Resolved

Before I get into it -- pictures from the trip are posted at flickr, along with moderately exhaustive commentary. They're all slightly grainy, unfortunately, because the iPhone does not have a flash.

(Really must start researching SLRs so I can take pictures in low-light situations.)

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But really, I wanted to talk about my resolutions.

It's about that time of year, after all. All the other blogs are doing retrospectives, but I just got back from vacation and there's a huge pile of crap work on my desk, and I don't have the time it takes to troll my archives and pull out the significant stuff -- much less provide all the links and import all the pictures for a really good review. Sorry. But if you actually want a retrospective, you could just go read it yourself, right?

(What I'd really like to do is a retrospective for five years ago. Maybe next year, I'll do a 10-year retrospective, since I started Reflections in January '99. That would be fun.)

So instead of looking back, I'm looking forward.

Category: Health

My health is improving -- I started exercising regularly over the summer, and I joined the YMCA and have been going three times a week (well, most weeks) for the last few months, and I've been making progress. My bum knee and my feet are a major problem ("Walk!" they all say, but walking more than a hundred yards or so is intensely painful, not just during the walk but for several days afterward) but I'm slowly finding ways around it. I managed our trek through the airports on our vacation without nearly as much pain and suffering as usual, though I'm still a little stiff and sore today.

So my health resolution is to keep moving forward with the exercising. Gym three times a week continues, with continuing lengthening of the sessions. Last month I switched from 30 minutes on the stationary bike to 20 minutes on the bike plus 20 minutes on the elliptical. I was a little nervous about the elliptical, but its effect on my feet and knee is not too bad.

Of course, as my sessions get longer, I'm going to need to find new ways to fit them into my schedule -- 40 minutes of exercise (plus 30-40 minutes travel time) is really pushing my "lunch hour." But starting in January, we're going to be taking Penny to the Y on Saturdays for swim lessons (if she doesn't get into the actual swim lessons that she's currently waitlisted for, she and Matt will be playing in the Family Swim area, just to acclimate her to being in the water some), so I may be dropping Alex off in the babysitter room and doing my exercise at the same time, which would lend itself to, say, two shortish sessions during the week and a longer session on Saturdays.

I should also pick up some short exercises on days I'm not going to the gym. I picked up a cheap resistance band to keep at work, and downloaded the 100 Pushup Challenge schedule, and somewhere I've got a DVD of 15-minute exercise segments that I intend to rip and put on my iPhone so I can use them more or less anywhere/anytime. I'm not sure exactly how everything will fit in, but I'd like to see at least 5 days a week with some level of exercise.

Of course, this will all be much easier to schedule when I'm down to getting my allergy shots only once a week instead of twice. (I can't exercise within about 8 hours on either side of getting an allergy shot, I've found -- if I do, the site gets inflamed and itchy and generally miserable.)

Category: Family

I think I do okay with spending enough time on the kids, if only because they demand attention when they want it. But between the gym and the allergy shots eating into my lunch hours, it's a real effort to manage to spend any one-on-one time with Matt.

Obviously, this will get easier when the frequency of allergy shots decreases, but my intention, my resolution is to try to meet Matt for lunch at least twice a month.

Category: Personal

I was so horribly stressed about the clutter in my life (of many kinds -- physical, emotional, and schedule clutter) that I wound up in therapy. I've worked out a lot of the kinks since then, and I'm no longer hyperventilating every time I turn onto my street on the way home from work and fantasizing about turning the car around and running away. So that's progress. I'm still occasionally overwhelmed by the sheer impossibility of fitting in everything that I want to do around all the things that I have to do, and the resulting need to pare things down and put things on hold. That's what I'll be working on this year, I think.

I do think I'm starting to get a good handle on scheduling and managing my commitments, especially for work. Home-management needs some work, though. I took a hiatus from Warcraft for most of the month of December, and that was incredibly useful. It was also very eye-opening, because I did not spend a single evening sitting around twiddling my thumbs and wondering what to do. I don't want to give up Warcraft entirely (it's almost my only contact with too many of my friends), but I think I need to scale it back to only once or twice a week, which will make time for things like scrapbooking and reading and other personal projects.

It will also open up some time for me to work on the physical de-cluttering of the house -- Matt and I decided last year that the compromise between my wanting to get rid of all the Stuff, and his wanting to keep all the Stuff, would be to give up and rent a storage unit. But the organization and packing of the unit is more or less my job (since I'm the one that wants the Stuff out of the house), and I don't want to start paying for the storage unit until I've actually got the Stuff ready to put in it. I bought a bunch of boxes a couple of months ago, but still haven't gotten around to filling them. I need to get on with that project. My goal is to get at least 10 boxes into storage before summer. And to get rid of all the baby stuff that Alex has outgrown, ASAP.

My mental and emotional clutter is harder to manage, because it's literally all in my head, so I've got a serious "can't see the forest for the trees" thing going. I do think I'm sometimes a little too self-centered -- possibly in reaction to having my introverted Self pulled so far, in so many directions, by so many different people -- and I'm going to consider some ways to counteract that... but I want to make sure that I'm not giving up the self-consideration that I really need.

And all that is... quite a list. There are more things I'd like to tackle -- I'd like to buy an SLR camera and get back into photography; I'd like to start writing again; I'd like to work on my self-esteem and various other emotional baggage. But I think I've put enough on my plate for this year.

Now, let's hope I don't choke on it.