supercheesegirl | Entries tagged with resolutions2009

I will strive to practice yoga three times per week. My goal is 130 yoga sessions in 2009--an average of 2.5 sessions per week (or 11 per month).

November: 6.5 yoga practices, 10 individual sessions
December: 8.5 yoga practices, 13 individual sessions
2009 overall: 73.5 practices, 95 individual sessions (which I counted easily by checking the number of posts tagged as "yoga2009"--I'm not that crazy)

So I did not meet my stated "goal", which honestly I think I pulled out of my butt anyway. However, if we take the 95 total sessions and divide it by 12, we get an average of 8 sessions per month, which means I was doing yoga a little less than twice a week. I'm cool with that.

I will increase my charitable donations and will give at least $20 per month.

November: My money went to the World Wildlife Federation. They do this holiday gift catalogue where you donate and get an adorable plush toy of the wild animal you "adopted". My mom and I have been adopting creatures for each other for three years now. This year, I gave her hummingbirds and she gave me a wombat. Yes, I did receive something in return for my donation, but since I had to give $50 in order to get said plush hummingbirds, I think my donation still counts. (And the plushies are really adorable and nice quality!)

December: My friend David is a founding member of Newspeak Music Ensemble, and they needed donations to help them fund the recording of their first CD. They're a registered non-profit in NJ, and I personally got to help out my friend, so this was a good pick all the way around.

2009 overall: I absolutely loved this resolution. This was awesome. I'm going to do this again in 2010 and try to increase the amount I give. I also loved that mid-year I discovered that my company will match my gifts. When I add everything up, it turns out that I gave $370 this year! And all of that should have been matched by my company, so that doubles my gift. Look what a difference I made just doing a little bit each month!

I will sweep the floor weekly.
Yeah, this resolution was a bad idea. Too quantifiable, and too easy to see how badly I was doing at it. It's a shame. Not going to try this again.

I will spend more time outdoors.
November was pretty okay for this resolution, mostly because I kept jogging once a week. December was harder, but F and I did take an awesome walk in the woods. We helped the park trim back their holly bushes (ie, we totally stole some holly and put it up in our apartment) and it was really nice. I also kept jogging for most of December as well. This resolution overall was really excellent and I'm glad I did it.

I will strive to practice yoga three times per week. My goal is 130 yoga sessions in 2009--an average of 2.5 sessions per week (or 11 per month). 10 separate practices for the month of October, which I think is pretty darn solid. They were almost all half-sessions, though, so it only added up to 6 total practices, but I'm sick of that way of counting it. I did yoga 10 times in October!

I will increase my charitable donations and will give at least $20 per month. This month's donation went to Poets.org, run by the Poetry Society of America. They're a non-profit supporting poetry, which is awesome by itself, and then they recently ran a campaign where they asked for donations to support them getting some robots--robots as in programming thingy-dos for the website, but I got a mental picture of adorable robots helping out around the office. How could I not support that? Anyway, great organization.

I will sweep the floor weekly. We swept up before the Halloween party, and we swept up a bit afterward. I need to sweep the yoga room, there's dust on the floor.

I will spend more time outdoors. We spent a day at Six Flags Great Adventure, we went to Long Beach Island with my parents and walked around the lighthouse there, we walked around in the rain to go to Swarthmore's food festival... oh wait, that was one time when being outside sucked. I don't think we did too bad at getting outside in October, although I think we could have done better. I continue to enjoy going out for my morning jog, too.

I will strive to practice yoga three times per week. My goal is 130 yoga sessions in 2009--an average of 2.5 sessions per week (or 11 per month). Ten individual yoga practices in September! Unfortunately, there were a lot of short practices, so it only added up to 6.5 full sessions, but this is still my highest monthly total yet.

I think, if I continue with this resolution for next year, I'm going to have to rethink the wording or come up with a different way of counting or something. When I started, I felt like a "real" yoga practice should be a full hour, so I am only counting 30-minute practices as half of a practice, but I don't think that's necessarily reflective of what I'm actually doing. I have done more yoga this month than I have in ages and it's awesome, but I'm not often getting in a full hour's practice. Also, although I made this resolution with the thought that I really wanted to focus on yoga this year, I have kind of expanded to an interest in my overall health. Now I go jogging once a week and take dance class once a week as well, and what my body is getting out of those activities gives strength and stamina to my yoga (in addition to the larger "hooray for aerobic exercise" thing). So, maybe next year's resolution will be about general fitness rather than yoga? But kind of the point of this resolution was to try to get in shape for yoga teacher training, and I still don't feel like I'm ready. Have to think more on this.

