Friday, January 5, 2018

Dear Mom, I'm resolving to resolve.

Dear Mom,

It's 2018.  I'm riding the wave of societal good intentions and I've set some goals for myself for the year.  They are:

1 - Do something creative each morning right when I wake up - even if it's only for a couple of minutes.  Whether that's writing in my journal, coloring in a coloring book, practicing a song, reading a script, just something to start the day with some creative juices.

2 - Learn a song on the guitar every month.  I know a couple of chords, but find motivation fleeting and elusive.  This will give me something to work toward.

3 - Go on an Artist's Date every week.  I got this from a book called The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron.  The idea is to do something with just you and your inner artist once a week to foster that part of yourself.  Being that I am a career artist, I think it's pretty important to keep that part of me well-fed.  Artist dates can be anything from making pottery to seeing a movie to a simple walk on the beach.  For me, it's one more dose of deliberate creativity.

4 - Most relevant to this post, I want to publish something online every week.  That helps with the motivation factor.  It'll keep me in the process of creating things.  So, you'll probably be hearing from me a lot more, though not necessarily every week.  I have some plans for some videos and maybe an art project or two that I want to put out there.  Writing to you is an easy way to create something and put it out in the world, though, so you'll be getting lots of letters.

The theme of my year, as you may be able to tell, is creativity.  I want creativity and creation to be a bigger part of my life.

I also have plans to make goals for each month because it seems that yearly resolutions or goals are easy to put aside after a time, but having a reset every month, I think, will make achieving those goals more realistic.  I don't have the whole year planned out, but January is focusing on physical health:

1 - Only drink water.  (I fudge on this one a little with post-workout protein drinks on occasion)

2 - Plant-based diet.  AKA I'm going vegan for the month.  (I've fudged on this one a tad, too.  But only because part of my motivation for going plant-based is to reduce waste and I had some leftover chicken broth I needed to use)

3 - No added sugar (the protein drinks, again, sort of fudge this one).  Which basically just means no treats.  I eat too much candy, dessert, pastries, cake etc.  I'll probably go back to eating them, cuz, duh, but I just need a reset for a minute.

3 - Exercise at least once a day, six days a week.  I got a job at Flywheel a few months ago - it's an indoor cycling studio - and one of the perks is free classes at a number of different gyms, so I figure I might as well take advantage of that as much as I can while I can.  I get a MUCH better workout when I take a class than when I'm trying to do stuff on my own.

4 - Intermittent fasting.  This is supposed to help train your body to burn fat better.  I tried it a couple of months ago and didn't really notice a huge difference, but want to try it out in combination with everything else and see what I see.

We're on day five, and I'm still feeling pretty motivated with all of this stuff.  I know it seems like a lot, but it's almost helpful for me in a way.  Having so many goals to keep up with helps me to keep up with them all.

Anyway.

Love ya,

Greg

No comments:

Post a Comment