New Year Revolutions

[thirdworld]

Do I make new year resolutions? No, not really. But I am in an ongoing process of trying to improve my life, in terms of health, personal projects and personal growth. So here are my ongoing goals, in no particular order, for this coming year and beyond:

1. Keep exercising, hopefully biking... though my 2 near accidents and loss of a pedal earlier this week somehow resulted in my knees really hurting, but if not that, then something else... and do more upper body exercise.
2. Keep loosing weight. My ideal is to lose at least 30 pounds, but without crazy diets or feeling like I'm starving. I want to cook more fresh vegetables and eat less processed foods.... and keep at The White Diet. Supplements too, particularly the fish oil (good results were measurable). The reasons are twofold, namely health and feeling good about myself.
3. Continue avoiding processed sugar, particularly HFCS, but all processed sugar really. They put sugars in almost everything these days.
4. Stay off the lactose (most dairy) and get even better about staying off gluten (breads and normal pasta). I miss cheese a lot, but otherwise the former has been pretty easy. Gluten-free pasta has really helped on the latter.
5. Hardest of all, get into good sleep habits. If I can average being in bed before 12, that would be really good, before 11 would be sensational. So far it's not going well on this front at all, despite my making a real effort. As an example, I got to bed by 11 earlier this week, but only got to sleep at 1:30 or so. It's not just getting to bed on time that's the problem, it's being able to get to sleep on time.
6. Socialize more and start having friends over to the house. Strengthen my friendships.
7. More walks and hikes and getting out into the great outdoors. I want to see Crater Lake this year and get to the beach more, but also want to visit some new hiking trails.
8. Investigate and plan a trip home to South Africa, possibly only for 2013.
9. Attend five conventions, for SF that's Worldcon in Chicago, DeepSouthCon in Huntsville and our local OryCon, and for work that's NTEN in San Francisco and Open Source Bridge locally, and maybe I'll add the local BarCamp as a sixth.
10. Watch much less TV, and in my case that means Netflix. This will help me accomplish several of the following points.
11. Get back into the habit of reading more.
12. Write much more, namely a number of short stories and work on the novel. Become much more active in the writers' group.
13. Spend more time being creative. Currently that means doing some pastel art for fun and a bunch of cartoons for a pet project. Maybe even finally learn to play the guitar a bit?
14. More socializing.
15. Up my volunteer time, just a bit, either something like Big Brothers Big Sisters, or something less structured and with more flexibility, in order to not interfere with the above points.
16. Oh yes, an important one is.... maybe I should do the whole dating and meeting someone thing... which may throw some of the above off, hehehe.

Jeepers! That's a lot. I doubt I'll get to it all, but steady progress is the goal. I'll refer back to this list during the year, and likely beyond, and see how that goes. I also reserve the right to change my mind at any time... though as I said, these are ongoing goals.