I will increase my charitable donations and will give at least $20 per month. This month's donation went to the National MS Society. One of my facebook friends was doing a big bike ride for MS, because his sister has it, and he asked all his facebook friends to give him $5 each. I figured that was a good enough cause and so I gave him $30. Also sent the matching gift form to the matching gift man so my company will give too.

I will sweep the floor weekly. I think we swept a little bit before F's family came to visit a few weeks ago. Now we are happily into Slipper Season and are wearing slippers all the time, so the condition of the floors is less offensive to me than usual. Although I need to sweep the yoga room, there's some gunk under the bookshelf.

I will spend more time outdoors. We were not big winners on this front in September, and I think we missed a lot of nice weather as a result. I think the most time outside was probably the weekend that F's family came to visit--we took a super-long walk around downtown Philly with F's sister and boyfriend, and then walked around campus with them the next day. No trips to the park or hiking, unfortunately. I am still enjoying my Tuesday morning jogs, though. It's nice to be outside for that time and see the leaves changing and the neighborhood waking up.

I will strive to practice yoga three times per week. My goal is 130 yoga sessions in 2009--an average of 2.5 sessions per week (or 11 per month). 7.5 practices for the month of August! I have not done so well since April. And that's even with a bum wrist!

I will increase my charitable donations and will give at least $20 per month. August's donation, as previously posted, went to my coworker Tim's annual bowling tournament to support blood cancer research.

I will sweep the floor weekly. This resolution is completely junked. We have not swept since moving in, except once in the bathroom, and to clean up specific messes caused by holes drilled in the walls. Our floor is icky and it makes me glad we're coming around to colder weather, because I can wear slippers and not have crud sticking to my feet.

I will spend more time outdoors. Haven't been good, haven't been bad. We've been spending a lot of time inside, just with unpacking and getting settled, but we've also been trying to go for walks a few times a week to explore the neighborhood and enjoy the nice weather. I'm hoping we'll get out pretty frequently now that we're more settled and the weather's cooled off a bit.

Today I made my monthly donation to charity--for my coworker Tim's blood cancer fundraiser. Tim emailed me afterwards to see if I would fill out our company's matching gifts form. Would I! I didn't know there was a handy form! I filled it out for Tim, and then I went back through all my records of giving so far this year. I have now filled out the form to match my gifts to the American Cancer Society, Philadelphia Free Library, Melanoma International Foundation, Elie Wiesel Foundation, and Crohn's and Colitis Foundation. That's $215 extra dollars for charity! I can only submit the form myself if I made the donation online, so I also filled one out and sent it to my friend Missi (the one ministering to disabled orphans in Nicaragua) so that when she sends my donation to Mustard Seed Communities, they can submit it and get the matched gift. I'm also going to send one to Abington Memorial Hospital (I sent them a check). The only donation I'm not going to try to match is my Planned Parenthood donation in January--I don't think Elsevier will match that one. Maybe I'll try anyway.

I plan to do this form every time I make a donation from now on--Elsevier will match my gifts up to $1000 per year! How exciting! The matching gifts administrator is going to get sick of seeing my name!

I realized I never made a resolution post for June--we were so busy traveling and packing and moving, I just forgot all about it. So here's the resolution update for June and July both.

I will strive to practice yoga three times per week. My goal is 130 yoga sessions in 2009--an average of 2.5 sessions per week (or 11 per month). June was terrible for yoga--only 2.5 practices total for the whole month, what with the aforementioned traveling and packing and moving. Oh well. July was an improvement--5 practices total, almost averaging 2 per week. I am hoping to step it up in the fall.

I will increase my charitable donations and will give at least $20 per month. I did double donations in June: one to my friend Reagan's 64-mile bicycle ride to support breast cancer research, and another to Mustard Seed Communities, because my saintly friend Missi is doing a mission trip with them to volunteer at an orphanage for deaf and disabled children in Nicaragua. In fact, she's there right now. Yes, really, she's a much better person than I am. July's donation went to Abington Memorial Hospital's hospice program, in memory of my Uncle Chick. I also gave $5 each to my college alma mater and to the college where F works, so he can track the donor mailings.

August's donation, which I just made, went to my coworker Tim's annual bowling tournament to support blood cancer research.

I will sweep the floor weekly. After moving in to our new place, the floors were terribly messy. But oddly enough, we've ignored them so long that it's come full circle--now it seems there's less crud sticking to the bottoms of our feet, so maybe the floors are cleaning themselves. (The bathroom, however, isn't.)

