New Year

It’s gonna be a great year by oheyjasmin

Am I ever glad that 2012 is over. The past twelve months have been something else. I pushed myself way too hard this past year, both at work and at home. I’ve haven’t been enjoying things very much, either. And this past couple of weeks were just the icing on the bitter 2012 cake. There have been a whole lot of things going on that I’m still not sure if my head is on straight right now.

I’m not going to go into any specifics on anything, because, frankly, the details are unimportant if you don’t know them. Suffice it to say that I need to rethink my priorities, deciding what is most important and concentrating on those things. The rest of the stuff I will get to when I do.

Here are a few things that I know I want to concentrate on for 2013. First, I really need to get back to exercising my creativity again. I am going to force myself to push through a full Project 365 this year, having quit early last year, and having struggled near the end of 2011. I will likely default to photos of my alarm clock’s face on days I fail to make the effort to take a photo, making it easy to visually identify just how poorly I did at the end of the year. Also, I need to finish my triannual solstice playlist (see my previous playlists for 2006 and 2009). I only have about a third of the tracks chosen, and I feel like I rushed those choices and will have to go back and rethink them, anyway.

Second, I need to do better at finding a proper work-life balance. For the past twenty months I have concentrated too much on the work side of the equation. While that means I have become very good at some new things that I do at work, it has come at the expense of my health (still struggling to lose about 40 45 pounds per the doctor’s orders) and recreational time. What’s worse is that I think I’m addicting to checking on things even when I’m not in the office. I find myself checking e-mail on my phone or on a computer at home far more than I would like, almost like a compulsion. I have been trying to curb that behavior recently, logging out of my work e-mail on my phone the few times I take time off work. Speaking of which, I should take more time away from the office, spending it with family and friends, face to face or virtually. To my family and friends reading this, help keep me on track.

Last, and this is related to the previous point, I really do need to take better care of myself. In that spirit, I am going to try a traditional New Years resolution: I am going to try working out at least three times a week and eating a little healthier. Last year I overdid the working out part, jumping straight into a full P90X routine during my winter break. That was unrealistic for me to keep up, and I gave up before day 10. This year, I am going to try the treadmill and/or some dumbbell workouts, aiming for a Sunday-Tuesday-Thursday routine. As for eating healthier, I am going to make an attempt to cut back on carbs during dinner (I love bread and baked potatoes), and cut out beer and soda (once I finish my current stock of Barq’s Red Creme Soda smuggled from Ohio). I think cutting carbs with dinner will be tougher than cutting beer and soda from my diet. Also, I haven’t decided if I’ll cut things like Gatorade or SSarbucks espresso mixed drinks; I probably won’t drop them.

Anyway, that’s what I’m going to try to work on for this new year. Oh, perhaps I should also note that I’m going to try to get back into having a real online presence again. I’m going to get back into Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and this blog. We’ll see if that is as hard as cutting back on delicious buttered bread with my dinner.

Happy new year!