I’m Getting It Started In Here but the Black Eyed Peas Aren’t Invited

I’m not gonna lie, coming up with titles for blog posts is not the easiest thing in the world and, yes, I roll my eyes at myself when I come up with particularly stupid ones… like this one.

You’re welcome world.

Anyway.

I mentioned recently, I decided that I was waiting until February to truly get started on working on what I wanted to improve for this coming year. That’s not to say I haven’t been working on things but now we get going in earnest.

I’ve been saying for a few months now that it feels like big change is coming. The end of 2017 started to feel really weird and I saw myself feeling more and more stressed out and anxious. This was super evident as I was in California for the Avengers races where I felt like a giant pile of garbage for most of the trip and left feeling uneasy in a way I can’t really explain.

This carried through the remainder of 2017 and I ended the year feeling generally uncertain about what was to come.

I have decided that for this particular rotation around the sun that I would focus on five areas of my life on which I would like to improve:

Fitness
Writing
Blogging
Reading
Finances

FITNESS: In the last year I somewhat let my health and fitness fall by the wayside. I found myself working out less and paying less attention to what I was putting into my body. I wasn’t going insane but I wasn’t taking the best care of myself either.

I have to say that starting the year with the Dopey Challenge was a wonderful wake-up call and push to get motivated again.

My times on races have slowly been slipping down. Disney races are somewhat understandable since I’ve been trying more to enjoy the experience and everything but other races not so much. I have been slacking and I’m not happy about it.

Sure, just finishing should be accomplishment enough but I want to find that inspiration again. My best half marathon time was 2 hours and 1 minute. I haven’t been able to do that since. That was April 2016. I know I was in the best shape of my life then, not so much now.

Let’s fix that!

I plan on jumping back on the 21 Day Fix wagon starting today and working a more regimented food plan into my life. I have been good prepping already this year and now I’m going full out. A big thing will be making sure I’m not snacking while I’m at work. Those damn French fries are so tempting!

Back to cursing Autumn Calabrese’s name on a daily basis.

WRITING | BLOGGING | READING: This three go hand in hand in my mind. Reading inspires writing!

I have to say that I have been reading less since I moved to Florida. I feel like a big part of this is because I’m not commuting by train. When I worked at the Aquarium in Boston, I was on the train back and forth to the city and I would often use that time to read. I would also read on my lunch breaks when I wasn’t running around with Nina.

I have been listening to audiobooks on my drives to work but even with an Audible subscription, it still pretty pricy to be getting audiobooks all the time. Now I’m working on finding the time to enjoy a good book. With the weather getting nicer, I think it’s time to clean up my back porch and get out in the sun!

I am not also commiting myself to writing a little bit every day. I wouldn’t be blogging mostly because a daily post would get super boring super fast. I’ll still be updating as normal when adventures come about or when I have random thoughts on the world around me.

I just want to work more on writing other things. With “You’re Doing It Wrong” almost complete I’m starting to think about what’s coming next. I want to start putting together more stories and essays so we’ll see what’s to come!

I’ve got my notebook and pen ready to go and they already come with me everywhere!

FINANCES: This one is tricky. I’ve been terrible with money my whole life and I totally own that. I’ve been working harder and harder at getting it all figured out and it’s yet to really happen though in the last year I have been making strides to better understand it all.

Still not easy.

This next year is about getting it together. I’ve been struggling to rebuild my savings ever since I paid off my student loans. While I’m relieved to not have to worry about them anymore, I killed my life savings to make them go away.

Now it’s about rebuilding and restructuring the way I look at money.

I don’t have much to say about my plan since that would be horribly boring but let’s say, there is a plan and here’s hoping it works!

With today being February 1, I am ready to get things truly started. I got my day started a tad later than I would have liked but I am still recovering from this nasty cold that I can’t shake so sleep has been a bit of a priority.

I had my breakfast and used the time writing this post to let it settle. Now I’m going to do my work out, finish editing this post and get it published. Then it’s on to some more work!

I have very realistic expectations for myself and know that success doesn’t come easy or quick. I will stumble along the way and know that there are some rough roads ahead. But I’ve got my eye on the prize.

I hate that sometimes life lessons come a little too late or that motivation hits at a time when things are the hardest, but that’s the nature of the beast. That’s all a bit cryptic because there’s a little more going on behind the scenes in my life then I’m willing to divulge at the moment, but I know that through the storm, clear skies are coming.

Here’s to making this year great!