Monday, December 31st, 2011

Good morning, friends!  This is one of my favorite times of the year!!!  This was what we looked like last year at this time.  No little Bear yet-just the 3 of us. Ever since I've been small I've loved making New Year's resolutions.  I'm a goal person.  I like to set goals and then reach them.  I dig it.  I don't understand how people don't make New Year's resolutions!  It's a time of the year to look back and appreciate the good things about your life and what you did, and also a time to say "this is what I'd like to do better to live the life I want."

These are the things I'm proud of about the past year:

1.  I worked harder than I ever have before to finish my first year of grad school.  One of my favorite achievements occurred last March when I got the results of my first Cell Bio exam.  After studying for weeks, neglecting the rest of my life, and giving it all I thought I had,  I'd low passed.  LOW PASSED! (If you low pass 2 out of the 3 exams you fail the course). It was a terrible feeling.  Not because I'd low passed, but because I worked so hard and STILL low passed.  Everything inside me told me I wasn't good enough - wasn't smart enough - that they'd made a mistake letting me in.  I burned the exam in the toilet and sobbed to my Dad that I would honor the next one (I can be a little dramatic at times).  I didn't honor the next one, but I high passed it and then, finally, I honored the last one.  I was so proud of that.  It took absolutely everything I had.  I learned about myself that I can do it.  

2.  I had my first fully vegetarian year.  My body feels better than ever and I feel better than ever about my food choices.  I could expound about the philosophy of how we treat animals and food choices and yahta yahta yahta, but the bottom line is that I think it's wrong and I know it's unsustainable, bad for the environment, and promotes high cholesterol, heart disease, and a host of other health maladies.  I joined a CSA, which meant I paid a little more to support a small family-run farm and eat organic produce, but it forced me to learn how to cook for myself and broadened what I eat on a daily basis.  It was one of the best 500 bucks I've ever spent.

3.  I had my best, most committed running year ever.  I remember going for runs with my Dad when I was about 12 or 13.  I've always run, but mostly it was to stay in shape for basketball.  In the past 7 years I've really gotten in to it.  Last year my goal was to run 1000 miles.  I didn't.  I ran 856.  I didn't reach it - but I bested my best year by more than 100 miles.

4.  I took my dogs almost every day to the Park.  It's tough to get up at 6am every day in wind, rain, heat, snow, sleet.  But I did it - and I did it because I love them.


My New Year's Resolutions for 2013:

1.  Stop eating crap when you get home from work.  This is the worst.  When I get home from work I'm like a starving snow yeti.  I will eat anything that's around.  Slices of bread with big hunks of cold butter spread on them, ice cream, nuts, tortillas, cheese off the block, chocolate, peanut butter out of the jar, salad croutons out of the bag... My goal this year is to plan better.  If I have things around that I can easily eat that are healthy - I'll stop eating crap when I get home.  Every Sunday I'm going to make something that I can easily heat up or eat right away that is good for me and that I can eat after work.

2.  Run 1000 miles.  Yep, this is the year.

3.  Learn to cook at least 15 NEW vegetarian meals.  (I'll write them down as I go so I know where I'm at).  I'll also be joining my CSA again, so this should be an even better year.

4.  This is the biggest one - Work on eliminating negative thoughts from my mind.  If you know me, you probably know that I love yoga.  I have done it pretty regularly for several years now and the more I do it, the more I realize how many wonderful things it offers you.  One of the major aspects of yoga is eliminating negativity and being mindful of the energy you put out into the world.  This might seem a little vague, but my goals are concrete.  When I have a negative thought (about someone, something, my body, my abilities, NYC, traffic, you name it...), I'll replace it with another thought.  I won't share negativity with others.  To do this, I'll avoid gossip and I will avoid negative conversation topics with others.

Happy New Year's, folks!

Carpe diem!

J