Resolutions for 2014

Body Image/Exercise/Healthy Living

• Keep track of what foods I eat and eat 3 meals a day. Aim for snacks
• Eat a fruit in the morning as part of breakfast once a week – work up to every day
• Incorporate walking into every day –find a gym in Montréal
• Lose 25 lbs
  • Work up to running for 30 minutes, 3 times a week
• Strength train for arms, core, and sides.
  • Start with simple stuff at home, work up to more intense exercises
• Write a poem once every week.
• Continue sleeping at a regular time
• Continue being conscious of my body
  • Relax my jaw
  • Work on corporal flexibility to strengthen mental flexibility – incorporate fluidity in how I live because water can’t break
  • De-stress every night through conscious loosening of tense muscles; identify and work on specific muscles that are tense
  • Continue to be aware of who affects my body and in which ways; listen to my body about how to respond to people – whether to approach them or stay away, whether to reach out or back away, and what to say. Remember that the words are already on my tongue – I just have to read them out loud without muddling from my brain or my ~feelfeels~
  • Continue to be conscious of my posture; go for massages

Relationships/Self Image – same goals as last year because they’re good and because I’ve been meeting most of them! A happy face beside each one I achieved

• Trust/love myself more – trust others will too 🙂
• Be hopeful rather than skeptical 🙂
• Value myself more – trust others will too 🙂
  • What does this look like? It looks like listening to my own body about situations – unease in my belly or tears in my throat – or warm feelings of affection and wanting to reach out in my fingers
• Meet the needs of people who I care about 🙂
• Express hurt before it’s too late…and value my own hurt for what it is rather than thinking I ‘shouldn’t’ be or don’t ‘deserve’ to feel the way I do. 🙂
• Don’t be needy or clingy; don’t be aloof 🙂
  • This was actually surprisingly easy to do once I re-evaluated what these terms actually mean and under what framework they operate in – once I started thinking of people and needs and meeting them, and my own body’s comfort zones and boundaries à All of this literally became 100% simpler. It’s now just a question of balancing those different boundaries and needs and finding a way forward. I will add that finding a way forward through conflict resolution is important to me –
• Be vulnerable around people I love, even if I’m hurt in the process. 🙂
• Open up to pain, love, trust, and friendship. 🙂
• In general, trust more. 🙂
• Believe I am loveable. 🙂
  • It saddens me a little that I had so much doubt about this – but there are still some days when I struggle with extreme bouts of loneliness. This is difficult to balance because I also really do like alone time and can’t stand huge crowds. But I think I was confusing loneliness with some sense of lack of self worth which is thankfully being fixed. 🙂
• Trust my knowledge, abilities, capabilities more
  • I…. still need to do this – but a half smile here! Because I’ve been writing lots and that has felt really good – and I trust my writing more now.
• Remove negative influences; determine and value my needs for friendship
  • Negative influences are primarily people who make me feel awful about myself. That still needs to end! 🙂
• Be more giving 🙂
• *new: Be more gracious and graceful with people – sometimes this means being more reserved
• Work harder
• Be kinder 🙂
  • Particularly to people who annoy me slightly through specific behaviours or traits but who I find are kind in other ways. Everyone has a different communication style – and it’s ok to acknowledge that, and find a way to navigate that.
• Volunteer/find organisations with similar political aims 🙂
  • Need to do this in Montréal! But I did a fair bit of this in Kingston I think…
• Feel deeper
  • No. Horrible goal. REMOVING THIS GOAL. Emotional feelfeels are not really my key to understanding the world around me – they’re nice, and they’re important, but they’re not my go-to for making my life better. At best, they give me temporary like 4-min anxiety laced cuddly feels, and at worst, they give me straight on panic attacks. No thanks.
• Appreciate good friends more – and more often. 🙂
• Maintain ties with friends. 🙂
• Give everyone a second chance no matter what, including myself. But only a second one.
  • Yes. This. So much foresight in this goal. Second chances, but nothing beyond that.
• Be less cynical. 🙂

Work/School Goals

• Read a chapter every day/take notes
  • Hand in final assignments
  • Send out 10-15 resumés per week
    • Find a job
    • develop thesis proposal
    • be kind to myself
    • set reasonable goals for work
      • pace myself – a little bit every day
      • decide whether I want to stay in academia or… do something else with my life.