Traditionally people welcome in the New Year with lots of alcohol and a resolution. The copious amounts of alcohol were consumed last night, to predictable effects (laughing, shouting, drinking cava on the park at 1am), and now its time to talk about resolutions. See, I never start resolutions on the 1st of January, they are bound to fail. So I start resolutions on the 2nd. Much higher chance of success!
Last year Joni and I realised that all New Years Resolutions fall into one of five categories:
1) Personal Interests e.g. I will learn a new language
2) Personal Well-being e.g. I will quit smoking, stop being fat and win a marathon
3) Lifestyle e.g. I will love my job/life/husband and never complain about my lot again.
4) Relationships e.g. I will start/end a relationship with another man/woman/goat
5) Altruistic e.g. I will give 50% of all my wealth to children with aids and volunteer 30 hours a week in an old peoples home.
Having set five categories, I decided to have one resolution for 2012 from each category. I wrote a list and in the following months preceded to loose said list and forget most of the resolutions. I know the Personal Interests one was about going to the Broadway Cinema once every calendar month, and I know this because it is officially the first ever resolution in the history of mankind to actually be achieved, hurray! A had a personal well-being one about getting skinny, lol, and a relationships one about my relationship with Joni "staying the same", a wishy-washy resolution if ever I heard one.
So on to this year. I figure if I blog about my resolutions then they might actually happen (and at the very least I will probably be able to find them next year).
P.S. Mostly because Joni is a total nerd the resolutions have to be SMART targets (thats Specific, Mensurable Achievable, Relevant & Time-bound in-case you have never worked in a school/office/any target-driven environment)
Fiona's 2013 New Years Resolutions!
1) Personal Interests: I will Learn Danish
This is a little broad, so to make it smart I will aim to be able to hold a reasonable conversation in Danish with one of my relatives when I go to visit them later this year. I will let the relative decide what counts as a 'reasonable conversation'.
2) Personal Well-being: I will do 150 mins exercise each week.
Diet goals never work - I always cave and eat my own mass in chocolate but 150 mins is the governments recommended weekly exercise for an adult and it seems achievable.
3) Lifestyle: To reach the end of 2013 with less debt than I have now, without the year feeling like it has been overshadowed by debt-repayments.
Its no secret that Joni and I have lots of debt and we want rid of it. In the last 5 months of 2012 we cleared over £2000 worth but we broke our backs to do it. I want to keep going in the right direction without feeling every step is being governed by how it affects our credit ratings. I'm not sure its a particularly SMART goal, but it is a goal.
4) Relationships: To not be dumped by any friends via text or other social media outlets!
While this may seem funny I am ending 2012 minus two friends who, in January, I thought were rather good friends. I discovered (via text) they weren't. While I am reassured this isn't my fault I do feel that this year I would like to focus on loving the friends I have, and building some new ones too. So watch out blog-lovers, you will be hearing more from me soon!
5) Altruistic: To blog once a month about how I have used my consumer-power to improve things.
I'm not a fan of giving money to charity. Millions of people give millions of pounds to charity everyday and nothing much changes. Starving people are still reliant on western cultures, ice caps are still melting and once a year Terry Wogan is still given a quick shock to wake him from his slumber, wheeled out on stage and given a variety of young presenters to ogle. BUT I do believe in consumer power, the power of every person to change the way the world looks by what they buy. Which is why once a month I will be trying to do something to change my habits for the better, and I will write about it here to encourage others to do the same. I think this will be the hardest goal, but it could also be the most worthwhile.
So there you have it. 5 resolutions for 2013. All a little bit tricky but also all worthwhile. I'm quite looking forward to next year now. Not looking forward to the 6am start tomorrow....
No comments:
Post a Comment