It’s New Years Eve today, and I’m just realizing that I haven’t yet taken stock of my year; all I’ve been doing is trying to ignore the little voice in my head that chirps, “Are you going to make any resolutions (and fail to keep them)?” Maybe taking stock of 2008 will empower me to look at 2009…
This year I actually reached some milestones, in terms of projects accomplished or well-begun (for my differentiation of project- and practice-orientation, see here):
- In my ‘day job’ — which is not just a day job, but a career path in educational development — I completed a two-year project pulling together a resource for higher education instructors to foster global citizenship in teaching and learning. I was the “editor,” which involved mentoring, delegating, writing, editing, and working through a publication process. I learned so much, and I’m pretty proud of the 100-page book we created.
- In the same job, I created a partnership with UNICEF Canada and thus ended a long hunt for funds to actually design and print the book.
- I completed the year-long creative writing program, The Writer’s Studio (I still need to take a few short courses to get the certificate).
- I found the voice of my book (potential titles: Homefront OR The War in the Nest) and have written four chapters.
- I am actually succeeding at finding ‘conservative’ families for my book! I interviewed two military families in December, and have one more in the wings, to be completed in January.
These all feel like major successes.
On the front of practices, I have also had a few successes:
- I designated August my yoga marathon month, and actually did practice yoga at my yoga studio every day that I was in town; I think that means 23 days — I knew but I no longer remember. The irony is that after August I went for at least two months without practicing yoga at all. And now I have gone back to yoga, though only to a sporadic once-a-week-or-so.
- I started a “Learn to Run 10k” running program in something like October, and it has been amazing. There were two weeks in a row in which I only did two of the three runs — my enthusiasm was flagging — but other than that I’ve been really committed. So far the longest run I’ve done is running 8 minutes, walking 1 minute, repeat 7 times. I should be in week 11, but I twisted my ankle — re-sprained an old injury — in the middle of a beautiful run through a forest (run 3 of week 10), so I have been set back. Still, I am going to wait out the injury this week and hopefully be ready to run again next week.
- Regular flossing! After spending the past 33 or so years as someone who flossed after eating corn on the cob and the night before going to the dentist, I actually developed a flossing habit! It wasn’t even difficult. What made the difference? I don’t know, maybe an increase in vanity? Encouragement from my dentist (yes, the one from the TV show!)? My partner’s enthusiasm at flossing (her own teeth, not mine)? Whatever it was, now I floss about 5-6 days a week.
I also made many, many attempts at establishing practices that didn’t stick, foremost in writing and healthy eating. I’m not terribly concerned about the writing practice at the moment, because I have still succeeded to write by establishing deadlines for myself — though the two weeks that I maintained a daily writing practice were incredible, and the pieces I worked on then were the keys that unlocked the book I’m writing, so there’s the advertisement for a daily writing practice.
Where I have really not managed to make a practice stick is in healthy eating, and it shows! I have gained over 30 pounds in 2008 — how is that even possible?! — through yo-yo eating habits, cycling through bouts of very healthy eating and bouts of sugar binges. I’m feeling a little helpless around establishing habits of eating that are good for me, even though it is actually quite simple, as Michael Pollan says: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. (and I’d add: Almost no refined sugars.)
I am of two minds when it comes to making New Year’s resolutions. I certainly have the ‘personal productivity’ impulses of making lists, setting goals, blah, blah. I am easily seduced by the idea of fresh starts, a clean slate of shiny new intentions. On the other hand, I feel burnt by failures to establish practices, and of course we all know that the vast majority of people do not keep their New Year’s Resolutions. I don’t like setting myself up for disappointment; who does?
Still, I’m intrigued by the idea of establishing new habits. I made two moves this week towards setting resolutions and establishing new habits.
I contacted Gretchen Rubin, who writes the blog The Happiness Project. Gretchen spent 2008 experimenting with happiness, following every guideline, suggestion, research finding that points towards increasing happiness, and she is writing a memoir about it. Gretchen also has a resolution chart, inspired by Ben Franklin, and she is willing to share her list if you email her; this is what I did. I was curious to see what her resolution chart looks like, and I was surprised to see a long long list of resolutions that change every month. Gretchen evaluates herself on all the resolutions every day, which also surprised me: those are a lot of things to try to work on daily, and many people writing about resolutions and self-control suggestion not making too many resolutions. Hmm. I haven’t emailed Gretchen back to ask about that, but I’m contemplating whether to make my own resolution chart. I think that if I were to work on healthy eating habits, I would have to break up my resolutions into really really small steps. For instance, if I wrote “Avoid sugar,” with the way things are going right now, I would have a really difficult time not having a string of sad-looking crosses representing my failure to avoid all sugar each day. Instead, I might have a resolution like, “Resist at least one sugary treat,” and that way if I succeeded once in the day at walking away from unhealthy food, I would succeed! The next month, I could step up to “Resist two sugary treats.” Hmm, I’m actually kind of excited by this idea. Maybe I’ll try it. Thanks, Gretchen!
The other approach I was interested in taking is Leo Babauta’s Power of Less. Leo writes the blogs Zen Habits and Write to Done, both of which I follow, and he has a new book out. He’s doing a bunch of things along with the release of his book, and one is the Power of Less New Year’s Challenge, which aims to help one create a new habit over the month of January. I was intending to do this, but I wonder whether the format really works for the habits I thought I would work on. The idea is to practice the habit for only 10 minutes each day, and then log about it in the forum. I had thought my new habits would be: eat sitting; eat slowly; eat three meals a day (no more, no less). None of those are only-10-minutes-a-day sorts of things. I suppose I could time myself for 10 minutes while eating slowly and intentionally, and then just let myself eat ‘normally’ the rest of the day. That might be the thing to do. I have some decisions to make in the next 24 hours!
Stay tuned; I will announce my resolutions (or lack thereof) in the next post.
