Wake Up To a Brand New Day

It's 2023. Yay. No, I'm not particularly excited about it. The last few years of societal collapse around a maniac as President and the subsequent pandemic and just decreasing lack of civility and compassion has worn me down. 

Still, I wanted to think about things I wanted to do better for this year. I mean, I make "new years resolutions" at every "new year" chapter, whether it's the start of the school year, the start of the summer or whatever, so it's really just an exercise in putting the thoughts out there, and then trying to make them manifest. 

Instead of just vague objectives though, I'm going to take a page out of my teaching book and try to make them "SMART goals" with time sensitive, measurable and attainable attributes.

1) Hike at least once per month. This one should be easy. If I can do more than once per month, that will be even better, and I want it to be a real "once per month" not an average over the year. This might work well if Pat has a resolution to fish at least once per month. If I can bundle this with camping, it would also likely help my mental health a thousand-fold.

The C&O Towpath is one of my go-to places for hiking

2) Blog here at least once per month. Yeah, that seems like a low hanging goal, but considering "blogging more" hasn't worked out too well, making this something measurable, time sensitive and attainable seems more realistic. Maybe I'll even finish the "writeup" from last year's road trip before this year's. 

3) Read at least one chapter in a book at least five times per week. Seems weirdly specific, I know. I'm very disappointed in how much I've read the last few years. So, again, I'm trying to make it measurable (one chapter) and attainable (5+ times per week). Will I read more than one chapter and more than five times per week? Maybe. Hopefully. I'm still working on The Queen's Weapons, which I bought in March of last year, and finally started just before Yule.

4) Exercise at least 20 minutes at least four times per week. Again, it may seem like an odd goal, and why not the recommended "30 minutes"? Because I am still subscribed to Centr, and some of the sessions there are 25 minutes, and not a full 30. Like the previous resolutions, I would like to do more than four times per week when I can. Hopefully, sickness doesn't derail this particular goal, as it often does; the most recent bout with COVID-19 over Thanksgiving break derailed a good run started after my "second marking period resolutions". Of course, hiking any particular day would tick off this box as well as the first one.

And now for a few more difficult ones to attain....

5) Make strides towards National Board Certification every week. This can take different forms, depending on which component I am working on, but I do need to do this, since I really dropped the ball last year and it turns out that you can't last minute this like you can a fifteen page term paper in college. I will start this right away this week when I go back on Tuesday. 

6) Sell the WRX and get a reliable new(er) car. This breaks my heart to write out, but if I don't commit to it, I don't think I will ever go through with it. I haven't driven it since April of last year because the brakes need to be redone, and while I have all the parts to rebuild the front calipers (and my brother did the work of removing the seized pistons from the calipers I have for rebuild), I just haven't sat down to do it. Part of it is fear of doing it wrong, I know, and part of it is also knowing it's a PITA to swap a caliper much less two of them. I did a caliper on the black Camaro years ago, plus I did the front calipers on the green Camaro when I upgraded to LS1 brakes after finding a pair up for grabs at the pull-a-part junkyard. Anyway, once I get the brakes done -- let's set a timeframe of "by Spring" for that -- then the car is going to be officially for sale so that I can use whatever I get for it for a down payment on a new(er) car that has a warranty and all that. 

No more road trips to the Salt Flats in this car

7) Feel like I've done something worthwhile everyday and making note of it. I don't know how else to phrase this one. Those who know me know that I suffer from depression, and a lot of that revolves around constant feelings of worthlessness. So, making strides to feel like I've accomplished something, no matter how small, and acknowledging that accomplishment in some away will be tough. I have a little journal at work that I have used off and on since autumn 2019 where I try to do this. I try to write at least one positive thing about the day, no matter how minor, and then one thing I wish I could change and how I could change it (a "delta"). The framing is important -- it's just not something bad, but something I wish had gone better and (this is the important framing part), how I might have done things differently or what I could do to change the outcome. 

I think with this last goal, it's about the negativity that permeates everything these days, and I just need to try to find the positive out there, somewhere. Oh, hey, I put together this coat rack today! Check it out, I mowed the lawn! I got out of bed and took a shower! I read that chapter in a book and hiked today! 

It's 2023. 

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