Goals and Progress

Progress has been made in some of my goals and I needed a reminder to keep moving forward on some others. I got a little push from Laura Neff who guest posted at Lance's The Jungle of Life earlier this week, who reminded Lance's readers that we need to move forward on our goals a step at a time and keep moving forward.

I remembered my word of the year, Clarity, and realized that there is more I can be doing to keep that my focus. I have planned in my calendar to call members of my family every other week, switching between my mom and sister one week and my dad and brother another week. This weekend it's my mom and sister. The conversation with my mom will be challenging and hopefully good.

I'm going to follow up with her about how I feel about her seemingly judgmental and assuming attitude towards my marriage and how I am not going to explain and defend myself/us anymore. I'll let you know how it goes.

I started doing a little exercise when I get home from work, before I get distracted by other evening activities. I'm using the wonderful little workouts outlined in Real Simple magazine every month. Yesterday, I spent 20 minutes doing exercises to strengthen my shoulders. They have nice short workouts for specific areas of the body and for a general all-body workout. My goal is to exercise for at least 20 minutes for 5 days a week. I'm already back to yoga once a week (for 1.5 hours each time!) and it makes me SO happy.

Donald surprised me yesterday by starting to use the iPhone application LoseIt! again. It's a calorie counting application that helped us lose weight last year. We both stopped using it - Donald because I think he was discouraged, me because I figured I had learned to keep the weight off - and I am so proud that Donald wants to start using it again. It has a Friends feature that allows you to share your goals and progress with people you know, which sounds scary and can also add a degree of accountability, much like sharing one's progress on a blog. I'm going to start using the app again simply to make sure that I'm on track and to help me maintain my weight, which I'm happy with.

His job continues to go really well. He is pretty confident these days that his job will become permanent, we just don't know exactly when yet. My boss at my current job is aware of the situation and I told him that I would let him know as we had more information. I feel loyalty to my current job, yet I know that if I can work full-time for the non-profit with which I currently volunteer, I would prefer to do that. At the moment, I'm content to see what happens. I have a feeling that my choices will become clear soon.

I'm finding lately that when I think about my "Happy Wish List" (some call this a bucket list or daisy list), I'm interested in adding more and more things that involve risky activities. Things like learning to barrel ride, driving on a stunt driving course, and rock climbing (maybe on a wall). I should tell you that I didn't exactly have a teenage period, not in the typical way at least. While I did bend the rules when it came to dating guys, I was otherwise very straight-laced, following my parents rules and generally trying my best not to worry them. I grew up constantly aware of consequences, always wanting to be responsible and being unwilling to take many risks.

So for me to want to do these things now I see as progress, too. I don't want to be reckless, I just want to live a little more than I have before. I want to try something that scares me. I want to accomplish something challenging and difficult and come through on the other side even more confident and skilled. I want to prove to myself that I can hold my own and face down my fears and win. And I want to do it for me.

It all has to do with the question "What would I do if I was not afraid?". What is your answer?