Monday, January 30, 2012

Week 4

I've done it. I've made it through 4 weeks - almost an entire month.


It feels like a lot should have happened in week 4 and didn't. I didn't finish my book...again...thus annihilating all leeway in the year. I now must finish a book every week in order to reach my goal of 50 books in 52 weeks. And, according to my self-set limitations, romance novels don't count. If they did, I'd be completely unfazed. However, romance novels add nothing but entertainment to my life and the point of the 50/52 goal is to improve myself by renewing my mind - taking care of the proverbial garden.

However, regardless of all that *didn't* happen - getting my house cleaned, finishing my book, finding a job, etc - it has been a good week. We still have plenty of food, there are just a few things we'll need to pick up when the check comes in. Unemployment has been approved and - as much as I hate needing these programs  - it's good to know that we at least will have that little bit to help cover basic needs. I've gotten myself organized by means of reverting to age five. That is to say, I've made myself a chart. I would have gold stars except I don't know where the nearest school supply store is, so I'm sticking to marker stars.

Additionally, God is working on me. I've been in a place of half-faith, half-connection. It sometimes seems that this place is my home and connection and faith are just vacation spots for me, but I'm working to change that. God has helped me to see the failings in my faith, the places in my heart where I haven't let him work, and how those things are keeping us apart. And, after about two weeks, I'm back on the right track. I'm having faith, hearing from the Holy Spirit - well, more accurately, I'm listening - and I've just started Prayer Partner training at our church.

The book for weeks 3 (and 4, I finished it in the beginning of 4) was The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson. I read the revised version this time, and it has so much more in there. I don't know why I didn't see everything the last time that I did this time, but once again it seems that God perfectly poised what I was going to read for where my heart has been. This time around The Slight Edge is helping me to be a little more lenient with myself, a little more forgiving. I'm better able, with the lessons of the water hyacinth and the gyroscope in mind, to accept my failures (daily though they may be) and get back on track sooner.

For those of you who haven't read this book: First off, read it. It's one of the best books you'll ever pick up in terms of what it will do for your life. Secondly, allow me to explain these analogies.

The water hyacinth is a plant that grows on ponds. It takes a long time for even one leaf to show on the surface. About a week after that there may be about fourteen leaves, barely enough to notice. But as time goes on, it quietly uses the law of the Slight Edge to it's advantage. The water hyacinth doubles itself, and within four or five weeks it will have covered half the pond - seemingly overnight because of how small the growth looked before. The very next day, the entire pond will be covered.

The example of the water hyacinth illustrates to us that it's the little choices we make day by day that are easy to make and easy not to make - should I read this book? Should I watch this TV program? Should I eat this doughnut? - that make the difference in our lives. They may seem small today, and they won't drastically affect our lives today. But over time that positive influence book will position your mind and understanding in a way that makes you incredibly successful, that TV program will make you a sarcastic and cynical person, that doughnut will give you a heart attack. It's not today that your decisions seem to matter, it's the way your daily decisions compound to create your future that matters.

As one of my heroes, Dave Severn, so often says: "Make the choice today so that you will have the life you want when it is no longer your choice to make."

The other powerful example in this book for me was that of the rocket to the moon. During most of the time it's headed to the moon (or wherever it's going) it's rarely actually on course. The gyroscope inside the rocket  is a little device that is always on course, and it sends messages to the processor to correct the course so that the rocket gets back to the right one. 2 degrees to the left. One to the right, come back to the left again.

In our lives, our goals act as our gyroscope. They tell us where we want to be and give us a basic idea of how we need to get there. For example, I know I want to lose 60 pounds in as healthy a manner as possible this year. That goal is my gyroscope, so when I'm going a little too nuts, pushing myself too hard on too little sleep or fuel, my gyroscope says: "Woah, girl, let's get back to the left a little." And when I have pudding on Monday and a doughnut on Tuesday, my gyroscope sees the cake I'm about to eat on Wednesday and says "Let's go right about five degrees. To the pears."

Having this example has done me a world of good, allowing me to see my life as a journey, a series of course corrections that will eventually get me to where I want to be. Knowing this, it's easier not to feel terrible and beat myself up when I have a doughnut, or when I don't walk one morning. And it's easier to feel better when I do walk and it's not quite as hard to make it up the hill as it used to be.

