Resolutions

No one does well with resolutions and I am, of course, no different. I have a trail of half-completed post drafts to attest to the strength of my willpower. Nevertheless, this year I am attempting resolutions yet again, but I’ve changed things up a bit. Rather than be ambitious about the degree of success I will have, I’m going to be ambitious about the breadth of what I want to focus on.

I have employed a couple of little tricks to help me out. The first is that I’m being “cute” about the theme. It’s the six F’s for me, and I’ll cover all those in a moment. The second is that I’m using a little app on my phone called Habits that represents a very straightforward log of my progress. It’s a fairly frictionless way for me to be held accountable. The last is that I am taking some pretty small baby steps in each area I want to focus on and I will ramp up what I am to achieve very, very gradually.

Food – I am going to try to eat better, which for me means a couple of pretty straightforward (though no less easy to enforce) things. I need to snack less late at night. I need to eat smaller portions. The first step here is just that I’m going to not eat desserts on Monday. Boom. Simple.

Fitness – I just need to do something here. So, 10 pushups a day to start. I think I can spare the like 25 seconds that takes. Maybe I’ll do 15 soon. Or sit-ups. I’m a madman.

Fun – Janelle and I don’t really do much for ourselves specifically these days. So I’m going to try to do a monthly board game day with friends. One of the games I have in mind involves my needing to construct some miniatures, so it doubles as a low-impact hobby.

Flirting – Also, we don’t go on dates. So, we’re going to find a babysitter that isn’t us always waiting for Janelle’s parents to have free time, and try to find one day a month to go out.

Focus – Originally I had been using “Phone” and just leaning on the “f” sound. But this is better. I need to use the phone less… or at least be more mindful about it’s use. I’ve already taken some steps here. I deleted the Reddit app. Purged some random apps to declutter the device. And, because idle hands and all that, I’m looking to replace what would normally have been putter-around-on-the-iPhone time with writing time and reading time. Reading time is just 10 minutes a day (at least) and writing time is just… something (today it’s this). The important thing with the writing though is that I need to not sit on it. Just get it done and get it out (the other day I did this on the writing prompts subreddit, which feels like it’ll be a good spot to hit up for quick projects: https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/7n1ylm/wp_a_super_hero_fights_evil_by_wiping_memories_of/ds2gehz/?context=3).

Finances – This one is more a one-shot than a major project. We don’t really spend a ton of money on things outside of daycare and the mortgage and food… but we’re also not really investing or engaging in any home improvement or planning vacations or any of that. That’s because we basically just know that we’re not losing money every year. So, we need to look at our monthly income, subtract our regular expenses, and make some general pools for the rest, including earmarking funds for longer-term or larger prospects.

Of these areas, only food and fitness have room for a lot of expansion, but that’s also part of the point. I don’t want to make things overwhelming. That’s also why I felt it was important that two of the resolutions involved having more fun, whereas I feel like resolutions in general tend to be about curtailing some manner of fun/indulgence. Also, now you people know about this, so it’s harder to be a slacker.

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