Resolutions
We finished re-watching the Lord of the Rings movies. It has become a bit of a yearly tradition. And each time I see them, I do get something different out of them. For the first time, I find myself wanting to revisit the books as well. (I can't think of any other movie - let alone whole trilogy - that I rewatch each year. We did watch Avatar: tLA a couple times, but that's the closest I can think of.)
Returning to where I was after Christmas. Seems like that time has passed in the blink of an eye.
Here's a neat article: http://www.psmag.com/environment/put-down-the-ipad-lace-up-the-hiking-boots-51031/
I like it because, small sample sizes or whatever, it justifies the idea that there is something special to getting away to the woods - like I already like to do in Indiana at least once a year. It .. helps to clear out some of the background noise and stress. Some of my anxieties seem to get caught on the trees and just stay there.
The challenge is not bringing back all those distractions and extra thoughts as soon as you get back to civilization.
I'm not going to reflect on 2012 for now. It was awesome at times. Other times weren't. That's a year.
Here's some immediate goals and some longer-term goals.
Immediate (as in, Month of January)
- Clean up house - it still has some work to do after being out of town so much. Got a start on this today, but there's still basics like laundry and some maintenance.
- Get beer/cider in bottles - and do this before making more from kits
- Work out
- Eat better. I have to admit, I don't really know how to plan a diet to lose weight. Low-carb diets scare me off a bit after seeing an extreme one that one of our friends was on. But, I think we can cut back a bit on empty carbs. Less sugar, less bread, less rice. Replace it with what? Veggies, mostly. It turns out I like them and they are not that hard. Tonight I had a parsnip sauteed with some olive oil and just a little salt. It was delicious.
- Eat smarter. Don't make massive quantities of stuff and only freeze it when tired of it or when it's just about to go bad.
- Work out. No excuses, get back on the plan.
- Brainstorm ideas for Hunter's wedding beer. He's asked about a sour, hoppy beer - a sour IPA almost. No breweries make something like this, for some valid reasons. I would want a back-up, for sure.. but I can think of some ways it might work. Just maybe.
Longer term
- Pick a cosplay idea and work out to be in shape for it. I don't care that much about cosplay anymore, but we keep trying to use this as a goal.. and failing. Nobody likes failing goals, least of all repeatedly! If nothing else, it should make for a good Halloween costume.
- Go to GenCon.
- Settle on some RPG ideas and just .. do them, instead of the treadmill of coming up with ideas and discarding them.
- On that note, deal with the hydra. The hydra is just short-hand for my tendency, lately, to always want to be doing something other than what I'm doing. It involves talking myself out of liking things and overthinking other things. It's all a bit mental to borrow the English slang - and while I can see where it comes from, it needs to stop.
- Get outside more. Spend some more time away from glowing screens.
- Finish things I start.
- Read more.
Some of these are repeats. Some things, I really think I improved a lot on during the last year, so they finally didn't make the resolution list.
Returning to where I was after Christmas. Seems like that time has passed in the blink of an eye.
Here's a neat article: http://www.psmag.com/environment/put-down-the-ipad-lace-up-the-hiking-boots-51031/
I like it because, small sample sizes or whatever, it justifies the idea that there is something special to getting away to the woods - like I already like to do in Indiana at least once a year. It .. helps to clear out some of the background noise and stress. Some of my anxieties seem to get caught on the trees and just stay there.
The challenge is not bringing back all those distractions and extra thoughts as soon as you get back to civilization.
I'm not going to reflect on 2012 for now. It was awesome at times. Other times weren't. That's a year.
Here's some immediate goals and some longer-term goals.
Immediate (as in, Month of January)
- Clean up house - it still has some work to do after being out of town so much. Got a start on this today, but there's still basics like laundry and some maintenance.
- Get beer/cider in bottles - and do this before making more from kits
- Work out
- Eat better. I have to admit, I don't really know how to plan a diet to lose weight. Low-carb diets scare me off a bit after seeing an extreme one that one of our friends was on. But, I think we can cut back a bit on empty carbs. Less sugar, less bread, less rice. Replace it with what? Veggies, mostly. It turns out I like them and they are not that hard. Tonight I had a parsnip sauteed with some olive oil and just a little salt. It was delicious.
- Eat smarter. Don't make massive quantities of stuff and only freeze it when tired of it or when it's just about to go bad.
- Work out. No excuses, get back on the plan.
- Brainstorm ideas for Hunter's wedding beer. He's asked about a sour, hoppy beer - a sour IPA almost. No breweries make something like this, for some valid reasons. I would want a back-up, for sure.. but I can think of some ways it might work. Just maybe.
Longer term
- Pick a cosplay idea and work out to be in shape for it. I don't care that much about cosplay anymore, but we keep trying to use this as a goal.. and failing. Nobody likes failing goals, least of all repeatedly! If nothing else, it should make for a good Halloween costume.
- Go to GenCon.
- Settle on some RPG ideas and just .. do them, instead of the treadmill of coming up with ideas and discarding them.
- On that note, deal with the hydra. The hydra is just short-hand for my tendency, lately, to always want to be doing something other than what I'm doing. It involves talking myself out of liking things and overthinking other things. It's all a bit mental to borrow the English slang - and while I can see where it comes from, it needs to stop.
- Get outside more. Spend some more time away from glowing screens.
- Finish things I start.
- Read more.
Some of these are repeats. Some things, I really think I improved a lot on during the last year, so they finally didn't make the resolution list.