New Year, New Plans

Well friends, it’s that time again. It’s the new year. Congratulations on making it to 2014. I had a really excellent year in 2013, but it’s always a goal to do better next time, right?

What’s the plan for this year, then? Here are my ten resolutions for an excellent 2014.

1. Read 52 books.
I finished up a year of books at the beginning of June, and after taking half a year off, decided it’s time to go again. This is certainly doable, and if you have any recommendations, please do not hesitate to leave them with me. You can also follow along with me on my Goodreads page, here.

2. Eat less meat.
I made the decision to spend this year cutting out meat as much as possible. My goal is to eat meat in my meals once a week or less. I already don't eat meat every day, so it won't be a big stretch. It will require some ingenuity on my part if my meals are both meatless and gluten free. Last night I made some chickpea curry to kick off the new year and it was really nice.

3. Practice a language every day.
I have been poking away at learning languages for a while now, but I need to buckle down and actually make a concerted effort. I read recently that people who can only fluently speak one language are now the minority in the world, and I think that I should do my part to become part of that majority.

4. Walk or run at least three days a week.
There have been days where I haven’t left the house...in a lot of days. I’m going to go for a walk or a run every single day, even if the weather is crappy, even if I feel crappy. I am still going to go.

5. Stop letting my dishes add up.
Our sink is always full. I do mean always. I'm going to stop letting that happen. My kitchen in general is really untidy, so I think that is a big goal to work on.

6. No more napping.
This is more about getting a healthy sleep schedule established. Right now I spend about three hours of my afternoon asleep, because I didn’t sleep at night. This needs to be fixed. No matter how tired I get in the middle of the day, there is to be no napping. When it’s time for bed, that is when sleep will occur, but not before. There will be a few exceptions I am sure, but generally, no more napping.

7. Schedule unplugged time.           
The first step in this is to stop using my phone as an alarm so I don’t have an excuse to sleep with it anymore. I’m also going to make an effort to be less accessible every minute of the day, because no one really needs me that urgently. They can wait an hour. It’s also quite a large time suck, being able to send emails all the time from my phone, so I spend way longer on them then I should. I deleted the Facebook app off my phone for this reason. I’m also going to cut down computer and TV time. I’ll probably use this time to do my weekly novel reading, but you never know. The important thing is that it will be electronics-free.

8. Make my bed every day.
I never make my bed, except when I know that people are coming over who might see it. My room is generally very untidy, but it seems somehow more pulled together with the bed done, so I’ll start there...so I should probably go make my bed now...

9. Try a new food every month.
This goes along with my lack of meat eating. Plus there are always those weird fruits and vegetables in the grocery that you aren’t sure how to eat. I thought it would be worth a try to test out a few new things.

10. Blog twice a week.
As noted, this was on last year’s list and I failed. I thought that we could try again, yes?

Well. There we go. I think I can do it. A lot of my goals are mostly about being more organized. I know that a lot of people make 'get prganized' their goal, but that was too vague. I think we'll have a good year. I'm ready for 2014 to be even better than 2013 was. 

What are your resolutions?

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