All in all, week 4 has been a good week for us, though my darling husband is going a bit stir crazy. Yesterday, after everything was closed and we were at home, he sat on his chair with his head in his hands and woefully moaned "I'm so tired of being bored." Fortunately for him (and for me) World Vision is really interested in him and his little brother is really pushing hard for him, so now we're just waiting for his third interview. Most likely, he'll be hired after that.

So, good news all around!

May week 5 have even more good news for us - and for you!

Friday, January 27, 2012

Valentines Day


With the approach of Valentines Day I'm finding myself oddly sympathetic to the Grinch post-Cindy Lou. I'm starting to get all mushy over something that before just meant cute decorations and a shape I could actually draw halfway decently. What used to excite me for one reason and one reason only (candy) is suddenly filled with weird emotions I can't quite identify.

Dearest says that this is the first valentine's I've allowed myself to really feel anything about because this is the first valentine's that is actually poised to go somewhat well. This makes an odd sort of sense to me, primarily because he knows me better than I know myself and he's usually right about these things. Even last year was rather horrible around this time of year and we ended up having a huge (as in, 3 days long) fight the weekend of valentines. Years before that had never brought me any particularly romantic feelings either. Sure, every girl has faint hopes of having someone confess his love on valentines day in the form of a sweet card or a box of chocolates or even an engagement ring. But I never seemed to be in a relationship on valentines. So for me, it was candy. The two years (last year and the year before that) when I did have a relationship were fairly awful so it continued to be candy.

This year, for some reason I don't fully understand, is different. I suddenly...want things. Like a date. Dates are fun and I'm always up for one, but wanting one on a specific day? A Hallmark holiday? It doesn't make any sense. But, I guess that's just how it goes.

So happy early valentine's everyone, and here's to hoping that we get to do something to celebrate it this year.

Monday, January 23, 2012

week 3

Week 3 has been a doozy. I feel like I'm missing a week somewhere, but my math indicates that I'm not. The week has been a blur, with massive amounts of snow from midweek to late in the week. We've been looking for work and today Dearest got a call from World Vision. We're really hoping that they hire him, because it's really the type of thing he wants to do. It meets his qualifications almost exactly, and we really believe in what World Vision does. So, this is exciting.

I finally finished The Slight Edge, and will post more about that later. And besides that, there's not really much to report about week 3

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Unfortunate news

To our dear friends and family:

Jared and I have found ourselves in a situation that we never expected would happen -- Jared has lost his job.

That means that right now, we are heavily dependant on God to provide a way so that we can keep on going.

Because in this economy, it’s very hard to find a company that’s not cowering in fear and that is not slashing budgets everywhere, we’re not optimistic that immediate employment is likely.

We’re not without marketable skills or things to offer; Jared has professional level computer skills and I have a variety of things that I can do as well -- so we’re going to be fully embracing a more entrepreneurial lifestyle.

We don’t want to go on unemployment and we don’t want to place any undo burden on anyone, so we’re going to work as hard as we can knowing that God will make a way.

Right now, we’re asking that everyone pray for us, keep an ear to the ground for opportunities that come up, and spread the word about what we’re doing.

In addition to our home based Internet retail sales business, Jared is planning on selling his time for technical services to individuals and businesses and I’m going to do the same.I am offering house cleaning/organizing, data entry/letter writing/any other task in that realm, childcare, cosmetic (facials, makeup for special events and photos, and errand running services. These are just some of the things that I can do for you, and for the people you know. If you have a job you need help with, chances are good that I can be an extra back/pair of hands/brain/ set of eyes/whatever.

We would greatly appreciate each and every one of you giving us a chance to *earn* your business and the business of your friends. Not to sob story here, but we're now officially completely reliant on this. We don't want a pity vote, just for you to keep your eyes and ears out for anyone who might need our services.



Thanks in advance for all of the help I know you'll be.


~L

Monday, January 16, 2012

Week 2

Resolutions


I pretty well failed at my resolutions this past week, allowing some hiccoughs in normal routine to completely throw my willpower overboard. I didn't even finish my book for the week, so I'll be working on that one for a little while yet.

Cooking


Last week was a fairly uneventful week in the adventures of me learning how to cook. After realizing that Dearest also has a slight citric acid allergy (judging by the fact that things in the citrus and tomato groups make his tongue and lips tingle, swell, and itch) I decided to forego the red pasta sauce and make my own white sauce. It's a fairly simple process, according to our uncle Dave. Just butter, flour, and milk in a pan; stir until it looks right and season to taste. Simple enough!

