Alieniloquent

Most people make their new year’s resolutions around January 1. This year I decided to see how things would shape up first, so now it’s nearly the end of February, and I’m finally getting around to setting some goals. (Actually, I just now set some goals, and I’ve decided to call them new year’s resolutions, but it’s all in how we frame it.)

One of those goals is to blog every day. No matter what. So, in the spirit of achieving that goal, I’m going to blog about it. Right now.

For the last few months, in many areas of my life, I’ve felt like I’m a kid playing at being a grown-up. Now, honestly, I think most people expect somebody who is 23 to be like that in most of these areas: personal finance, housework, time management, etc. But, I’ve never been normal. I’ve been married for five years and I just bought a house, clearly I’m out of the nest. I just feel like there’s a lot of skills I ought to have that I don’t. There’s a lot of things I feel that I ought to be doing that I’m not, and I know that I’m the only thing standing in my way.

There’s a lot of areas that I think I can improve and grow in, but there’s three that I’ve selected to start with, and I’ll tell you, I decided to start with a bang. The three areas I’m going to start working on are my blog, my diet, and my sleep.

My first goal is to look back on my archives at the end of 2006 and see one post for every day of the year between now and then, that’s 307 more posts after this one. This goal is to help me build some self-discipline. I expect to be blogging about my work on my other goals, but who knows?

My second goal is to get back onto the Atkins diet. For those of you who read my blog a few years back, you’ll recall that I had a lot of success with that diet. The fact is, I’ve never felt better than when I was on that diet. I had more energy. I slept better. I had more focus. I felt healthier. The weight loss was just frosting on the cake of feeling altogether better. I want to feel that way again.

I am going to start the diet again next Saturday, March 4th, and Erica is going to do it with me. Nate even said he’d go low-carb. During this coming week, we’re eating as many of the carby things we have in our pantry so as not to just waste the money we spent on them. On Saturday we’ll kick it off. Last time we (successfully) went Atkins, we gave away an entire grocery-shopping trip’s worth of groceries to my sister-in-law. We might do something crazy like that again.

The third goal is to adapt to polyphasic sleep. I almost wrote “or prove to myself that it’s not for me,” but I’m not going to give myself that option. It is for me, and I’m going to make it happen. I have an exam in my analysis class on March 9, but after that I don’t have class for an entire week. I’m going to have a full night’s rest on Wednesday night into Thursday, but then I’m going to start my napping schedule after I get up that morning. I should be plenty rested for the exam, and I should be through the worst of the adaptation by the time my next class rolls around. That also places the days which most people seem to have the most trouble with either on weekend days, or days that are very short for me at work. It’s a medium-risk, high-reward move for me, and I like those.

Those are my three goals. I am going to attain all three.