I will spend more time outdoors. Unfortunately I've been spending a LOT of time indoors lately, unpacking. We did take Heather and Dann to Ridley Creek Park over Bastille Day weekend (mid-July), which was pretty awesome, and we've gone for some nice walks around F's campus (which, again, is right across the street from our new place). I'd love to get out to the park again sometime soon. Or, actually, the place we chose for our wedding has a nature trail along the creek, so maybe we'll just go there.

I will strive to practice yoga three times per week. My goal is 130 yoga sessions in 2009--an average of 2.5 sessions per week (or 11 per month). Six individual yoga sessions in May, some of which were only half-sessions, so five practices total. I'd had such high hopes for May, but travel and illness interfered.

I will increase my charitable donations and will give at least $20 per month. This month's donation went to 10,000 Books for Children: The Free Library of Philadelphia's Book Drive. My donation went towards buying books for children's summer programs. Can't argue with that! You can visit the library website at http://freelibrary.org.

Donations in the near future will go to my friend Reagan's 64-mile bicycle ride to support breast cancer research, and my coworker Tim's annual bowling tournament to support blood cancer research. I think I also need to give some money to my alma mater so my darling fiance can do work-related research and check out the sorts of mailings other colleges send to their donating alumni.

I will sweep the floor weekly. This was the stupidest resolution in the history of the world. A FLOOR MADE OF DIRT WOULD BE CLEANER THAN MY FLOOR. I should move to a hut.

I will spend more time outdoors. This was a good resolution! I enjoy spending time outdoors. The fact that we are outdoors is my favorite part of going jogging. Haven't spent enough time in the park in the last month, though.

I will strive to practice yoga three times per week. My goal is 130 yoga sessions in 2009--an average of 2.5 sessions per week. I had nine separate practices in April, some of which were short sessions, so seven practices total. If I'd practiced this past week, it would have been better, but what can ya do.

I am definitely NOT on target for my goal of 130 sessions this year--I should be doing around 11 practices per month, and I haven't hit that at all yet (though this month was the closest I've come). I was also taking a class this semester and adjusting to F moving in, so I understand it. The real goal was to increase my practice and be more serious about it, which I think is happening. Maybe when I hit the halfway point of the year I will revise this goal to be more attainable. Or maybe I will just start doing more yoga.

I will increase my charitable donations and will give at least $20 per month. This month I gave to the Elie Wiesel Foundation. They lost all their money to Madoff, and they do good work for, you know, humanity and justice and stuff, so they're worth donating to. (Elie Wiesel himself also lost all his money to Madoff, so I encourage everyone to go buy his latest book in hardcover!)

I will sweep the floor weekly. I suck at this resolution. I hate the floors. Thinking about the floors in my apartment makes me want to stab myself, which I don't do simply because then there'd be blood to clean off the floors along with everything else. I love the way hardwood floors look but I hate them so much. They are always, always dirty, especially now with two of us in the apartment. The state of the floors make me depressed and upset, which was the whole reason for this resolution, but I don't think it's helped because now I just get upset about the floors more publicly. I don't know what to do about this besides just do better. Great, now the floors make me feel like I am a bad person, because a better person would clean them more regularly. Can I have wall-to-wall carpeting?

I will spend more time outdoors. I love this resolution. F and I had such an excellent hike on Sunday, and we've been out and about in the neighborhood often lately. I want to go to the park every week. (The only problem with this resolution is that time outdoors leads to muddy shoes leads to continued floor cleaning angst.)

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I feel pretty solid about my metaphorical weight loss plan. I haven't lost as much metaphorical weight as I'd like, but I am in a shape that I'm not totally ashamed of. I also have a lot more muscle strength, which is nice. My arms are still a big concern, because they look fat even though they are not. The current level of tone in my upper arms just sort of highlights the fact that they're not as toned as they should be. I need to push more on weights in the next month if I want to wear spaghetti straps this summer (and I do). Overall, though, I've been pretty good about this, taking a walk or doing yoga or lifting weights almost every day. We're also trying hard to eat healthier (although I put so much salt on my green beans last night that I may have salted all the nutrition right out of them). We continue planning healthier meals, eating multiple vegetables per week, and eating healthier snacks. We've still indulged for special events--hot dogs at the Phillies game, cookies and fancy food while visiting friends in NYC, that sort of thing--but we're improving. And I've been trying hard not to eat after 9 pm, and doing better at it.

