Ha! Fooled y'all!

I didn't really mean to fool you, but thanks to all the warnings about smoking, I have decided to quit. Actually, I never really started. After those first three cigs, I gave up. Really, though, I thank you for your comments of concern. If only Suk had been half as concerned!

So, after a week of thinking about my "goal" for the next convention and also getting inspired by Christine's conviction to lose weight, I decided to join the bandwagon.

But, first me and my Type A personality had to figure out what my challenges are towards reaching the goal and exactly how I would attempt to pull it off.

First challenge
My irregular, lazy-ass schedule - Ever since we moved, I have not been able to get my ass in gear and I blame it on the following things:

* Cable TV (which we had installed when we moved)
* Max (who needed a lot of attention and also needed to be watched like a hawk)
* Too much school work (though not nearly as much as I used to have)
* The Internet and email (which I check many times per day)
* A very comfortable & inviting sofa (Suk suggested adding this to the list)

Due to all the changes in my life, I sort of fell off the boat. When we moved, it was as if all the things I used to do, like cook well-balanced meals, went right out the window. And it was much easier to watch Max like a hawk while sitting on the sofa with Cable TV on in the background. And, shopping for groceries, much less planning a menu fell by the wayside. And, then comes procrastination, which is a big word that takes just as long to say it as it does to just do the thing you have been procrastinating about.

Procrastination with a capital P
I am not, by nature, a procrastinator. I can think of many people in my life who, in fact, are major procrastinators. However, since I moved, I have fallen into that category. These are the things that I constantly feel guilty about but never do anything about them:

* Studying Japanese/Doing homework for Japanese class
* Starting to eat healthily
* Exercising
* Keeping track of finances
* Practicing piano
* Starting a new project for scrapbooking
* Organizing certain areas of our aparment, such as the walk-in-closet.

So, after careful Type-A analyzation of my goals and challenges, I decided that taking things one hour at a time would work best. Also, "scheduling" rewards in between would probably motivate me to do that which I am supposed to do. One more piece of advice I gave myself was to not expect to do too much in one evening.

Of course, life always gets in the way. You get an unexpected phone call (oh god, that rarely happens nowadays. It's 2006, people!). You have to run an errand. There's a dinner party for work. Aside from that though, if I can kind of keep to a regular schedule, I should be able to achieve more.

Basically, my goal is to leave school at 5pm every evening and get home by 5:30 by minimizing errands that need to be run during the week. Also, I want to get into bed by 11:30, so I can actually read my book for a good 20 minutes before nodding off (rather than the current 2 minutes - 1/2 a page per night - rate that I am at). My other goal is to minimize TV-viewing to one decent show per evening. That means that I can't just sit there and watch X-files for a sake of watching TV, even though I can't stand the show. If I plan my week's menu on Sunday and go grocery shopping for the whole week, that will save time from having to stop by the store during the week, and I'll have more time to actually cook. Finally, I am hoping to fit one useful activity in each evening such as study Japanese, exercise, play piano, or scrapbook a few pages. This is basically what I was doing before we moved, but I got completely off track.

As for rewards, I am allowing myself rewards here and there - TV-viewing, reading a book, surfing the internet, checking email, and OF COURSE playing with Max.

When all is said and done, I am hoping to have lost some weight. And that, folks, would be my ultimate goal here in terms of working towards the next convention. I am not sure if I am going to convince people to sponsor me though. Maybe my mom would since she loves to donate to anything relating to breast cancer.