Like most people, I find myself reflecting on the past year as the year 2010 draws to a close. I marvel at how much shit I've managed to accomplish, and then without skipping a beat, I chastize myself about all the shit I feel I should have accomplished. Do you find yourself doing the same? I'll bet that most of you do! It's human nature, after all.
Before I go into any specific whiny tangents about how things could have, would have, should have done, I'm going to take a little while to toot my own horn.
Did you know I finished FOUR classes in 2010? I didn't realize it either! That's 15 credit hours completed towards my degree. And I did them while managing a household (with the support of The Hunk) and while being a career woman (with the support of Bossman).
In addition to checking the requirements off of my degree program, I used that coursework to develop my skillset that I use day to day at work. This makes me a better employee and more marketable down the road should I want to or need to move on. How empowering is that?! It's such an awesome feeling to be able to really understand advanced networking concepts and how they relate specifically to the architecture at my current job. (And dammit, I feel SUPER smart!)
I almost completed the P90X program on two different occasions. Okay, okay, it's cheating to list that as an accomplishment since I didn't actually finish it either time I set out to, but trust me, if you've ever tried it, you know that it's only cheating a tiny, tiny bit. However.....well, we'll get to the however statements later....
My daughter is amazing. No, I didn't make that happen by myself either; it also goes down in The Hunk's list of 2010 Greatest Acheivements. Still, I'm claiming half of it. Being a parent is really, really hard work no matter how you spin it. Is it worth it? Hell yes. It's so awesome to watch her run around, singing songs, pointing out shapes, reciting her ABC's, and being a joyful little girl (for the most part).
I learned the value of a hobby and decorated some cute cakes along the way. When I'm tapped out from working and going to school, it's nice to have something to do for sheer pleasure. The Hunk will tell you that my hobby also tends to stress me out, but at least it's to a lesser degree! LOL
I began learning how to save money. This is something that I plan on capitalizing on in 2011 to pay down some debt. It's so crazy to think of how much money I blew paying full price for everything for so long. I still have a lot to learn, as well as some other things I can do to cut my spending, like eating lunch in the office instead of going out, but I made a lot of great progress in this area! Our grocery and household goods bills are cut in half!
While that's all fine and dandy, I still find myself feeling like I fell short for the year. Maybe it's my endless quest for self-improvement. Maybe it's that I'm overly critical of myself and normally fail to give credit where credit is due. Who knows? At any rate, there are so many things that I find myself wishing I'd have done. Some of you are nodding your heads and thinking, "Amen, sista, I'm SO THERE!"
ALL HAIL THE NEW YEAR, right? I mean, isn't this a "fresh, new start"? Don't we get a do-over on all the crap we didn't accomplish? Isn't that what all this New Year's Resolution hocus pocus is all about every year? Don't worry about eating those extra three Christmas cookies because you can just start over on January 1st. Don't worry about spending that money on that extra pair of boots - you'll work on saving money NEXT year. Come on, you know you've rationalized something to that effect this week! (Or is it really just me?)
So that brings me to the concept of the New Year's Resolution. For the most part, I think people make them with the purest, best intentions. I want to lose weight. I want to learn to budget. I want to be nicer to people. Whatever the case may be, it's all great stuff to work on, but the question is two fold - WHAT do we need to do in order to be the person we want to be and HOW are we going to do it? For me, it's going to require a complete overhaul. I know, it's completely unrealistic to think that I can reinvent myself in a year, and truthfully, I don't think that. I think I can, however, make a good bit of progress.
The thing I'm most in need of is to be able to wake up in the morning and feel GOOD. The Hunk pokes fun at me because I normally have some sort of ailment on an almost daily basis. I'm either tired, have a headache, have sore knees, have heartburn, or a host of other things. The truth is, I'm terrible to my body. I fill it full of junk and don't take care of it consistently. Remember my ALMOST completed attempts at P90X? Yeah....see? I suck at consistency. And I tell you this while putting away a few Reece's Pieces because I'm "getting rid of them before the new year hits."
I also don't get enough sleep. My mind is always working, even when I'm trying to sleep in order to be ready for the next day. I often wonder just how much better I'd feel if I could regulate my sleeping habits. Those headaches I get? Almost always in the morning or a couple of days after a stretch of poor sleep. I spent most of 2010 blaming my husband's snoring for my craptastic sleep habits. He got a C-PAP a few weeks ago, and while he's waking up feeling more refreshed than he has in years, or maybe even ever, I'm still waking up exhausted, wishing I could go back to bed. Maybe it's a matter of habit; maybe I'm just used to waking up so often from the past snoring that my body just thinks it's ok to wake up every hour. Or maybe I'm just stressed out from taking on so much and not making it a priority to spend some time decompressing and taking care of ME.
I KNOW the things I need to change. I know I need to eat healthier. To put it plainly, I SHOULD BE EATING HOW I WANT MY DAUGHTER TO EAT. I know I should exercise REGULARLY. I don't want my daughter spending her waking moments in front of the tv, so why do I do it? I know I should sleep more. I know I should learn to maintain patience with my daughter, especially at a time when she's really starting test boundaries. I know I could spend less money on frivolous things and more money on getting rid of my car loan and student loans in addition to saving for retirement and my kid(s) college expensive. But how? HOW?!
This is the part I'm still working on....
Until next time,
MFW
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