Tuesday, February 2, 2016

New Year's Resolutions: February Check-In

It's been a month since I set down my resolutions for the year, so let's do a check in and see how I've been doing.

1. Blog! - Well, obviously not doing great here. I wrote three blogs in January, which was more than I wrote in December or November, but that's still not even one a week. I get a week off in the middle of February, though, so we'll see if I can get some blogs schedule. So far I get like a 4/10 for this.

2. Live healthier. Oh, this has NOT been a good start to this. Thanks to a fairly nasty depression-anxiety combo in the second half of the month, I've been eating more junk food and going to the gym less than I did last year. We're going to have to try to jumpstart this again this month. 0/10.

3. Watch more movies. I've actually done REALLY well with this. I watched 17 new-to-me films in January (the best was Room, the worst was Flesh for the Inferno), most thanks to MoviePass. Watching movies alone is a good way for me to de-stress, so I've been getting a lot of use out of it. 10/10.

4. Reprioritize God. Not great. I powered through anxiety and went to church a few times but I don't really count that toward this goal because church attendance has been throughout my life almost wholly unconnected to my actual relationship with God. I've been spending a bit more time with God on my drives to work, but still nowhere near where I want to be. Like a 3/10.

5. Get back in touch with friends. Yeah, I didn't do this at all this month. Maybe like... once. 1/10.

So out of 50 possible Goal Achievement Points, I have... 18. That is pretty cruddy.

I think my resolutions might have been too broad for me to take in all at once. In the interest of doing better this month, let me shrink them down to some February-specific goals that will take me a step toward my bigger goals.

So.

My February-specific goal for blogging is to write eight full blog posts during the week of February 14-20. That will be enough for me to schedule something once per week from now until my next furlough week in April.

For health, my goal in February will be to drink no soda at all (which I had done last year and then horribly backslid this month) and go to the gym at least twice a week. Obviously I'd like to go more than that, but this will give me something to move toward.

For movies, I'm doing pretty well, so I don't think I need to boost anything as far as more watching. But I would like to post reviews for movies within a day of seeing them. Right now I have like three reviews piled up and the longer I put them off the tougher it is to get them finished up.

For reconnecting with God, I'd like to keep it simple: spend a little time in Bible and prayer every day. I'm going to put my Bible and prayer journal on my nightstand (now that I have one) and hopefully that'll remind me to spend some time with God every night before I go to sleep, even if it's only a few minutes.

And for reconnecting with friends, I started a project last year to try to reconnect with several of my awesome lady friends. I'd like to restart that project and actually try to reconnect with them as promised. So that'll be my goal for February.

All right, folks. Here we go.

How are your New Year's resolutions going so far?