In the interest of full disclosure, and just so you don’t get wrapped up into reading something that you thought was one thing and turns out to be another, this post is about my “new year’s resolutions.” I dislike that term, but that’s what these are, if for no other reason than their timing.
Why am I putting these here? I dunno — maybe so I can feel responsible to someone other than myself, who has proven herself to be something less than reliable when it comes to holding me to some sort of standard. (Did that sentence make any sense to anyone but me?)
This is about what I think I want. Which is untrue — these are things I really do want, but the question becomes how hard am I willing to work at them. Which ultimately translates into how much do I really want them? We’ll see I guess.
To break it down, here is the list of things I guess one can call my New Year’s Resolutions:
- Lose 20-25 lbs. Or, be able to wear a pair of the jeans currently in my closet, or one of the bras in my dresser drawer all day and still be comfortable.
- Get up every [work] day at 6:30, shower, and put in at least 6 quality, focused hours of work a day. I am an independent contractor and my contracts are only part-time, so this makes more sense to me than it probably does to you.
- Blog every day. Write at least something.
Now, these really don’t seem all that complicated, and they’re not. As I posted on Facebook earlier, it’s not that hard. It’s just about making better choices. Consistently making better choices.
But that’s kinda nebulous, aint’ it? So I’m trying to come up with a “plan” to achieve these things. If I’m smart about it, I can make them all sort of work together so that I can succeed at all three.
#2 sorta stands by itself, but that’s more a matter of getting my ass out of bed before the kids get up. And then NOT getting on Facebook, and NOT deciding that I should just go to the grocery store in the morning after dropping the kid off at daycare, along with the myriad other things that distract me throughout the day. I get my jobs done, so it’s not a matter of not completing work. But I’m sure the quality of my work has suffered, as I compress all the shit I have to do into short little intense periods of work. Plus, I’m paid by the hour, so it behooves me to NOT do that. I just need to balance my client work, either daily (x hours per day for each client) or weekly (x days for one, x days for the other, depending on current workload). It’s not really that easy, but it probably could be if I worked at it a little.
#1 is going to be the tricky one. I have a moderate addiction to food, in as much as it tickles that little part of my brain that makes me feel good and makes me feel like I’ve done something good. And as alluded to in an earlier post, I can justify the evening snackage with all kinds of bullshit about how I do all these things and should be able to treat myself blah blah blah. Yeah, sure, it’s a perfectly good argument, but it ain’t gonna make my jeans fit better.
The way I want to start is to just start making better choices. Choose NOT to eat in the evening. Choose to EAT DINNER so I’m not hungry at 8pm. Choose to blog at 8pm instead of stuffing cookies or whatever else into my piehole, even if all I end up posting is a whiny assed rant about how hungry I am or how much I would rather be eating some slices of sourdough along with some cheese. See how that works? If I’m good, I can tackle both #1 and #3 at the same time!
I suspect that will work sometimes. But not all the time.
The REAL problem is that my best time of the day is the morning, after coffee but before say 1pm. I do my best thinking and best writing during that time. And nearly every day, I come up with something I want to blog about in the morning. But I feel obligated to give my employers that part of my day, so that I can successfully compress all the work I need to do into that little short focused burst of work that gets the job done. You know, the one I mentioned before.
Usually about 9 or 10am I have something really clever or interesting or bothersome that I want to write about. But I don’t write then because I feel obligated to be working. (Yeah but it’s okay to Facebook for an hour from 9 to 10? This excuse doesn’t really fly cupcake…honestly, you can do better cantcha?) And then by the time the end of the day comes, I’m wiped out and don’t feel like writing and/or I have forgotten whatever it is I was gonna say.
Christ I had about six different entries about Joe Paterno and Penn State and they’re all gone now.
And this all sort of comes down to my belief that you should do the things you NEED to do instead of the things you WANT to do. Which is all fine and good but I’m beginning to wonder if I need to re-think that philosophy some. That’s another post. Hey! Maybe tomorrow!
So now I have to figure out if I want to write when I feel the “spirit move me” as it were, and then be disciplined enough to work more in the evening if necessary, or save it for later and try to recall it, or what. I’m still working that one out.
Ideally, I should write up a quick draft with the basic points, in the morning if it strikes me, then edit and finish it up in the evenings when I’m not stuffing my face. That sounds like a plan. Think it’ll work?
I dunno – I think I’m gonna have to take a ‘work in progress’ sort of stance on this one.
The food thing – the weight thing – well I have a plan for that one. Minimally, as I said, stop eating after dinner. There’s no point in it. Which also means I’ll have to get used to feeling hungry, but being sure to eat proper meals during the day so that I’m not ACTUALLY hungry. I also need to find better snack items for those nights when I really really just need something. Maybe a small bowl of cereal or some fruit rather than the standard go-to items.
I need to plan dinners for the week too. That will help me make sure the kids get fed and allow me to eat my other meals of the day around the planned dinners. It will also reduce the amount of stress I feel about trying to figure out what to feed the kids and the husband.
And then at some point I’ll tack on some regular exercise, which will make me feel hungry a lot more, but hopefully I can practice my “good choices” then too.
Those things combined with paying a lot more attention to the stuff that I do eat should get me on my way. I find it difficult and disheartening to try to count calories and follow plans. Mostly because I just end up trying to hide the food from myself and just not admitting that I’m eating it. It’s ridiculous, I know. But it’s how it feels to me.
Well this is has been a little disjointed, and I’m sorry for that. Since I plan to force myself into writing every day, this may be more of what you get for a while than my usually thought-out diatribes. Who knows.
