New Year, New Me

               As promised, I've written up a little ditty about my goals for the new year. I'm not going to lie, I wrote this while I was at work on Friday, bored, and I don't necessarily remember what I wrote in it, but the goals are there. Let's get serious, people.

 

2014 Goals

 

Area’s of focus: 

 

Health
 

                This is, of course, something I’m constantly worried about, yet never doing anything about- just like half of the other people in this world. I went a little too crazy this holiday season on the sweets, and am officially at my highest weight ever. I’m not quite ready to post what that is here, but there will be a weekly update on my progression with this. 
 

                My focus won’t be on counting calories, but more on getting whole, nutritious foods, and exercise. I’ve been slowly cutting fast food out of my diet (without even thinking about it, actually), but that fast food has been replaced by junk from other areas. A salad and soup from Panera is not always a healthy choice. I’m looking to cut the crap out of my diet.
 

                 I’ve been working on an eating and health plan for myself, and it’s definitely doable and reasonable. My hardest part will be getting Jason on board with me. He doesn’t have to go along my path if he doesn’t want to, but he needs to support me on it. He’s been complaining just as much as I have about feeling unhealthy- except in worse ways. He’s been complaining of chest pains, and has had some other issues (more so than his usual back and knee problems from hockey and golf), so we got us both on some insurance (no thanks to YOU Obama or your “care,” WHICH WAS MORE EXPENSIVE THAN THE HEALTHCARE OFFERED THROUGH MY WORK THANKYOUVERYMUCH- but I digress…), and we’ll both be getting full check-ups.

Just kidding. Mostly.

 

Organization
 

                My life is a mess- literally. My work desk is a mess, my car is a mess, our guest bedroom that’s being treated as a storage closet is a mess, heck, even my hair is a mess 90% of the time. I want to get more organized. It’s great that every weekend I clean the living areas of the house, but I need to do more than that, and I need to do it more than once a week.

My goals for this area look a little something like this:

•  Write the things I need to do in my planner every day. Do them.
• Do the dishes every Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday.
• Focus on the details every other week (dusting, adjusting, air filters, etc.)
• Get organizational tools for my work desk, to help keep my papers sorted.
• Make a to-do list every morning when I get to work. Also update my customer service issue list.
•  Plan out my breakfast and lunch meals for the work week every Sunday (or Saturday- which ever day Jason works- those are my “me time” days) and prep/prepare what I can.
• Clean out my car once a month. A deep clean, too. Not just a pick up. Just because my car is a POS doesn’t mean the inside needs to look like one. Plus, this will be good practice for the new car I’ll be getting, sometime in the next 6 months.

 

Social Life
 

                Since moving to Naples, my social life has suffered greatly. I’ve talked about this before, and how it affects both my friendships and my mental state. I always feel so guilty about making plans with my friends and leaving Jason home alone, because he has 0 friends in the area. Literally. His last friend within an hour of us is officially moving to Delaware in three days.
 

                I know that he’s fine, but even still, I try to plan my get-togethers with the girls around the times that he works late, so that he doesn’t feel sad and I don’t feel guilty. The problem with that is that my best friend’s “weekend” is Thursday and Friday, and she works from like 2am to 9am. It’s not exactly easy to work with those hours.
 

                Then on the weekends, I get 1 day off with Jason (his only day off a week, which has now turned into a half day because of how busy this season has been), and then the other day I usually spend cleaning the house and doing the grocery shopping for the week, or running whatever other errands there might be. Not to mention that it’s about the only time that I have to catch up on my girly shows.
 

                 While I miss my friends a lot, I really cherish my ‘me time’. If you live with a man, you know what I mean by this. When you live with your girlfriends, being around them can still feel like me time. You can guzzle champagne and paint your nails during a Sex and the City marathon without guilt, because the others want to watch it, too, not to mention borrow that gorge new Essie color you just got.
 

                While I can drink all of the champagne I want, and paint my nails as often as I want, when Jason is home, he tends to want me to do things that involve coordination and my fingers, like help him cook something, or do something for work (the man is worse than useless on Excel), so this really limits my time for those things (I still manage to sneak the drinking in somehow, of course).
 

                I got a little off topic here. What I’m trying to say is that I really want to try harder to see my friends this year, but I would appreciate it if they would do the same as well. I have one friend who lives within 20 minutes of me, but she doesn’t have a car, and the others live an hour away. It takes quite a bit for us to be able to see each other- like a day off in the middle of the week. Which is why I have a New Years Day brunch planned with my ladies, and I CAN’T WAIT.
 

 

Moxie
 

                Moxie is a funny word. It’s old fashioned, but it never goes out of style.

Merriam-Websters defines moxie as the following:

 

 

 

              When I started this section, I originally had it titled Motivation, but it just didn’t feel right. I wanted more than motivation. I wanted determination, I wanted flare and style to be a part of it. I wanted it to be reflected in every aspect of my life. Then it came to me: moxie.
 

                The first time I heard this word was probably from the movie The Holiday. You know, the old man tells Kate Winslet that she has moxie. From that moment on, I’ve loved the word.
 

                I want the courage to do the things I think about doing, but don’t- like go to that photography club that I’ve been hearing about for months, or get off of my butt and go for a run. I want to be motivated to start doing things that I love, and even trying to find ways to make money at them (Yes, I want to make more money. My heart is full but my wallet is empty).

                I want to work harder at my job, or at least smarter, instead of writing blog posts (like right now) and Pinteresting because I’m a procrastinator. We’ve been so insanely busy lately, that I’ve been embracing any little break that I can get, but I don’t need to be that way. Yes, a mental health break is good every couple of hours, but not every 20 minutes. That’s called, “I don’t want to work right now, I just want to dream about how beautiful my own house could be.” It needs to stop.
 

Which leads me into my next, and final, area of improvement…

Time Management
 

                I am the WORST time manager in the world. I’ve always thrived under pressure. In college, I would write ten page papers the night before, and I would even do so well and finish them in such good time that I would help my friends with theirs. But when you’re under the gun like that, there are a lot of little mistakes that you can make. When you limit yourself to a small amount of time, you miss out on the ability to perfect your work.

 

               Don’t get me wrong, I’m no perfectionist. I’m only slightly type-A, and that really only applies to things I really care about (my husband, my family and friends, baking, tv watching, pinning, and eating or drinking, really), but I really need to buckle down and start being better at my checking my work. I’m a great writer when I want to be, but I’m always a terrible editor.

 

                My goal in this area would be to properly allot the amount of time needed for the different sections of my life. I used to be obsessed with being places early, nowadays, it hardly bothers me (as long as it’s not a job interview or something). I don’t give myself enough time in the morning to properly wake up and get ready for work, even though I know that in the long run I would much rather have those extra 30 minutes to do so, rather than sleep. I spend far too much time on the couch in front of the TV or my computer, when there are so many other things that I could be doing.

 

                  I can manage my time a little better, there should be plenty of room for all of the things that I love, and maybe even some things I don’t, like working out. ; )