With a little help from the planner and article that Chris Guillebeau over at The Art of Non-Conformity published, I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want to do next year. it involves an awful lot of reading, writing, and financial planning, really, with a healthy dash of extra income and healthy lifestyle adjustment. And of it all goes according to plan, it will be one heck of a year.
With this planning, I’m looking at the next year in a way I never have before. I always enjoy making a list of resolutions to get me through the New Year, those that are to begin promptly at midnight on January 1st, and are to be discarded as somehow soiled beyond repair if I don’t strictly adhere to them and execute them perfectly every day. (Can you tell I’ve been watching The Last Samurai? I can!) To put it more direct, if I can’t keep it up, then I give it up.
This time I’m trying to think of things as stepping stones. Yes, I want to do all these things, but they can’t happen all at once. For example, I want to drop a pant size (by when, I haven’t yet decided). To do that, I’ll need to drink less soda and more water, get more exercise and more rest, and stop pigging out so often (calorie control). And I also want to write a 50,000 word novel outside of NaNoWriMo. Well, I hate to admit it, but those two activities, currently and in my world, are mutually exclusive. They do not coexist. Writing is staying up late and not getting enough sleep and drinking to much caffeine to assist in it all. Healthy is sleeping in all my spare time and overdosing on water and making fifteen trips to the bathroom in a day at work.
But if I made drinking more water a habit, say for two months, and that’s all I focused on. Forget the sleep, soda, food, and exercise (or if not forget, at least not focus on exclusively). Concentrate on getting all my water in every day until it is a habit I stop thinking about and simply continue. Then suddenly adding in exercise to the mix isn’t so difficult. And once that’s a habit, I can try working writing into my schedule.
Just an example, but you get the idea.
New Year’s Resolutions in the past have consisted of:
- Give up soda
- Sleep more
- Stop biting nails (got that one several years ago, FWIW)
- Write more
- Journal every day
- Write two novels this year (had that one last year)
- Et cetera
That’s a small sample, but perhaps you can see how even trying to remember to do those things all at the same time would be difficult.
I haven’t got it all ironed out yet, and you’ll probably see more of these posts in the next week from me. I’m recreating Chris’ spreadsheet because his wasn’t working for me, and this is an ordeal in itself. Trying to find enough time (and attention) to complete it is still a challenge, but I know I can make it work. All the while I’m competing with website ideas, a secondary business idea, and oh yeah! My family needs my attention too in all of this.
Plus, you know, Christmas.
So we’ll see how it goes. Perhaps it will proceed better than planned.
It’s a bit chaotic around here at the moment – at least in my head. But I had a thought yesterday in the bathroom that I jotted down – and may have actually discussed here before – that I wanted to share.
Well, kids, I’m feeling a bit better, I think. Entering this next week with a positive outlook, we’ll see if it’s work stress or family stress that’s been dragging me down.
Okay, for a blog that at one point (not too long ago) was supposed to be purely about planning, I’m not a very good planner. Since then (very recently), this has sort of morphed into a personal essay blog. I feel like I’m driving a college student around that wants to try everything out on their way to figuring out what they really want to do with their life. I’m going to let that be okay for now. Eventually it will become something, and right now I’m content to write whatever pleases me and see how things develop.