Almost February Resolutions

I remember as a child that New Year’s Eve was a BIG deal. I mean, my goodness, I got to stay up until midnight. That was huge, particularly when your mother put you to bed at 6 pm every night well into your childhood (at least 8 years old). That’s another story for another day I suppose.

Anyway, as I got older I had great expectations for this holiday. It seemed as if it was the night of ultimate party possibilities. As a teenager my parents would often encourage us to stay home, (“It’s the new millenium, you’ll be glad to remember spending it with family”) or to come straight home after the ball dropped. The most excitement I usually had was stake dance hopping or eating lots of food at home.

When I was in college I expected things to change. This was it! I was free to party the night away. Except none of my friends were around (they were all at home) and I couldn’t ever find a party to attend. The moral of the story is, I tried. I really did. I tried to like New Years. But I failed miserably. Instead, I think it is the biggest let down of a holiday ever. I think my expectations were just too high. You might argue St. Patrick’s Day is bad—really, wearing green and getting pinched sounds like fun, but my expectations are pretty low and now I know they dye the river in Chicago green so I think it still ranks higher than N.Y.E. Groundhog day, that might be one I consider (why does that stupid ground hog get to decide when winter is over? And why did we choose such a cowardly animal to do it?) except it is also my husbands birthday so it has a redeeming quality now.

Anyway, it’s a good thing I’m not Chinese because without the excitement of Christmas I might really be a bore not loving the Chinese New Year (I bet theirs is better than ours though). Whoop-de-do, I HAVE to stay up til midnight now.

So, this is a really long way of saying I don’t really “do” the New Years Resolution thing. It actually isn’t really because I think the holiday is usually disappointing (but I do appreciate a potential day off). It just never seems to work for me—I don’t think I’ve ever succeeded at one of these before. But I have been thinking of a few goals for myself, so I guess we could call them “End of January Resolutions for 2011.”

They say it isn’t really a goal until you write it down and share it so thanks for your patience.

--Clean up after myself/keep our house clean. This is something I have been working on for years! I can’t seem to shrug my habit of wanting to deal with things later. I am starting small—I’m trying for a week. I’ve had about 2-3 days of success. I hope to keep it up, particularly when I get more busy. When I get better, I hope to get more organized as well.

--Run a half marathon. Maybe. Not sure yet. Not quite ready to commit. I am scared. But intrigued. If nothing else, I am working on better fitness and health. Not sure what my actual goal should be, one that I can actually reach. Any ideas? I'm also trying to watch more what I eat. This is hard when I always have homemade treats like these lying around:

-Study more. My goal has been to read an hour per day on OMFS related topics. This is hard to do. I’m trying to make sure I at least learn one new concept per day. We have a test coming up in April that compares you to all of the other residents nationwide. I really hope I’m not below average!

--Read the New Testament this year. So far I am going strong on this. Yay for success.

So we’ll see how I do. And Happy New Year!