New Year, New Plans

Every year around this time, I find myself making all kinds of promises to blog more often. Then as the year passes by, I discover I have nothing to say. Writing about one subject over and over again bothers me to no end, and I find myself saying, "Hey, how can I approach this same topic I covered a month ago, the month before that, and the month before that from YET another point of view?"

Blogging only about weight loss always felt very confining. For years, that was the only topic I focused on, but after a while realized there's a whole lot more to life than weight loss. I've heard horror stories of people who focused so exclusively on getting the weight off and made it the center of their world, but, once they were done, had no coping mechanisms for dealing with real life.

See, that's the problem I ran into this past year. I've felt like I had nothing of interest to say because, frankly, I've been incredibly boring. My energy has been so focused on this one goal that life has been passing me by. Sure, weight loss is important and will continue to be important even after I reach my goal, but I need a life now. Well, life was also sucked away by internet gaming; if there's one thing that will eat hours of your time before you realize it, it's gaming. Rift, Star Wars: The Old Republic, Neverwinter, Guild Wars 2. I've devoted far more of my time to those games than I care to admit.

Maybe that's what happens as we get older - we get stuck in the rut of adulthood. Life becomes a continuous cycle of doing the same things that we've always done over and over again. And when something new happens, just because of the novelty, we devote our focus to it to the exclusion of everything else.

My goal this year is to get my life back, to feel like I have something interesting to say again, to feel like I'm not stuck in the rut of adulthood, and to limit my time online gaming. As the New Year passed, I started putting together a list of the things I'd like to do this year that I've been putting to the wayside:

1. Blog an average of once a week.
2. One crafting project a month.
3. 365 days of tracking food.
4. Average 70,000 steps/week.
5. Get out for a bike ride every month.
6. Try out one new recipe a month.
7. Complete one Home Improvement / Organization Project each month (or average 12 over the year).
8. Audition for at least five shows this year.
9. Read one new book a month.
10. Find reasons to see people, hang out, have parties, get togethers, what not.
11. Enjoy time gaming each week, but don't let it get in the way of life.

Here's to a new year and new plans!

Image from http://www.someecards.com.