goals

This year has been a year of change for me... Or at least thoughts and goals of change. I think it mostly stems from having a 2nd child. People told me my life wouldn't change much. It didn't. Much. But what did change or still needs to change are my priorities and time management skills!

My blog has been put on the back burner this year for lack of time, and also because I wasn't blogging for the right reasons. I would get disappointed when I wouldn't get very many comments. Or mad at myself when I would get behind on updating every single detail of our life. That's not how it should be. So I'm making a goal, starting in January (I have to give myself the crazy holiday buffer), I hope to get back in to blogging.

I canceled my gym membership this week. I know... I know... It hadn't even been a year. Remember how I wanted to get healthy and update my progress? Well after 3 months of constant gym going and eating healthy, I lost ZERO pounds. Seriously. It depressed me. It discouraged me. And for the next 3 months after that I ate anything and everything I wanted to, and rarely ever exercised. And guess what??... I gained ZERO pounds!!! Yeah, I know. It's weird. I'm confused too. So this last month I've slowly been figuring out what exactly I want to do to change this lack of focus on exercising. I know I need to... the weight I need to lose is actually 2nd place to the fact that my back pain/ thoracic outlet syndrome pain is really starting to come back and trying to take over me.

We renewed our membership almost 2 months ago and I've been back to the gym ZERO times! I know, I'm pathetic. My honest to goodness reason, though is... I'd have to go in the morning before Hayden goes to school. So Hayden would be in child care at the gym, then as soon as we get home he'd have to get ready then go strait to preschool. Basically he'd be in the care of others almost the entire day. And I'd miss him. And feel bad. So I'm choosing being a good mother over being fit. Considering I hate exercise, it wasn't really a hard decision ;)

I have a good friend who is much more educated and motivated in healthy living, so I've been learning a lot from her. I'm also going to buy an exercise bike with my refund money from my canceled gym membership. There's not much room for it in our little place, which means I'll have to keep it clean and get rid of more stuff.

That's another thing I'm working on. Getting rid of stuff. The less stuff I have, the easier it is to keep things tidy. I am seriously in shock of how much STUFF we've owned. I've been getting rid of stuff non stop for the last two years... and not just a little bit here and there... I mean TONS of loads and yardsales worth of stuff! Yet, I'm hardly noticing a dent. :( I guess that means I should stop buying stuff? Yeah, I'm working on that too! I'm trying to get in to the habit of buying less stuff for cheap that I like and maybe spending a little bit more money on fewer things that I LOVE. It's a hard concept to work out while we are also on a tight budget and trying to pay off debt, but I think it's really making me look at things differently.

After the new year, Dirk and I will be going to a school counselor to figure out what we both need to do in order to further our education, at the same time. Dirk will be getting his Associates Degree this coming spring and will continue on. After only thinking about it for a few weeks, I decided not to dive right back in to school this fall. Instead we decided I will start taking classes next fall. After 6 1/2 years of not being in school, I really needed to make sure I was going to go back in to the right thing for me. So we're hoping it will all work out for us to both be students at the same time, and hopefully to be able to stay here in Missoula for a while longer.

So basically all this rambling is me starting on my New Years resolutions a bit early.
1. blog/journal more often
2. get back in to taking photos (I've gone 19 days without taking a single photo of my kids. That's just not me.)
3. cook and plan meals for my family (I normally go in to a crazy cooking frenzy at the beginning of fall, but for some reason this year I just wasn't feeling it)
4. exercise. go outside daily. even (especially) during winter!
5. Eat healthier.
6. List more of my "get rid of" items for sale instead of just dumping them at Goodwill (this is a weakness. I "fear" the effort it takes to list things for sale. I think because it means I will eventually have to do something about it and follow up. So many more steps in the process!)
7. Pay off more debt. Spend less.

I'm going to post this without editing, because when I edit these types of posts I get scared and so often don't actually publish them. I guess if I publish them then I really have to follow up on them!