Brainstorming New Year's resolutions

I think that I'll keep my New Year's resolutions list fairly short this year. Sometimes the list gets so long that it ends up looking really intimidating, and I give up within the first week. I figure that fewer things on the list means fewer things to concentrate on and therefore a higher success rate at keeping them.

Here goes a rough draft (I may or may not revise it, depending on how well it works out):

• Manage time effectively: I haven't been getting nearly as much sleep as I need in order to be fully functional and at my best. Particularly, my short-term memory doesn't seem to be working very well these days. I want to distribute my 24 daily hours more efficiently between academic time, work time, relax time, and sleep time. "Relax time" is actually a new requirement I'm making for myself this year separate from "sleep time", which will hopefully be around 8-9 hours a night. Yes, I do need that much sleep!!
  
• Get in shape: Exercising helps so many aspects of life. When I exercise, my mental facility, emotional balance, and physical well-being all improve. I feel a lot more alive and happy, and it feels good to move about and know you're doing something to keep your body from deteriorating. I'm not sure yet exactly what I want to do for exercise, but I'm going to shoot for a modest goal of 30 min, 3 days a week.
  
• Be aware of self: Something I've been dying to do for a long time is to start doing daily journal reflections. I want to see what I felt good about each day, what I didn't feel so good about, ways in which I'd like to improve, interesting or amusing things that happened, and any insights I've had about life. I want to be able to see the direction I'm heading in as a person, and I want to realize what I'm proud of and what I'm not proud of in myself. I want to believe in myself and feel good about myself, and develop a stronger self-image. I want to feel like I'm doing more than just letting life drift along.
  
• Enjoy people: There's so much more to college life than the academics. I want to be more sociable and spend more time with people that I like. It's amazing how relaxing and refreshing it can be to spend even a small amount of time catching up with friends and doing something fun once in a while. And it also makes you that much better at doing things you need to do, in my opinion.
  
• Organize finances: I've never done much budgeting with my money. I just earn as much as I can, try not to spend too much, and hope it comes out nicely. I want to do better about figuring out how much I want to save, and I want to be more careful about how and where I spend my money. My financial goal for life is to never be in debt when possible, but still live comfortably and have the resources to pursue my interests.

Hmm, one New Year's resolution that I ought to make is to actually keep my New Year's resolutions.

I'm thinking of maybe making signs for each of these and putting them up on the wall of my room. I've never tried anything like that before, and it might help me remember what I'm working on. I think it would be fun to make them kind of artsy too, so that they're nice to look at. A future Sunday project, perhaps...

Christmas present ethics

A friend of mine asked me the other day, "Is it wrong to buy someone a Christmas present, and then decide you like it a lot and buy another one for yourself?"

The funny thing was that I had just done that earlier. I dunno, is it?

My thoughts on guys, part I

My hard drive is freaking out after the last update I installed, which in turn is freaking me out, so I'm currently backing up everything on this computer. Before doing so, though, I'm trying to clean up and organize a little bit so I'm not just backing up stuff I wanted to get rid of anyway. Haha, it was actually one of my goals to clean up this computer during the Christmas break, so maybe this is just a little push to get me to do it.

Anyway, while looking through things, I found this note I wrote on April 21, 2005 about guys. Thought it was kind of funny and sounds just like freshman me, and I thought I'd put it up on here, albeit at the risk of seriously embarrassing myself. I think my thoughts on guys have greatly evolved since then, but it's pretty fun to hear what I thought at the time:



"Before you agree to marry a guy, you have to see how he acts when he’s mad. You need to know what he does when he’s frustrated, especially with his family members, how he treats them. You should see how he treats little kids, what he thinks of them. You should see him when he’s stressed, whether he despairs or hangs in there without complaint. You need to see how he treats his friends when he’s had an argument with them. You should think twice if he’s ever forced you to do anything against your will. Most of all, you should make sure it’s not on a whim, that you have already thought about marriage with him and that you have known him long enough, say maybe 2 years minimum. And it’d be best if you were at least 20.

"My ideal guy? By no means do I set absolute requirements or dismiss a guy if he doesn’t have one of these qualities or traits. I look at the big picture. But, I could definitely describe my ideal.