Except that I have the amazing power to screw anything up and my sauce was too thick and too flour-y tasting. Instead of trying to fix it (and probably messing it up further) I decided to repurpose it. "This," I thought, "tastes like pancake batter. Tomorrow, it will be pancakes!"

Not so much. But trying to cook the sauce/batter and ending up with a pretty tasty goop made me think that I might be able to make it white sauce after all. I took out a wider, shallower pan and some extra butter and milk and tried it.

It was all right. Bland but all right. As I was trying to make it work, Dearest came up and said "That looks like gravy" which frustrated me, so I served him pasta and 'gravy' for breakfast. Which he then liberally applied salt and pepper to. However, I think he was right. After tasting it with a more open mind I've decided that all it's really missing is the sausage and sausage grease.

So next week, we will be making biscuits (from scratch, since there's not a darned pre-made biscuit out there that doesn't have some form of soy in it) and sausage gravy. I'm actually pretty excited about that, since it was one of my favorite childhood breakfasts. Maybe I'll get uncle Dave's soda biscuit recipe from him.

I'm also trying a rosemary scalloped potatoes recipe this coming week, we'll see how that goes.

Other news


My brother in law was ordained the associate pastor of his little church in Federal Way yesterday, Jared and I went to the ceremony to support him. It was a good thing we were there, because it also snowed yesterday and Mom got stuck in Tacoma. Obviously, we couldn't let Mom miss her kid being ordained so we went to get her and all turned out well.

It snowed yesterday and some more today, though at the moment it's melting again. I got some really great pictures out of it. Dearest reminded me that my phone has the picture-taking capacity of a regular camera so I've been trying to learn to use it as much as/well as I can use a regular camera. Keep in mind, I'm an amateur hobbyist picture taker, not a photographer (lol).

I still haven't found a job, so I'm planning on widening my search. Fortunately, there are a lot of little shops and whatnot and Dearest and I have already made friends with one of the local business owners (her name is Mary and she owns a delightful little shop called Happy Delusions, Momma would like it a lot). Hopefully that means that once I start pounding pavement instead of computer keys, I'll have something solid within a week or so. I might even be able to work at The Terrible Beauty. That would be super fun...and probably devastating to my cholesterol levels.

Out of boredom, I restarted my food- and wedding-focused tumblr blogs. Yeah, I know, restarted two blogs and didn't finish my book. Bad time management choices. I'm still working on that. In any case, I've got a bunch of stuff queued up so I don't *have* to go check on them every day for them to post. So if you're interested, yumiliciosity.tumblr.com and alittleobsessedwithweddings.tumblr.com are my blogs. Feel free to check them out.

There are some developments with Dearest's work that I won't talk about yet but let's just say they're developments and I might not be capable of being cordial to his boss next time I see him. No worries though, things are going fairly well regardless and God is providing in some neat and odd ways.

Speaking of which: Because of the medical situation last year, and moving, and all the stuff that happened last month, this month was going to be a little tight. Add on to that the fact that our usual breakfast of protein shakes was unavailable because of a backorder situation at the warehouses, and the new no-soy shopping I had to do, and we were about a half week short on food with no more money available to get said food. I realized this about two days into the month, and I let God know that he was going to have to fix it, since I had no choices. And, go figure, I open up my freezer to put away the veggies and chicken and see that it's already full of food. Naturally, I checked with the guy who used to live here (and now lives upstairs) to see if it was his. He said that it had actually been left behind by one of his roommates and if we wanted it we were welcome to it.

Neat, huh?

(photo is not my freezer, but is a somewhat accurate representation of how full mine was)

So, that's us over the past week. Hopefully at some point this week I'll get a chance to blog about something that I can exercise my writing abilities over. They've been cooped up for a while.

Monday, January 9, 2012

Week 1

My, my, this certainly has been a busy week for us. We're finding that we enjoy our time in Renton much more than our time in Federal Way. There are friendly people here, people with good, lifelong relationships with other people. There are people here who smile at you on the street, who help you if you're lost, and who are always ready to tell you exactly how to get to their favorite restaurant or store and admonish you to "tell Mary that I said hi." We live within walking distance from downtown Renton, which is much nicer than downtown Seattle or downtown Federal Way. We have a major shopping center just a short drive away, and we can see the traffic report from our living room window. The sun rises every morning at one end of our home and sets in the evening at the other and our huge windows all throughout the house make sure that we can see them both.