Also in the realm of things I want to do more of, now that my class is over, I'm going to get back into writing and sending out my work. This weekend, hopefully. F has suggested too that since we're used to me having class on Mondays, we should keep Mondays reserved as Writing Night. I like that idea.

I will strive to practice yoga three times per week. My goal is 130 yoga sessions in 2009--an average of 2.5 sessions per week. Only 4.5 practices in the entire month of March! Not a good month for yoga. However, 3 of the 4.5 March practices occurred in the last week of the month--I'm working to get back into it.

I will increase my charitable donations and will give at least $20 per month. This month I gave to the Melanoma International Foundation, in memory of my mother's dear friend Denise, who recently passed away. Before Denise, I don't think I really knew that skin cancer, even after it's been removed, can come back again years later in other parts of the body. Now I know. I strongly encourage any of you who can to donate to this important cause, or at least read up on it in the interest of keeping yourself healthy.

I will sweep the floor weekly. Bad again this month, but we swept and cleaned this weekend. (Of course then last night I stepped in brownies and tracked it all over the kitchen. Sigh.)

I will spend more time outdoors. About a week and a half ago, F and I had a lovely hike in Wissahickon Valley Park. It was wonderful. We've also done some nice long walks in my neighborhood lately as the weather improves.

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I've been doing okay lately on my metaphorical weight loss plan. The carrot sticks totally didn't work out, but I have had some form of exercise (yoga, walking--even if just ten minutes, stretching, weights) every day since I started the plan. I'm hoping to do at least a few minutes of weights every night in the hopes of getting my arms into a non-jellylike condition, and I've done weights the past two nights. Changing eating habits tends to be harder for me than doing exercise, but I've been trying hard--the past few days, there has been much pizza (but only two slices per meal) and little portion control (but on healthier things than pizza, like vegetable lasagna or my dad's meatloaf), but I'm still steadily improving. Even the aforementioned brownies were No Pudge Fudge, which is now my favorite brand of anything ever. And we're combining exercise and healthy cooking by walking to the little fresh market and the farmer's market for veggies. F is wonderful and has been full of encouragement towards my efforts.

Also in the realm of Rox-habit-improvement: I have grown used to my electric toothbrush, and have begun flossing again, and also using mouthwash. Usually after a lapse in flossing, my gums bleed like whoa, but not this time--the electric toothbrush must be having an effect! As much as I dislike dental stuff, I just have to keep reminding myself that it's much, much better than spending extra time having things drilled at the dentist.

I will strive to practice yoga three times per week. My goal is 130 yoga sessions in 2009--an average of 2.5 sessions per week. Eight separate sessions in February, although two of them were short mini-practices. Rounding out to about twice per week, again, so no improvement from January, but it's acceptable for now.

I will increase my charitable donations and will give at least $20 per month. Gave $30 to the Crohn's disease research people via

grass_stained's friend Jason, who's doing a half-marathon fundraiser. Crohn's disease is a cause close to my heart because my mom has suffered from it for years, so this was a good one for me (although I'm sure Jason was a little confused to find a complete stranger donating for him).

I will sweep the floor weekly. Mostly did this, although I haven't yet this weekend and might not.

I will spend more time outdoors. I dragged F out for a long walk on Thursday instead of doing yoga, because the weather wasn't terrible. We also spent a whole afternoon a few weeks ago (when, again, the weather wasn't terrible) walking around in Media, PA and exploring the town. Better than in January, and will improve with the weather.

I will strive to practice yoga three times per week. My goal is 130 yoga sessions in 2009--an average of 2.5 sessions per week. Eight yoga sessions in January. That's twice per week. OK for now, but need to improve that.

I will increase my charitable donations and will give at least $20 per month. Gave $25 to Planned Parenthood last week.

I will sweep the floor weekly. Mostly did this (and I'm sweeping again this afternoon.)

I will spend more time outdoors. ...Yeah, no.

I don't usually make resolutions, but I've been pondering this for a while, since my small group meeting last month. This year, it makes sense for me to make some resolutions.

I will strive to practice yoga three times per week. My goal is 130 yoga sessions in 2009--an average of 2.5 sessions per week.

I will increase my charitable donations and will give at least $20 per month.

I will sweep the floor weekly.

I will spend more time outdoors.

Even with everything that will be happening in the next few months, these are achievable goals, and appropriate ones. They are the sorts of goals that, if I can keep to them, will result in serious improvements to my emotional wellbeing.