eating healthy), being smarter about grocery shopping; being more judicious in traveling and how gas money is spent.  Its so easy to make decisions that result in spending money during the chaos of a week. But those difficulties to make the best decision presents opportunities to do so as well.

I want to be better at pursing my favorite "hobby" of reading.  Maybe this is odd to say for someone who has read more than 50 books a year for each of the past 5 years; but I feel that the past couple years I haven't been as dedicated to it, that I've committed time mindlessly reading things on social media or playing various phone games, whatever, that would better be spent, that I would feel better about, that would be more consistent of who I want to be, by reading.   In particularly, I want to get back to reading more nonfiction than I have in the past couple years, get back to exploring and learning about new ideas - the root of my passion for reading.

I want to be calmer.  I let many things rile me up, often for little reason, as most of them are not really important.  Whether it be the occasional sporting event that I get over invested in, or a political issue that I get worked up about, or whatever else, too many things "make my blood boil."  I want to, in the phrasing from "Fight Club, harness "the ability to let that which does not matter truly slide."  Or, as Maia would sing in her best Frozen interpretation, "Let it Go, Let it Go."  (sidebar: In a college philosophy class, we had an assignment to pick a song that we thought represented or said something about the meaning of life.  The professor for the class shared "Let it Be," by the Beatles.  I often thought how appropriate that was.).  Whether someone's being a racist or is wrong about climate change on the Internet, I need to stop thinking (and thinking and thinking) about it, and let it go.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="300"] From the wonderful xkcd.com[/caption]

These things may be important on various levels, but its not worth letting it distract me from the more important things in my life; and certainly not so important for me to get worked up about.  So I want to be calmer in the coming year; I want to let certain things slide, and respond to things in general with a calmer and more level demeanor.  I don't mean by responding to other people, as I rarely get out of control in such situations - but how I respond in myself, stop obsessing and imagining conversations in my head addressing certain arguments, stop grinding my teeth and whispering under my breath about the absurdity of people or ideas; rather, take in the information, digest it without the heartburn, and move on appropriately.

The last of my five recurring goals for the better version of myself in the year ahead - balancing social media use (see also - letting things slide).  A confession - I despise Facebook. Why the format has so much potential to add to or supplement relationships, it just doesn't work. It controls what shows up in its feed; so much of its usage and content is based on sharing things other people are doing (likes, comments) that they are probably not aware that it is being shared.  It also treats everyone the same - family, best friends, college friends, the service group acquaintance, the random third cousin - which is antithetical to everything that encompasses my philosophy about relationships.  Obviously, Facebook is not the only social medial platform (the largest though).  And while I probably need to stop worrying about people being wrong on Twitter (see above) and just use it as an information source, and though I won't change my use of Google Plus because of how much I adore the "circles" and the ability to control how content is shared, Facebook quickly becomes a black hole for me.  It sucks time; it sucks some of the enjoyment out of relationships for me; and I never know how to utilize it, treat it, view it.  I could go on for many, many more words (just ask Jackie), so I'll stop.  Simply, in the year ahead, I don't want to use Facebook as much (and by use, I mean I don't want to spend nearly as much time on it as I do now).

Those are the goals for the 2015...and off we go.