Since moving into this house and getting rid of as much of our soy consumption as possible - a process that is still in progress, but thank God we have family who has been through this already - we have both had a lot more energy. We spend our days however we spend them, usually with Dearest at work and me running errands. In the evenings we meet at home, and I feed him, and then we go wandering around town to meet people. Once the last Starbucks has closed and the Barnes and Noble is locking up, we head home and cozy up in front of our fireplace with Netflix. It's a nice routine. I like it a lot.

The house in Federal Way was supposed to be auctioned the other day, but we got a letter in the mail (that had been sent the day before the auction) saying that it has been postponed again. I have a feeling they just can't find anyone who will buy it at their asking price. But regardless, it means that we have the place in Federal way and as of mid-February will officially have had it rent and mortgage-free for a year.

I haven't done so well on my resolutions thus far. I've revised them a little, realizing that with my schedule some days it simply isn't all that feasible to exercise. But Dearest and I still make it up the hill every chance we get. I'm also not doing so great at the "eating healthier" part but I'm working to keep my portion sizes under control, which helps overall.

I did, however, keep a few of my resolutions. For example, I resolved to read through one book every week. Last week I decided to re-read through Get Married, Stay Married  by Paul and Billie Kaye Tsika. Those of you who know me may know that this book plays a particularly sentimental role in my life. If it weren't for this book, I probably wouldn't be in a relationship with my husband, much less married to him! I really love the example Paul and Billie Kaye set; their marriage has survived 50-some-odd years despite an affair, and a time of long-distance while Paul was a travelling minister. I really admire them, and reading their book changed the way that Dearest and I related to each other. When he was going through his rough recovery, reading about the way that Billie Kaye dealt with her pain after finding out about Paul's affair really helped me. She wrote about taking her feelings honestly to God and how in that time it felt like a privilege to be able to seek comfort in prayer, and I really could relate to that in that time of our journey.


In other news, I'm looking for work still, and really hoping to work at Starbucks. I love our new place, a lot! And hopefully, next week I'll have another date night with Dearest and we'll go down to the pub.

Thursday, January 5, 2012

Dear Terrible Merger *(vent)*

I understand that you, in your shiny new Corvette, think that you are much more important than me. I understand that you think where you have to go is more important than where I have to go. I even understand that you may think you're impressing me with how loud your music is. However, none of that is a good excuse to completely ignore the rules of merging.

When there is a traffic backup at the point of merging, one car from each of the merging lanes goes at a time, so the two lanes nicely zipper into one. Trying to skip my turn just messes up the zipper. Aside from that, slowing when I slow to let you in despite your error simply doesn't make any sense. It makes even less sense for you to then speed up after I have sped up, and slow after I have decided to slow so that I don't hit you. Be thankful that the breaks on my little Prius work outstandingly and that the drivers behind us were giving us plenty of room. Otherwise, your pretty car would have been ruined, not to mention the serious injuries you'd probably have on your conscious because Priuses don't do too well in collisions.

So in the future, lousy driver, follow the rules of traffic. Not everyone pays as much attention as the smart drivers behind us today.

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Resolutions

Every year, all across America and other parts of the world, people take the new year as an opportunity to reflect on how the last one went and promise themselves they'll make changes in this one. We call this process "resolution making" because the idea is that we *resolve* to change something. And all through Christmas we make jokes about how unlikely we are to keep those little promises to ourselves.

Resolution making has always been an especially difficult point for me. I don't like to make promises that I'm not sure I can keep and so the very idea of saying "I'll exercise every day this year" simply doesn't click right with my brain. Because of that, I've never made any real resolutions. Oh, I'll joke about losing weight or say something abstract about improving myself but until this year, I had never actually resolved to do anything.

As I mentioned before, this is my year. I decided that my rather incredible lack of self-discipline required some work; what better way to work on it than to commit myself to something that wasn't going to be easy or comfortable but was still possible? With that in mind, here are the things I've resolved for this year:

  • I will exercise 6 out of 7 days a week throughout the year.
  • I will walk the hill at least twice a week.
  • I will read 50 books this year.
  • I will be sure to keep up on all of my CORE habits every day.
  • I will read my bible and journal every day.
  • I will read a devotional every day. 
  • I will volunteer whenever possible.
Those are just the concrete ones, I have a bunch of abstract ones but those I'm not sharing (so there!).

