Resolute: 2013

Happy 2013!

And now that makes 5 times today that I have typed the date incorrectly and had to go back to change it, even as I am in the process of acknowledging that a new year has begun. It will take me until at least halfway through January to get this figured out. I don't deal well with change, have I mentioned?
We had a nice quiet New Year's Eve, exchanged a champagne-sweet kiss at midnight, and I promptly fell asleep on the couch for several hours before dragging myself up to bed in the wee hours of the morning. Always nice to start the year with a crick in one's neck, yes? I hit the gym yesterday morning for the first 5k of the year (recently my running has been killing me... I would have loved to log a few more miles on 1/1 but this was all I could get through without crying yesterday). Dan made a yummy brunch and then headed off to work, and I spent the rest of the day deep cleaning. I made a lot of progress, but still have so much left to do... I wish I could take a week off just to organize my poor house. We still have stacks of wedding gifts that are now supporting more stacks of Christmas gifts, all patiently waiting for a home. One of these days.
I made two kinds of New Year's Resolutions this year: abstract, lofty, I'm-going-to-be-a-perfect-specimen-of-a-human-being-by-next-December-31, and realistic, specific, I-might-be-a-little-bit-better-but-basically-still-the-same-old-me-just-slightly-more-experienced-by-next-December-31. I hesitated on whether to share them with the world, because although I enjoy making resolutions, I don't so much enjoy looking back throughout the year to congratulate or castigate depending on whether or not I'm actually following them. I decided on a compromise -- here is a list for now, but don't hold your breath for a follow-up post... unless I do a great job at keeping them, in which case I might write about how I'm totally on track to be perfect by December. My blog, my rules.

The Specific Goals

Read a book every month
I have officially become terrible at reading. I was so excited to finally have some time to read over our honeymoon and brought several books that I was excited about, but smart me picked the most dense, slow read I owned to crack open on the first airplane. I did read a ton, and I really liked the book... and returned a week later, less than halfway through the damn thing. I'm still trucking along, but it's likely that this will end up being January's book... if I can finish it in the next month. I am going to try hard to make more time for reading in the evenings, which will mean putting down the phone/iPad, turning off the tv, and finding some way stay awake for more than half a page. Here are a few of the books I'm hoping to get through this year:

Try something new in the world of fitness every month
My gym time is incredibly boring. I run, I spend some time on the elliptical when I need a break, and I run some more. While sometimes sticking to what you know is best, I often feel guilty that I'm not really taking full advantage of the pricy gym membership. My focus will still be on running, but this year I'm hoping to mix it up a bit: take some yoga classes, try spinning, and finally sign up for a pure barre class (at another gym) that I have been dying to try. To get started, this month I made up a "plank challenge" that will involve a daily plank that gets longer each day... still working on the details. It has been months since I did much ab work, so I'm already dying 2 days in... whee!

Watch less bad TV and more decent shows and movies
I often spend hours watching mindless, terrible tv and reruns of shows that I've seen a billion times, while there are a ton of great new shows I've been wanting to watch, and my Netflix queue spilleth over. I am vowing to no longer get sucked into a housewives marathon or a Family Guy episode that I could quote by heart... but let's be real, at 9:00 every Tuesday night, you'll still find me soaking up every awful moment of Dance Moms. Otherwise, though, I'm going to get started/caught up on these:

Cultivate my sense of adventure in the kitchen
I am very out of the box and brave when it comes to baking and desserts, but our dinner rotation (as my poor husband can attest) has stagnated somewhere between "breakfast for dinner!" and "some sort of baked chicken again?" I am hoping to discover some new recipes in the coming year that we both enjoy, and I'm also pledging not to be deterred by scary words like "poach," "chiffonade," and "add mayonnaise" (I kid you not, just typing that word made me shudder. That's probably one thing that won't change in my kitchen this year... if it can't be made with greek yogurt or sour cream instead, it probably won't be made at all.)

Take more pictures for the ol' blog
'Nuf said.

Lofty resolutions:

Reset my inner clock
Remember how last year I resolved to stop running late? Well, it's a year later and here I am finally getting around to it. While there were a few moments of glory in 2012, this was generally a big fail. So we try, try again...

Communicate better
I also resolved last year to get better at staying in touch with friends. I am extending this one as well, because in 2012 I: 1. didn't do well and blamed it on wedding craziness, and 2. did much better as a direct result of the wedding (staying in closer touch with friends becomes sort of essential when they're in your upcoming wedding party and you're trying to find shoes for them to wear). So this year I'm re-resolving, free of any wedding-related influences. 

Declutter
This is the massive umbrella resolution under which most of my life-changing aspirations fall this year. I want to declutter everything: my house, my desk, my work, my brain, my life. I want to simplify and organize and streamline and cut out the people and things that are weighing me down. I want to sweep out my head and get rid of the things that constantly plague me but are never going to change. I want to be more efficient and get things done faster. I want to stop wasting my time and energy on things that aren't making me a better person (I guess some of that's not exactly decluttering, but go with it). I am determined to come out a much lighter, calmer, happier person on the other side of this year.

Ready, set...

   Love,

    Meg