1. It's the time of year for reflecting, and I can't help but think that 2010 was a productive year. I finished the PhD, decluttered my house, got all my pictures into albums (through July) got into shape (sort of. I am pretty slugly at the moment), and finished the novels of Dickens. Wheeee! It makes me say, What next?? I didn't hit my New Year's resolutions from last year, but I was aiming pretty high. Each one, it turns out, bore its own fruit, and so I'm enthusiastic about aiming high again.
2. I read a couple of really helpful books this year about discipline, change, and time use: Switch and 168 Hours. I was kind of lukewarm about 168 Hours at first, but I have continued to think about it. Laura Vanderkam is exactly right: you live your life one hour at a time, and it's easy to let the hours slip away. I was dithering about how much to tell you about Switch, and my dithering paid off -- take a look at this thorough post over at Bearing. I found it useful to think in terms of the Rider/Elephant/Path framework. Erin will tell you all about it, but it boils down to the reality that willpower is finite and you can't just will your way through change.
3. One example of how this worked for me recently is the laundry situation. I have been writing online about my laundry backlog for as long as I have been writing online, which is kind of sad, but this summer it dawned on me that I needed to get my Elephant on the team. Instead of taking baskets of clean laundry up to the guest room, where they would mysteriously not fold themselves yet again, I started leaving them in the living room. I can deal with one basket of laundry in the living room, or perhaps two if I am unusually busy, but more than that makes me intolerably twitchy -- twitchy enough that I fold it, as a matter of fact. Huzzah! (I am sure there are many of you who would frown on having a basket of unfolded laundry in the living room, but I have to tell you it beats the heck out of the Laundry Andes that used to bury the guest bed.)
So. The actual resolutions--
4. Body. First on the list is sugar, again, though I continue to struggle with how emphatically to eschew sugar in a culture that celebrates everything with sugar. I think I'll try giving up all solitary, non-celebratory sugar. I'll have a slice of my kids' birthday cakes, but I won't keep eating cake alone after they go to bed. (This might be delusional, given my history. We shall see.) I'm also planning to run 500 miles this year, or do an equivalent amount of other exercise if my aged joints give me trouble.
5. Soul. This year I am aiming to get to Mass a hundred times, although it is a little weird to count one's Mass attendance. I am also planning to talk regularly to my spiritual director about my internet usage, which continues to be a problem for me. Those Sunday Night Strategizing posts have been a fantastic self-discipline tool for me, so I'll keep them up. (I also feel a little weird about posting them here, because I think they are simultaneously boring and very personal. I'm going to scoot them over to their own blog, one I've had set up for a while, and see how that works. I'll link to them for those of you who've found them helpful, but you won't have to read them if you're tired of my to-do lists. Although-- anyone tired of my to-do lists probably stopped reading this post a couple of paragraphs ago.)
6. Mind. Remember my frustrating Shakespeare project? I am seizing the bull by the horns, resolving to finish the works of Shakespeare this year. This is ambitious, because I have 16 (or 17? must go and count when I finish this post) plays plus most of the poetry to read, but I'm going to give it a shot.
7. Family. Here my plan is to stay off the internet between the end of school and the end of dinner clean-up, and after 10:30. I also want to pray more explicitly for my kids, instead of just vaguely lifting them up.
More quick takes here.
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