Wednesday, January 02, 2008

New Year Resolutions? Nah, Not Me!

First, Happy New Year everyone!!!

I really wanted to have posted on the first day of the year, but we got home from Massachusetts at 10:30 p.m. and for once in my life I had the sense of going to bed instead of going online. :) The fact that the house thermostat had been on 50 for the past 10 days didn't help either, so the best place was in bed. Now that the house is comfortably warm again, which for us is 63 F since oil is expensive (it's been a mighty relief coming home after spending 10 days on a 75-79 stifling apartment, that's for sure ;) I can resume my computer habit, or should I say, addiction?

Now, on to talk about today's subject: "New Year Resolutions? Nah, Not Me!"
Well... that has been my attitude for many years now -- why make any resolutions if I know some of them cannot be kept? I've already said here that I'm a "habit adverse" person, so I know that certain resolutions that involve routine-related things such as "exercising every week" are just out for me. I still look ahead to the year before me and think of various things that I want to accomplish. In the past 3 years, for example, the recurring wish/desire/resolution has been "finishing the dissertation, defending it, and getting the Ph.D." This continues to be the main one this year (see how I haven't delivered it?). It's gotta be now or never, that's for sure.

Just for fun, though, I decided to list some "resolutions" here anyway. First, the highly superfluous ones that I CANNOT even dream of making because I'd certainly keep them at all costs and thus would do nothing useful in life:
1) Putting all or most of our (thousands of) printed photos into scrapbook type albums (without most of the scrapbooking "crap" just with lots of cropping and some nice papers and a few stickers sprinkled here and there -- that's how I like my albums, but that's another subject).
2) Blogging more often and more openly. Believe it or not, I'd like to write more about certain things that I just hold back for some reason. This one may happen, but slowly and not as often since I cannot feed this addiction too much.
3) Organizing all our books with a library style software or online. That's so highly superfluous, though, that I won't even think about it ;)

Serious ones that I'm likely not to keep or that aren't easy to accomplish, but that I'd still like to work on. I want to improve in these areas as much as possible so I want to record them here:
1) Cooking more often and even more healthily than I have been cooking. We're already "ovo-lacto vegetarians," but I'd like to eat more organic and unprocessed foods and more fruts and vegetables. (The CSA that we're joining this Spring may just get that one going during Summer and Fall). I'm sorry to say that I have been seriously lacking in this area. I have tons of cookbooks and I enjoy cooking and generally do it well, but in the past few months I've just been completely lacking energy to do it.
2) Helping more at home and "keeping house" better (I'm terrible at it) so we can keep it more organized and cleaner. That way my wonderful husband K is not overloaded since he does more than his share around the house while working full time and being a stupendous father to the boys. (Thanks hon!)
3) Joining aYMCA and exercising there with the whole family (we may accomplish this one).
4) Reading more (finishing the dissertation may help) and also writing more (academic or creative things) and try to get stuff published.
5) Making more friends and spending time with people even though our hectic lives often prevent us from doing so.
6) Going hiking and doing more outdoor activities with the boys, cycling in the bike trail and other things.

Well, I'm sure I could add more and more items to the list (like the things we really want and need to do in the house -- I'll do that later), but then, again, I don't like making resolutions, so that's more than enough! Have you made any resolutions this year?

3 comments:

Aliki2006 said...

Those are great resolutions, and they seem "doable" I think! Of course resolutions always seem doable to those people who haven't MADE them!

Anonymous said...

hi lilian - thanks for commenting. i commented once on your blog saying that i love reading it esp. for the philadelphia references - i was a lifelong philly resident until we moved west for grad school, but i'm terribly homesick :( it's nice to read about other's experiences - there are not many gradmommies around these parts...

kate said...

Wow! I have been skimming posts off and on but totally missed your good news! I am so, so thrilled for you all! (This is actually in response to the year-in-one-paragraph post below.)

And it's funny, I saw a post that mentioned New Year's Resolutions a few days ago and was like, Oh yeah. Had totally forgotten about the whole concept. And this year I am not even considering making any. But I like yours!