RandomThink.net

So, while I sit here waiting for a rather large backup to complete, I figured I might as well push out a post with some thoughts for the new year.

While 2007 was really a great and eye-opening year in several ways, there was something that didn’t seem quite right to me. Normally I get more excited over my birthday and Christmas, and I didn’t quite get into things at all last year. 2008 seems to be shaping up differently, as I’m already feeling some excitement about my birthday and such.

One major thing that I accomplished last year was a bit of weight loss. I’m fairly sure that I started the year at 255 pounds — not exactly the lightest person. My doc recommended working on weight loss to help with my gout, and he also recommended Mindless Eating by Brian Wansink. It’s a book talking about all of the decisions that we make relating to food each day, and how we do an awful lot of mindless eating.

By employing some simple techniques from the book, and just being more conscious of portion sizes, I’ve managed to lose some weight. I was down to 240 by the start of the holiday season, and I managed to hold my weight at 240 even through the massive food holidays. While I felt like I’d hit a plateau at 240, I’m noticing that my weight is starting to move down again, albeit it slowly. I can safely say I’m stable at 238 at this point, give or take a pound, and that makes me extremely happy.

So, one of my major goals for the year is to keep the streak up, and to keep the weight going down. If I can pull off even just one pound a week (which seems to be my current rate) then I can possibly get down to 200. Honestly, I don’t expect that, because even when I was weightlifting on a regular basis in school, I couldn’t get below 230. Then again, I was also eating much more worse at the time, so hey.

My other major goal this year is to work on my creative side. I realized over 2007 that I was really lacking on creative outlet. I haven’t played real music (as much as I love it, Rock Band doesn’t count) in years, I’d stopped drawing, and my blogging went down. Life got into a real rut and I need to get out of that.

Last year, a friend was all excited about Project 365, and was taking at least one picture a day. I got jazzed about it, tried to do it myself, got about 13 days in and missed a day, and that was that. Doing something every day isn’t really reasonable at this point, so I’m modifying it. I’m trying to do something creative — and it doesn’t have to be photography, but any form of outlet — at least once a week. It’s only been two weeks, but I’ve managed to do quite well.

Example: On January 4th (I think, could have been 5th I guess), my nephew Isaac got on the phone when Lisa called me and was very excited because “Uncle, we got you a truck!” I was amused, thinking he meant a small Hot Wheels truck or something similar, but what he actually meant was a little unpainted wooden truck. They also bought some paint, and we all got together and painted various wooden toys. It was really quite fun. I really wish I’d taken a picture of the truck.

I’ve also been experimenting with our old Canon Powershot A70, and am getting a better understanding of what the various terms mean, and also learning how to manually adjust exposure, aperture, ISO, and even manual focus — which is really painful because I can’t easily adjust it with a ring or anything, but it’s a start. I’m sure I’ll be uploading more at some point. I’ve easily taken 50 photos in the last two weeks.

Something about only requiring once a week makes it easier, I guess!

So, not a lot of goals — weight loss and more creativity — but I like it.

You’ll note that I’m not saying resolutions, but goals. It’s really just semantics, and they’re effectively the same, but by viewing them as goals, I’m hoping that I can approach it from a more long-term sense, as opposed to simply something I want to do with myself in the new year.