You must understand what a huge step for me. I don't usually commit to much of anything if I'm not absolutely sure that I'm going to be able to do it. My word, is one of the most precious things I have and I place great value on my accountability. Yes, when it comes to insignificant things (product of the week, anyone?) I tend to flake out and it doesn't bother me. But an actual commitment is different. So, this is a big step for me. 

Obviously, there are some words or phrases you might not understand. For example. CORE is a set of habits my mentorship group hast determined are key to success. They include things like reading a positive-influence book at least 15 minutes a day. The hill is the hill that is right before my home. It's a big hill, and for someone who gets winded going up a flight of stairs it's an incredibly difficult hill. These pictures don't even do justice to how steep it is. 

 This is a side view of the bottom half of the hill, it gets steeper after that.

<-Bottom half of the hill and the top half of the hill-> 
My house is way up at the top of that picture.

So walking the hill isn't just going for a stroll, it's serious cardio and I feel like I'm going to die every time. But at least Dearest does it with me. 

My devotional book this year is one I got for Christmas from an aunt:

It's a pretty good book, I'm enjoying it because it's cute.

So what are your resolutions?

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Spaghetti Brain

As I may have mentioned before, my mentor is from Egypt and English is his second, third, maybe even fourth language. Because of that, he describes things in very frank but funny ways. The most recent example is the concept of spaghetti brain.


Men's brains, he explained, are compartmentalized. There's a compartment for work and a compartment for home and a compartment for the ball game and a compartment for food and a compartment for each and every other thing a guy does in his day/week/year/lifetime. For men, this sometimes causes issues because they need to put everything in one compartment away before opening another compartment and once they've put the things back in the compartment they can then open the next one and take everything that's there out. This is why, according to him, a wife cannot hold a conversation with her husband while the football game is on. He simply isn't in the conversing compartment and since the game is not over yet he can't put away the football compartment for the conversing one just now.


Women, on the other hand, don't have compartments. Everything is connected, somehow. The wife can't have a bad day at work and come home and have an okay day with the family. If someone at the office was mean to them, everyone they come in contact with knows it because they all suffer from the fallout. That's why women can't have a bad hair day and still have a good day, if the hair is bad then everything for the rest of the day is bad, worse, and terrible. This, he says, is because women don't have the compartments men have. Instead of neat little boxes they can pack and unpack, women have everything all tangled up together in the same space where it can knot up on itself and cross wires and make things incredibly confusing. Which is why they even want to hold a conversation while the football game is on.

According to my mentor, women are always like this. (Keep in mind, there's an exception to every rule.) At any given moment a woman could be having a great experience or a terrible one based on something not even remotely related to where she is and what she is experiencing at the moment.

The funniest part about this entire speech was his drawing out what he was talking about, but I don't have those on hand.

In any case, I felt it important to tell you about spaghetti brain because it has been a surprisingly effective communication tool for my husband and I. "Is this a legitimate request for solutions, or are you just being a spaghetti brain?" he'll ask me. And, as infuriating as it is in the moment, it enables me to tell him "I suppose I'm just being a spaghetti brain" and from there he's able to listen and sympathize, cuddle and comfort, or just walk away, depending on what he can handle at the time.

Allow me to note that him electing to simply remove himself from the situation is absolutely infuriating when I'm spaghetti brained, but the fact that he's *just* brought up the analogy makes me take a step back and question how reasonable I am or am not being. Which usually gives me enough time to calm down to a point where he is capable of handling me. It's done wonders for my temper issues (which were admittedly terrible until just recently - *I* probably would have divorced me before now) and for our ability to communicate. He can gently tell me that I'm being unreasonable without giving me a verbal backhand, I can communicate that I'm not functioning on logic without having to say "Dear, I'm not being logical at the moment and because you married me I'm afraid you're just going to have to put up with it" and we're suddenly diffusing arguments before they get heated.

As another note, I had not realized just how many arguments were about nothing at all, just me being spaghetti brained and him trying to fix the apparently broken processor that is my mind and me getting mad at him for trying to fix me.

So I guess the point of all of this is: If you want your marriage to go smoothly, get a wildly successful and slightly eccentric Egyptian as a mentor.

