01.19.08

the new year’s post

Posted in Well-Being at 10:27 pm by elizabeth_grigg

I received my renewed driver’s license today. I was able to renew it online. They dredged up a photo from late 2000 or early 2001. I was blonde and tan-ish, but more likely I was using some face prescription that caused a supposedly temporary reaction. I had been caught speeding a few days before at 6am, going down to Portland for a usability study, talking it up with a friend. The license I handed the officer was expired. So in getting this picture taken I was also a bad, bad person. A criminal, even. Someone with a $480 ticket that had yet to be contested down to $80. My height read 5′11″, a figure we all know to be false, although I did not know this at the time. (Until last year, I spent all of my adult life thinking I was this height and not my actual height of 5′8″.) My weight read 220, which was likely close to accurate. Sigh. I was just a couple of little eyeballs in the center of a big whoof of yellowish brown, like a circle drawn too big around a happy face. The licensing department chose this picture, and the sad thing is, it’s a better picture than the more recent one. What can you do.

I’ve been doing so many things differently recently and over the past few months, now that the new year has arrived it’s obvious how monumental all the changes are. I read other people’s posts regarding what they’re doing in the new year and, realizing that I look forward all the time, I’d like to look back at 2007.

What I’m proud of from 2007:

Cooking and Food
- Order the organic grocery box
- Eat out of the organic grocery box, even if I’m the only one who does. No throwing stuff away!
- Put chard or collards in my sandwiches instead of lettuce
- Canola mayo
- I have a functional eating plan that I can go “on,” will lose me 1lb a week pretty reliably, and is tasty and does not make me crazy
- Generally I don’t eat white carbs or saturated fat anymore. These cause food cravings
- I can go off coffee and alcohol when I want to. I do this 4-5x a year for 2w at a time.
- I am not the family chef. Older son eats a school lunch and people who are grownup can cook their own food.

Career
- Full time at my company
- A network of people at my company who are rooting for me, and I ask for their help
- I no longer have to be out of the office and heading home at a certain time

Hobbies
- I go to any conference I have a ticket to. I heart conferences.
- I belong to groups that do creative things
- I make new friends doing stuff I like to do
- The music room is functional and I’ve fulfilled a lifelong dream of having a piano in there
- I make and keep artist dates with myself and am training my brain to be creative
- I have a functional weblog, comments are working, and all my old posts are there.

Finances
- We have a handyman who is fixing things in the home
- We have no consumer debt
- The rental rates are raised to an amount that is worth it to us
- Every pay period I set up a small emergency fund (although I usually end up raiding it)

Travel
- I’ve applied for a passport
- I went on a pivotal trip to CA last year
- I did NOT travel for Xmas this year, which is what I wanted
- I have plans to travel with each family member individually for each of my 3 week’s vacation this year (2008)

Health and Fitness
- I can now run for the bus actually quite fast, and feel strong, not like I’m dying
- I look forward to my walk and look for ways to extend it
- Flossing every day. Sometimes twice. I’ve become compulsive.
- I have the correct face cream that will not put me in the poorhouse, and I use it
- I understand my cortisol level patterns throughout the day and this helps me strategize my acrivities.
- My supplements and prescriptions are right for me and they work.
- I am in kit 5 of the Solution and careening towards kit 6 which is the LAST ONE.

Art
- Writing Classes
- Writing conferences
- Writing at home, more than just here on this weblog
- A place to write, and some tools I feel good about using if I get stuck
- I found my photographs and am halfway through the cataloguing project

Music
- I bought more CDs in 2007 than in many years previously
- Listening to music is part of my stress management
- I go to concerts

Wild-Ass Guess Regarding 2008:

At the end of 2008, I hope to do the following:
- Have a regular game night. Become a gamer with new gamer friends. Bring back my love of gaming.
- Have my singer songwriter repertoire back to where it was in 2000.
- Instead of using my work laptop for personal purposes, have my own laptop for that.
- Send off the photos for digitization and restoration.
- Upgrade my cell phone. The one I’ve had since 2003.
- Become someone who uses a computer or digital music player to listen to music, rather than a CD.
- Use a USB drive or other portable media, instead of leaving stuff all over the place.
- Become more social, but instead of inviting everyone over, I want just 1 or 2 people.
- Reward myself for meeting my weight goals by doing that japanese thermal thing.
- Continue the awesome stuff that happened in 2007.

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