A New Year – New Goals
Hopefully, there is going to be a real focus on accomplishing some projects this year. Yes, we all make those wonderful, thought provoking “I want changes” new year resolutions. Instead, they fizzle out like a sparkler and we are left upset when there are no more sparkles to light. Therefore, as previously stated, there are going to be some wonderful – and life altering changes that will be the focus of this coming year. Despite the chaos and volatility of our society.
1. Weight Loss and Healthy Living
The most significant aspect of this year will focus on losing weight and healthy eating habits. One of the things investigating is the transformation from eating process foods to natural foods. Some months ago a book title had crossed my path. While there has not been a lot of time devoted to reading and researching the contents of the book, the premise proves interesting and life altering.
Shape your waist, rediscover real food, and find new pleasure in every mean as Bruce Weinstein and Mark Scarborough teach several aspects of healthy eating
Real Food Has Curves: How to get off processed food, lose weight, and love what you eat is written by Bruce Weinstein and Mark Scarbrough. The back cover provides some detail in how this book is not a mere fad diet but a means to accomplish real results:
Eat to be satisfied
Recognize the fake and kick it to the curb
Learn to relish the big flavors you’d forgotten
Get healthier and thinner
Save money and time in your food budget
Decode the lies of deprivation diets
Relish every minute, every bite, and all of life.
Who would not want to not only lose weight, but have real nutritious food and not the fake stuff that puts away the pounds until we look at ourselves with disgust.
Along with reading and seeing what this book has to offer, as pertaining to a more robust and healthy diet, the other objective is to become active by doing basic exercise programs. This does not require a gym membership at all, and there is no need to go out and purchase any type of exercise equipment. All it requires is discipline, motivation, and about 20-30 minutes a day. This type of exercise program was blogged at the Movin Momma’s blog where I contribute articles as well and is titled – Take on this 2012 Fitness Challenge. To sum up this previously published article, the fitness challenge alternates between the days where one performs the push ups, sit ups, squats, dips, and stretching with that of running. Links to each aspect of the fitness challenged are provided and the program, less the running, goes through six weeks of building up one’s strength to accomplish 100 push ups, 200 sit ups, 150 dips, 200 squats, and in nine weeks the ability to run a 5k marathon.
All of this is ideal and reasonable goal setting. Plus, our family is wanting to become more active with getting out to do more outdoor activities. We are contemplating Saturday day hikes, or outdoor activities where we get away from the computer, get away from the rushing around of errands, and spending some quality time as a family. The difficulty of this is that my stepson goes and sees his father on the weekends and comes back Sunday afternoon. However, we are in the planning phases of getting some outdoor fun things going.
2. Time Management
Yes, the most problematic area in this gent’s life is the inability to management time efficiently, effectively, and even wisely. There is a lot of time wasting going on. Much of this has to do with lack of discipline and allowing less important things to override the more important things that ought to be focused on.
Now that winter quarter has started, my classes are online (except for one which is a hybrid class and meets only on two Saturdays). This requires some diligence in self-discipline, as well as accomplishing all the necessary housework and childcare that needs to be done. This includes getting our two-year old daughter on a regular schedule of breakfast, interactive play and learning, nap, lunch, dinner and bedtime routine. This is the primary battle at the moment in our house because she is at that stage where we offer her food and she refuses, and hardly eats what we offer her. She has grown accustomed to staying up later and later at night, only to sleep in most of the day as well.
This is partly my fault because of being up most nights waiting for everyone to go to sleep, and my wife having her vacation, and our schedules just being off. However, things definitely need to change because we need that old routine back where bedtime is bedtime and not play time. Along these lines, keeping myself up late at night has to end as well because of lack of sleep. A good nights rest and becoming an early rise is the key goal here.
3. Declutter and Organizing
It is my wife’s goal to declutter and put our house in order. On the Berman Family Times blog, which I gave to my wife for her blogging interests, she shares her discovery of how to declutter one’s home within a year. According to what she found, and the blog she found it on, there is a calendar and daily tasks on how to have your home organized and declutter within this next year. Because of this, we are going to make this, not a personal goal, but a family goal so that we have a cleaner and more organized home.
One of my own pet projects is to take the computer/office area that we have and declutter the area so that there is only one desk for the both of us to share – yes it will be large enough – and where we can also have our books available to sit and read. This is still in the negotiation stage right now and even in the idea development program.
4. More writing and building a writing career
Yes, attending school, caring for an active toddler, and managing a household is not enough for my plate. One of my passions is that of writing and after having contemplated in what direction I would like to go with my writing and writing career, the decision to be a freelance writer is becoming more and more of a reality. There is still an interest in writing and publishing critical essays on politics, philosophy and religious thought, however, my content is writing and publishing for the three Examiner.com columns I write for. Last year, this experience has been a touch and go kind of deal, but it is going to be this year where I make it my own personal commitment to write more frequently, seek out different freelance writing venues, and get more articles published – both online and in print.
As pertaining to my first novel – I am still looking at finding time to get that rewritten and may have other writing projects in the works for “novel ideas” (no pun intended). Reason behind this is because I have worked so hard to get it written, and it has just been sitting on the shelf, neglected and has not seen the light of day and would love to finally say I did complete it and not left it unfinished.
Summary
Yes, this year is going to be very challenging, and even a wonderful adventure. I believe that these are realistic goals that I have established, and hopefully, by the the time 2013 rolls around (if there is no cosmic end of the world, rapture, alien 4th dimension migration) I would have looked back and say – I truly had set out to accomplish those goals initially established and not left undone.