Sunday, January 1, 2012

Naomi

This is my sister-in-law, Naomi. And this is the blog post in which I gush about her because I think she's awesome. She's spunky, creative, and witty. At first, we didn't get along very well - which probably had a lot to do with the fact that I wasn't sure how to handle her. From the first time I met her I was sure of three things: 1) she is absolutely larger-than-life in a totally awesome way, 2) she overwhelmed me at least a little bit, and 3) she embodies a lot of the characteristics I wish I had in myself. In the face of someone like Naomi, insecure little me just didn't know how to react...unfortunately, that means I went antisocial.

Fortunately for me, though, she's a forgiving person (to hear her tell it, she just can't remember long enough to hold a grudge) and after a heartfelt apology during a chance encounter at the mall, we get along splendidly now.

Random note, one of the reasons I like her is that she says words like "splendidly."

Naomi is an all-over-the-board kind of person, and she pulls that off really well. She's an artist. I haven't seen much of her work because, like any artist, she's a bit self-conscious about it. But what I've seen is awesome. I admire that she can even get her hand to paint the things that are in her mind, and I think it's even more awesome that they come out so well.

This one is titled "Fairy" and was stolen from her FB page. >>>>

She also translates her artistic tendencies into food...my personal favorite art form. She, sometimes with the help of friends but often without it, creates the most delicious and visually stimulating things I've seen, from cupcakes with cloud frosting and rainbows to cupcakes with "eat me" very beautifully written on them to her most recent foodish venture: teas.

Let me take a moment here to say that I'm not a tea person. I'm not the sort to stop at some point in the day and think to myself "wow, I'd really love a cup of tea right now." In fact, tea for me tends to only happen for one of two reasons: 1) I'm sick, or 2) I'm going to Naomi's house. She often mixes up her own little concoctions of herbs and leaves and flowery things that end up tasting great. This is another reason I admire her, because if I tried to do something like that it would probably taste horrible.

In the short bursts of time I've been able to spend with Naomi, through her facebook posts and the more-than-occasional family gathering, I know I still haven't even begun to scratch the surface of who she really is. She's awesome with kids, which probably has a lot to do with her incredibly upbeat, creative personality. She brings out the funny in everyone around her and whenever she's within hearing distance of me, I always end up laughing. As do most of the people around us.


Of course, we are both people. And we have different backgrounds and experiences. Which means that we don't always see eye to eye. There are a lot of things we disagree on. She handles them gracefully, usually by steering us toward a different topic, like our mutual love for Red Dwarf and Alton Brown (though I don't think the two would go very well together). Which brings me to another thing I admire about Naomi: her sense of tact and the way it couples with her sense of humor. I can't really think of any specific examples of this, without potentially making an arse of myself. So let's just say that she's really good at it and I'm really not.

Whenever I'm around Naomi I sorta feel like she's the slightly older sister I don't have. I find myself constantly looking up to her and wondering if I'll ever find a way to have as much personality as she does - or if I should even bother trying. There are also times where I find myself looking at her and wondering what in the world is going through her brain.

I hope, over the many years I'm sure we still have as family, to get much closer to Naomi and get to know her more. And maybe then, when I've learned more about her and can say some more in-depth things about her, I'll do another blog feature. Until then, this is my little featurette about how I think she's pretty awesome and I occasionally wish I was more like her.

January 1st

As the new year begins we all find ourselves looking back over the one that disappeared so quickly and forward to the months yet to come at the same time. Or at least, we find ourselves attempting to. We all try to do the introspection thing, even if we only do it in the background noise of our minds while we're washing dishes or vacuuming or stuck in traffic. We ask ourselves questions like: Did I lose all the weight I wanted to this year? Did I get organized? Did I overcome my fear of social situations? Essentially all of these questions boil down to one: Did I succeed at making a difference, somehow?

For most people the answer is no. For most people, they look back on the year and see either stagnation or backward movement. For example, I gained 30 pounds (due to way too much overindulgence and way too little self discipline). I'm only slightly more organized than I was before, I didn't set any goals so I didn't really reach any, and I wasted a lot of time on TV.

This year is my year, though. As I've mentioned, I'm starting out the year with lots of stuff going right, and I'm determined that despite anything that goes wrong this year, I'm going to continue doing the things that matter to make things go right. For example, I'm developing self discipline this year and I'm going to get in shape (I will feel better if not completely satisfied when I no longer need time to catch my breath at the top of the stairs in someone's home). Organization definitely will become a forte of mine, my schedule will be booked up most of the time, and I will begin to really enjoy life instead of just watching it happen from the corners of rooms.

I love new beginnings.