New Years Resolutions

Last year, I started out my New Years post by saying "this is the new year and I don't feel any different" (a line borrowed from my absolute favorite band DCFC). This year, I cannot say that.

I feel different. Not so much that it's the New Year, more because a bunch of different aspects of my life are coalescing around the New Year. Which makes the New Year a good target to center my feelings around.

I'll be starting the last semester of my undergraduate degree on Wednesday. I am learning more about myself now than I have ever consciously considered before. I feel like this New Year is the start of a new me, a new phase in my life, a period of new spiritual discovery and intellectual growth. This New Year is the beginning of the rest of my life. :) And I'm ready to embrace it. The good, the bad, the ugly, the divine. I'm ready to face what I have been afraid to really confront before: myself, in all my light and dark and all shades of colors and grays.

And therefore, my resolutions this year are a bit different than the last but before we get to them, let's review last year's and evaluate :) because evaluation is key to success. My resolutions for 2009 were:

1. Go to a class at my school gym at least once a week.
2. Dress up each day that I go to my internship or work
3. Keep my room clean
4. Write Blake regularly
5. Budget

I didn't go to a gym class EVERY week but I definitely improved. Especially last semester, I started going to a rock climbing class on Wednesdays and had a Tennis class on Mondays. I also started taking pole dancing lessons. It felt good to exercise regularly. I didn't do much in December but I plan on getting a membership to a dance place and regularly attending classes there.

I did dress up for my internship and started doing better for work as well.

My room clean? ha ha ha, big fail on that one. But I cleaned it up for New Years and intend to keep it that way.

I did start writing Blake more regularly and then he came home in February. Unfortunately, Blake and I broke up in October. I miss him a lot and hope he is doing well.

Budget, yeah, didn't really do that one either lol but it is hard when all of your money goes to tuition. My study abroad to France didn't help things but I wouldn't trade that for anything. I'm ending up having to take out another loan for school but it will lead to a better quality of life for me and help me not be so frantic at the start of every month when I don't have enough money to make my payments. I figure it will help me more in the long run anyways, because then I will actually be able to learn how to budget instead of having every cent go to tuition.

My resolutions this year focus more on character development and relationships. They're a bit more vague but I hope that they will continue to make me into a better person and influence my long-term future for the better while improving my quality of life and the lives of my friends and family. In no particular order:

1. Continue to take care of my physical body. Exercise regularly, eat well, and present myself in a way that reflects how I feel about my body (which I love) and the situation.
2. Be honest. With myself. With others. I have a tendency to avoid conflict. It's just part of my personality. But sometimes that tendency gets in the way of being completely honest with myself and others. I will learn to be honest while being tactful and respectful. In this way, I will avoid conflict later on by addressing problems as they come up in the most ethical manner possible.
3. Improve my relationships with family. My little sisters are growing up and it is so weird to see. But it is wonderful, too. I feel like we are starting to relate to each other as adults and friends in addition to sisters. I want to treat them kindly and with respect to show my love for them. I will extend this effort to my father, mother, and little brother.
4. Improve my relationships with friends. I will keep plans with friends and be on time. I will show sincere interest in their lives and make an effort to spend quality time with them to get to know them better. In this way, I will communicate that they are important to me and be the kind of friend that I want to have.

To be sure that I will be successful in these goals, I will make a list of ways to do implement the changes and review my efforts monthly. I will need to organize myself and be proactive with the small day to day stuff in order to focus on more important things, so that is kind of a resolution as well.

Happy New Year everyone! I wish you success in your resolutions (if you make them) and in your endeavors of 2010. :)