New Year's Resolutions

Two blog posts in one day! Holy smokes. Luckies.

I guess you are supposed to make your new year's resolutions known ON new year's. Oh well. Here are a few of mine. I'm not going to share all here. I am proud of myself for keeping up with these for four whole days already. Whoo hoo, go me!

1. Continue my endeavor to read the whole Bible in a year.

I actually started this on December 1st because I had the idea then and was really excited about it. I wanted to read my Bible more but didn't really have a clue what to read. So I figured I'd just start from the beginning and go all the way through! Well, it was exciting until I got into Leviticus the other day. Oh dear. But I shall persevere!

2. Get in the habit of working out.

I am not setting an expectation yet of how many days per week but I plan to try for at least three. My plan for January though is to do the 30 Day Shred DVD workout by Jillian Michael's. It is a 20 minute (she lies, it's actually like 24), intense workout to be done every day for 30 days. It claims you can lose 20 pounds in those 30 days if you stick to it, but we'll see. I'm not as focused on number pounds lost as I am on creating the habit of working out and getting more fit. Yes, I want to lose weight too, I am just not setting a certain number. I don't even own a scale. I weigh myself when I'm at Kim and Caleb's house but that's all. (except for when the scale is missing from the guest bathroom....I don't know where it runs off to) I don't want to become obsessed with the number on the scale. Rather, I want to focus on how I feel and look. I have done the workout the past four days successfully and have gotten past the awful soreness of days 1 and 2 and I'm already seeing an improvement in my stamina and strength. Yay! We'll see how this resolution fares when tax season rolls around. Ugh.

3. Simplify my schedule.

Here's on I'm not sure how to carry out. I just want to somehow get rid of the feeling of "Oh my gosh, I have been running 100 miles an hour and have barely been at home at all in ten days!" I am a homebody and I get really strung out, exhausted and plain not fun to be around when we are running, running, running. A few weeks ago, in a fit of "We are so busy!", I made a list of all my time commitments, partly to see why I feel that way and also to see what I might be able to cut out or combine or streamline. I don't really know what I could cut out but there are a few things I can sort of phase myself out of over time. I can also learn to say no to new requests for commitment, unless they are required of me or I am the only person that can do them. So maybe this resolution will take longer than a year, but it's something I want to work on. The world will continue to turn if I reduce my commitment list.

4. Make more time for things that are important to me.

This includes things like reading, journaling (for real, not blogging), cleaning our house, cooking meals at home. I don't love to clean and cook but I don't mind it. And a clean house does wonders for my attitude. I even have a stupid "vacuum dance" that I do in the den when the carpet is freshly vacuumed and so pretty and clean and oh my gosh I just love it, I just have to jump around on it... Ooookaaaaay...anyway. Coming home to a messy house after being gone and busy puts me in a bad mood. If I can figure out a system for cleaning and stick to it, meaning find time for it, then that will make my life so much better.

Regarding meals, we just need to get better at eating at home. In the long run, it's cheaper and better for us. And, as long as I'm trying to get my schedule straight so I can be more of a homebody, I might as well start honing some other homebody skills, like cooking. Trent likes to cook too, or rather he likes to invent. So that's always a fun adventure and I appreciate the help.

The time for reading and journaling is a big deal to me. I was able to journal a whole lot over the past week or so, mostly because we were in holiday mode which meant random days off as well as regularly scheduled things being cancelled. Now that the holidays are over, we'll go back to being busy so I think I'll dedicate a portion of each Sunday to journaling if I can. That'll hopefully work and give me the dose or brain/heart dump that I crave.

That about does it. I'm four days into 2011 and doing great on all these so far. Hopefully this 1.09% of the year will be indicative of the remaining 98.01%.