Mid-year New Years’ Resolution Check-in

Well, we’re officially in July. Six months have passed; I’m not really sure where the time went. It feels like it was only yesterday when I was making my New Years’ Resolutions, and already we’re halfway to new ones. So I guess it’s about time to check in and see how I’ve been doing.

Let’s start with #1:

(I’m going to do this from least successful to most, so ignore the numbers in the images.)

So far, not so good. I did a great job in January, but as soon as the semester hit, that was the end of that. That said, I’ve decided to be realistic and just accept the fact that reading for pleasure during the semester is simply impossible, and now that the semester and the last of my summer work responsibilities have ended (I work for about 3 weeks after my paychecks end for my music job emptying folders, filing music, and whatnot), I’ve been a bit better. I can’t say what I’ve read has been terribly important reading, but hey, I deserve a little fun mindless reading sometimes too.

Again, I’ve admittedly been not-so-good about this one. The stress of having the classes cut and the financial uncertainty that comes with it really distracted me from this whole quest for positivity thing… Adding to that mess, it’s also sort of brought up a bit of an existential crisis for me about what the best path for me going forward is. I don’t want to get too into it here — at least until I’ve formulated a little bit more of a solid opinion on it — but the more I think about it the more I feel like I’m really in a lose/lose situation, and having that at the back of my mind hasn’t really left space for savoring the little things. So I really need to try to actively improve this one in the coming months.

This one I’ve actually been decent about. The abrupt financial fast brought on by the class cuts actually very much helped me make better food choices, as take-out was pretty much out of the question. I’ve been eating a lot of baby spinach, a lot of frozen veggies, and in general just less crap like potato chips, cookies, and chocolate. That shit’s expensive.

Although admittedly the last two weeks have been a biiiiigggg step back on this – my brother has been home for a while to relax post-graduation (PS – my bro is now officially a graduate! Yay!), and so our parents have been giving us money to hit up as many of his favorite restaurants as we can before he has to go back… and a lot of those places happen to be things like pizza and wings. Additionally one of our good friends came in to visit this weekend, and, well, same deal there only minus the parental donations. But as of today I’m back on track.

This one has been very hit-or-miss. Sometimes I’m great about it, sometimes not so much. I’ll have to work on consistency for this once the semester starts again, and for now this is almost completely out the window due to the temperature of our apartment. We’re on the top floor of an old building with no air conditioning, and, well, heat rises. We’ve been trying to avoid putting in our window air conditioners for as long as possible for the sake of our electricity bill, but it’s beginning to get pretty unbearable… basically the only thing you can do without sweating your ass off is sit with a fan blowing directly at you. And that doesn’t really bode well for productivity. We may have to bite the financial bullet on this one soon for the sake of getting-shit-done.

I was pretty good about this during the semester, but now that the summer has hit I’ve backtracked on this a bit. The temperature of our apartment hasn’t helped. But it matters much less during the summer anyway, since I don’t have a set schedule the way I do during the year. Although if I sleep in too much, I end up missing out on keeping up on the next resolution due to weather limitations.

Another relative success. Once the weather warmed up I started walking to work as much as possible. Unfortunately the weather has now switched to the other extreme, and what with work not starting again until August, it’s gotten a bit harder to make sure I get my walking time in. But the last few weeks I’ve been good about getting up earlier, before it gets to hot, and forcing myself out the door to just roam the neighborhood a while.

And then last but not least: the biggest success of them all. Although admittedly this happened out of necessity more than my own strong self-discipline. I have in the last few weeks received good news that one of the two classes that got cut has been re-added, so now I’m only down one. That’s taken some financial pressure off, but bottom line is I managed to really stick to this anyway. For the first time in, well, ever it’s looking like I might actually have some savings left once the paychecks start again because of how efficiently I’ve stuck to this one and how much I hustled during the semester, and that’s an amazing feeling.