New Year's Resolutions

I guess it's a bit early for New Year's resolutions, but for some reason, I woke up today excited to make resolutions. Sometimes I feel embarrassed about my zeal for things like New Year's resolutions because it seems to be slightly abnormal, but I have to go with what works for me. I like resolutions because I have a good track record of keeping them, and so I think of them as a proactive motivational tool that actually works. I don't have many of those, so I get really excited about making resolutions.

Previous successes include: no more binge drinking (admittedly, this still happens, but it's less often and what constitutes a "binge" now is smaller than it used to be; more importantly, I rarely use alcohol anymore as a method of dealing with anxiety), stop wasting money on stupid crap like pants that are identical to other pants that I already own and of which I don't need more, stop eating most of my meals out, and make an effort to try new things (this was particularly successful, triggered by my first attempt at climbing and discovery that I liked it, and giving me newfound enthusiasms for yoga, snowshoeing, and skiing). Looking back on it all now, I can probably blame the success of trying new things for the fact that I have acquired a lot of expensive sporting habits that necessitated the making of resolutions like "stop wasting money on stupid crap like ______."

Here, in no particular order, are my resolutions for 2006:
1. Get a job, you lazy slob! I still harbor a faint hope that this can be accomplished in 2005, but the time is running out and I have to be realistic. I strongly hope that it will not take me an entire year to knock this one off, and if it does, my resolutions for 2007 will undoubtedly include taking my own life.

2. Pay off my credit card debt. A prerequisite for achieving #2 will be achieving #1, but I believe that both are possible. I look forward to many years of being chained to my law school loans, but I am trying to maintain a positive outlook by tackling smaller debts along the way toward greater financial independence.

3. Finish the kitchen remodeling and replace that ugly wallpaper. This is a bit of low hanging fruit to encourage me. I have already done a substantial amount of the work needed to accomplish this goal.

4. Prepare more of my own meals. I make this resolution every year and each time, I get a little bit better about it. My goal is to have as many healthy and well-balanced eating days as possible, so there is always room for improvement.

5. More hiking and doing fun stuff outside (apart from riding my bike)! It is depressing to me to have to turn this into a resolution at all, but if I'm to learn anything from 2005, it's that I need to get myself over a certain level of inertia. I like being able to leap from bed (maybe the part about leaping is an overstatement) and decide on the spur of the moment to have a hike or do whatever. But that's not possible here unless I want to do all of my hiking at Great Falls. So I need to take the additional step of planning the night before to drive somewhere, and for some reason, that doesn't come to me naturally. The reason I'm exempting bike riding from this resolution is that I already do it weekly (in the summer anyway) and the purpose of this resolution is to get me into other activities.

This is a larger number of resolutions than I normally resolve, but some of them, like getting a job and finishing off the kitchen, are things that I hope to cross off early on. I don't normally turn those kinds of goals into new year's resolutions, but these are a big enough deal to me that I think it's warranted. By adding in some long term ones, it's a good mix of things to feel good about being able to cross off and things to keep me busy for the entire year.