Start your engines

It's that time of year again when I start my New Year's resolution. Usually, my resolution has to do with making my ass smaller. This year, that is part of it, but my real resolution is to live my life with more balance. As I sit here the night before starting work again, I'm reminded of how nice this last week and a half was with my family and friends. I had time to take better care of myself, sleep until I felt rested, read books for fun, and (gasp!) go to a movie with L.

It could go without saying that I do not do those things when I'm in full swing at work. But I am saying it to remind myself that my life in 2009 was wwwwaaaayyy out of whack. And therein lies the problem. My career has led me to a degree of financial security that I have not previously had. However, my financial rewards come at a rather high cost to my personal time, health, and relationships with people I care about. While I always strive to overperform and deliver on my work commitments, everything else falls off the face of the earth and that's just not healthy.

I'm not entirely sure how I will be able to balance everything, but I know that I have to try and get things under better control than they were last year. Of course, I'm hopeful that 2010 will bring less family problems and death as well.

My goals to be in better balance are:
1. Eat more healthy, more often throughout the day. This includes cooking more meals at home and making better choices when I eat out. L. and I are starting up the South Beach Diet tomorrow, which is similar to, but not quite as strict as, what I did on 20/20. If I can get to a place where I do that even 3/4 of the year (allowing for inevitable setbacks, holidays, etc.), I would be a much healthier person than I am today. If I can get to even that level of accomplishment, I will be happy. I know that I need to eat more frequently throughout the day to keep cravings from creeping in, too.
2. Move my butt. I really hate exercising. Everyone says to find something that you like to do, but honestly I am really not an active person and finding something interesting that doesn't make me want to bash my head in after 5 minutes is pretty tough. Coming off of the fall where I started having some joint problems, early carpal tunnel signs, and tennis elbow, I've learned that I need to be a lot more careful with the kinds of exercise I do. For now, I figure if I can get in 2 days a week of good cardio, that will be a start. I'll alternate that with more walking each day. So, I'll look for a couple of good classes at Gold's Gym for the 2 days of cardio, and aim to walk Oli more frequently around the neighborhood on at least 2 other days of the week. It's a start. Of course, this will require me to get home at a decent hour to do said exercise, since exercising in the AM puts me into a day-long coma, and a longing to just go back to bed and pass out.
3. ...which leads me to #3: leave work at a decent hour. And when I work from home, shut the computer down at a decent hour. No more leaving the office at 11 PM, or conversing with members of my team at 2-3 AM. I'm not sure I'll ever be able to get everything done in just 40 hours a week, but if I could even get it down to 45-50 hours a week, I'd feel pretty good about that. Hopefully my reviews won't suffer too badly.
4. Make weekends a time for relaxation and doing things with family and friends. This is pretty straight forward, but I'd like to get my work done during the week and not have to work weekends whenever possible.
5. Get to sleep at an acceptable hour. No more rolling into bed at 2-3 AM. Part of this will rely on my getting work done and being able to let go of the things that are beyond my means. Prioritize, prioritize, prioritize.

So, that's it. One of the things I finally did was hire a house cleaner to come in twice a month. It's a luxury that is totally worth it, and I think we'll hire someone to come in this spring to do the initial yard cleanup also. Then we just have to do the maintenance.

Some other things we hope to do this year:
* Sell my condo. We're renting it out now along with L.'s properties, but it's a lot to keep it all going and is more stress than it's really worth.
* Replace the windows in the house. It will make the house more energy efficient, and needs to be done as a few windows have blown their seals now.
* Replace/repair the fence. I think some sections are bad enough at this point to just be replaced, but some could probably be repaired without too much trouble. We'll have to find a good person to come take a look and let us know.
* Remove the overgrown pine tree in the backyard. The tree makes a huge mess with pine needles, and it's situated in a horrible spot right in one corner of our fence and outgrowing the spot. I'd like to pull it out and put in something that is smaller and more suited to growing next to a fence.
* Read more for fun. Lately I've been reading books like crazy, and I've been having a blast getting into the stories and character development.

That's it. At least I have a year to work on it, and I know that I won't be perfect or make it happen all at once. But hopefully by 12/31/2010, I can say that I have things under better control and more balanced in a healthy way.