Rusty's Blog

I’m going to throw these up now and revisit them later to see what I think I can actually stick to:

1. Exercise more

   Right now, I’ve been running for 30 minutes two or three times per week. I’ve managed to keep most of the weight off that I lost a little over a year ago this way, but I think I could stand to drop another 10 or 15 pounds and to generally push myself harder with exercise for all the well-known reasons.

   Since we’re moving the beginning of next year, I’m not going to try to mess with my routine too much until that’s done, but after we get moved I’d like to up my exercise to 90 minutes four or five times per week.

2. Eat slower, be more mindful of portions of food

   I don’t think my diet is that bad on the whole now. I try to eat fruits, vegetables, and whole grains every day. I avoid most processed foods, soft drinks and fast foods and limit my red meat intake.

   What I do need to work on is I eat too fast and eat too much of everything. If I cut down my portions and slow down eating them, that would be good and maybe I wouldn’t notice much after a while.

3. Cook more recipes from scratch

   There’s a lot of good food I should be cooking that I haven’t been cooking.

4. Blog more frequently

   There are several things that happened near the end of this year that I wish I’d written something about. But once a certain window of time passes, it almost feels dishonest to write about it, if that makes sense; like I’m embellishing or cherry-picking the best parts. I’d like to get back in the habit of blogging more frequently.

5. Engage more, be more civil to people I don’t like

   The past year I withdrew from a lot of confrontations that I typically would engage in. This was in part because I would end up feeling guilty about being mean to people afterward, even when they deserved it.

   Everyone needs their views challenged. I don’t think it’s healthy for me to disengage to the extent I have recently any more than it’s healthy to go around getting into shouting matches.

   So I need to work on 1) reengaging in some discussions I’ve sat out, and 2) putting forth more of an effort to be outwardly respectful to people at the beginning of a discussion, even if I don’t like them (note I didn’t say “disagree with them,” this is about people I find to be abrasive on a personal level for generally arbitrary reasons).

   This doesn’t mean avoiding all negative confrontation so much as it means I’d like to make sure moving forward I’ve exhausted every option to be civil. Some people will always just be trolls who understand nothing but turning their own bitterness back toward them, if they even understand that. In those circumstances, I need to take a step back and put more thought than I have in the past as to whether it’s in my best interests to engage in that sort of discussion. They can’t all be avoided, but a lot of them should be.

6. Curb my temper

   Related to the last item, I need to generally keep my temper in check better. I think I’ve done okay the past three years or so in this regard, but there’s always room for improvement. It doesn’t do me or anyone else a bit of good for me to lose my cool.

7. Unplug from the Internet more often

   While I think I have done a little better about this recently, I spend too much time reading email/Google Reader/Twitter on my phone and on my computer when I get home. This may seem contradictory to item four, but I don’t think it is. I think if I spent less time gleaning over small pieces of information, it might help me concentrate on putting bigger thoughts together.

8. Spend more time with friends

   This is never wasted time, even when you’re wasted.

9. Go talk to my aunt, who is about 90 years old

   This time last year, I meant to take a video camera over to her place and record her talking about her life, Atlanta, etc. It’s been a year, and I have yet to follow through on this. I’m writing it here in hopes of motivating myself by public shaming.

10. Put together research about my grandfather

    I spent an afternoon earlier this year at the Kenan Research Center looking up newspaper articles about my grandfather, who was a football player at Tech High School and Georgia Tech. I really only scratched the surface of what I believe is out there, and I want to find out more.

11. Spend time with my grandmother

    I also said this time last year that I was going to spend time with my grandmother, but I didn’t end up following through on that either.

I’m not going to call them resolutions because resolutions are zero sum. I doubt I’d stick to anything on here if failing once meant total failure. I might add or subtract from this later.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 27th, 2008 at 3:19 pm. It was tagged goal, goals, The Future. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.