Thursday, January 1, 2009

Good Morning 2009!

I love New Year! It's like I'm looking at this fresh start, full of potential spread out in front of me. Fabulous!

This year I want to be more healthy.

This year I want to increase my spirituality.

This year I want to save money.

This year I want to take the next step on my path to becoming a professional writer.

Those are my goals, out in the open, for all to see. That makes me a bit nervous. Now you will all know if I fail. But you will also know if I succeed. The pressure!

Health - With the abundance of super yummy food during the holiday season and in the candy aisle at Walgreens combined with the irritating reality that my dryer is certainly shrinking my jeans a little more each week, I've decided to spend 2 weeks on South Beach's phase one diet.

I've completed South Beach phase one before with great success. First, my cravings for sweet snacks dramatically reduced. Second, I lost weight. That gave me the motivation to keep going and continue making healthy eating choices.

In addition to my food make-over, I'm going to start walking at an indoor track 3 times a week.

Spirituality - I love any chance to multi-task so during my indoor track walks, I'll be listening to a downloaded General Conference talk, or some other kind of spiritually uplifting fare on my iPod.

Money - Warning: Our crazy strategies for saving money might shock you, so read on with caution. We. Are. Getting. Rid. Of. TV. Ahhhh!

OK, we are keeping the television set. How else would we play our new Wii? We are canceling our Dish service and will not have cable or anything. We will get "free" TV via the good old fashioned rabbit ears until February. Then we will get one of those new-fangled converter boxes.

Another money saving strategy: No eating out. This includes happy meals (yes, we've told the kids) and burrito supremes as well as sit down, order-from-a-menu joints. The good news is this will probably help with my "health" goal a little bit.

Writing - I haven't really come up with a concrete way I'm going to take my writing to the next level in 2009. I'd certainly like to get published in Vancouver Family Magazine on a regular basis, and possibly another magazine with maybe a bigger readership. I've always wanted to get published in "The Friend." I'll figure something out and let you know...or not.

Happy 2009 everyone!

8 comments:

Erika said...

I love your goals--they're right along the lines of what I need to do, all except the writing one. I'll just leave that one up to you. I've been wanting to try South Beach, so maybe I'll check out the book and see what it's all about since you've had success with it before. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised with not having DISH anymore. We don't have it and we rarely watch any tv at all. PBS and American Idol are about it. We mostly watch movies and with Redbox who can go wrong? I wish you luck this year, especially with your writing. You are so good.

Afton said...

I just printed off a list of acceptable phase one foods, plus a few recipes to get me through the 2 weeks that I found on line. I've heard the book is very good though.

Our Family said...

Well, I learned this year (now that the twins are 14) that the freshness of a new year is hampered by lack of sleep due to New Year's Eve dances and parties, wherein mother is up until 3 am awaiting party-goers arrival home and talking about party events, then woken up by non-party-goers far too early, thus making mother a walking zombie in the morning. Hopefully I will feel up to setting some goals tomorrow! Also, I think our $9.88 rabbit ears from Walmart said they work as a converter, too. I'll let you know...Happy 2009!!

Debbie said...

You can start your writing goals with sending me an edited chapter???? ;)

I'm not sure if you want me to tell you this or not...because it may not be fair to your kids...but we've been downloading all of our tv since we got to singapore. then we can watch it whenever we want. If you want details...ask. It's FREE!!! :D

Anonymous said...

You are so inspiring! It sounds like it will be a great year, despite not having a DVR or Dish Network. :(

Marah said...

Afton, I love the idea of canceling Dish.

Debbie, tell me how to download TV for free!

I just started a more serious exercise, routine, which means actually doing it. I get on the treadmill every day. I watch a movie on the laptop while I'm on the treadmill, which was Ashley Thelin's suggestion. I'm with ya!

Angela Taylor said...

I have to admit when I read that you are canceling your dish I thought, she's crazy! Now you'll have to go to church to watch conference. I can think of lots of things I would rather do than that! But, it's probably good, for others! :) Good goals though. Good luck!

Afton said...

Angela, the first thing I thought too was no conference at home, but we can get it on line and listen to it that way. Robert says there is some magic thing he can download that will make us be able to surf the web on our TV through our Wii and then we can just watch it on TV like the good old BYU TV days. Plus, Debbie's plan for downloading shows sounds pretty good too.