"First, physical traits. I tend to go for Caucasians. Maybe it’s because I’ve just grown up around white people, who knows. But I am attracted to height and that light hair color that’s somewhat in between blond and brown. I also like light-colored eyes. My ideal guy would be taller than [my brother], but I would still be taller than his shoulder. He would be heavier than me but faster than me (not TOO much faster), and he would be strong enough to lift me in his arms and carry me around without difficulty.

"There are certain qualifications that I’d also like him to meet. He would need to be older than me by at least two years, but no older than [my brother]’s age. He would be ... spiritual like [my brother]. He would be smart on a level comparable with mine, interested and good with languages, and energetic athletically. I am really impressed by coordination and quick reflexes in particular. He would be musically proficient on either cello or piano (but it would be great if he played others in addition). He’d know and be good with computers.

"As for personality traits, he’d be socially sound, but he’d have his dorky moments. He wouldn’t be the life of the party, but he’d be liked by everybody. He’d split time between people and girls (he’d still hang out with friends!). He’d have to be a night person. He’d hang out with mainly guys and not be like those guys who are super nice to all girls. He’d be more of a distanced, polite sort of nice to girls he didn’t know (or both genders for that matter). He wouldn’t be insecure, but he wouldn’t be overly confident; he’d be human and still have his doubts. He wouldn’t overanalyze relationships but he would still be a little nervous and analyze them somewhat. He’d get somewhat jealous but be cute (unknowingly) about confronting a girl about it (and he would confront, not sit there sulking). He’d give a girl space now and then. He would be the type of guy to be aware of girls’ personal bubble and sit some inches away from her. But if he liked her, he would sit closer sometimes and be nervous. Most importantly, he’d TALK.

"Well, there you have it. My kind of guy."



One thing that's pretty interesting is that a lot of the things I mentioned imply someone who is a lot like me (minus the Caucasian part). Lately, I've changed my mind a lot in that regard and think I would like to marry someone who is different from me in a lot of ways. Who wants to marry an identical person?

I think ideally I'd marry someone who shares a lot of common ground with me, but who has a different approach to life. I'm so logical, so deliberate, so serious. I need someone who will liven things up a bit.

More thoughts on this later.

Pressing the snooze button of life

Today's topic in church was procrastination. At first I thought, "Yeah, yeah... everybody does it and we all know we shouldn't." I almost zoned out. But then I started listening and thinking about it, and really so many of the worries and sources of stress in my life (and probably anyone else's) stem directly from procrastination.

What are the things I usually beat myself up about? Homework deadlines. Being late for things. Not being prepared for an audition or performance. Not being far enough along on a project. Not sending important emails or making important phone calls. Not keeping in touch with people. Not telling people how much I care about them. If I weren't such a procrastinator, all of those problems would vanish! It's not like I'm not capable of getting all those things done in the time that I have. I just get into this mode where I lack the willpower to make myself do anything.

I have a terrible time getting up in the morning. I'm the type of person who can hit snooze for over an hour and not really notice that time is going by. Funny thing is, if I wouldn't procrastinate going to bed, I'd get enough sleep and wouldn't procrastinate getting up in the morning. But that of course would require that I not procrastinate my work and have to stay up late. Which would mean that I would have to get stuff done earlier in the day, which would probably be easier if I got up on time. Which means that I would need to go to sleep earlier... etc. Endless downward spiral...

Sometimes I wish I could stop and hit the reset button and start with a clean slate. Nothing would be behind schedule, and then I could try to stay on schedule. But how do you get back to that point once you've started down the spiral? The lesson on procrastination is always to just not even do it. But where's the lesson that tells us what to do if we've already started doing it?

How do I stop when everything's already backed up like crazy? If I don't procrastinate one thing, I've gotta procrastinate something else to keep up. It's like getting caught in a pool of quicksand.

Itching to write

Apparently more people look at this blog than I thought. Which makes me slightly embarrassed about that post on falling in love... but I'm going to fight my introversion and remind myself that the reason I started blogging wasn't in order to hide my thoughts.

In all honesty though, there have been so many things I have wanted to say but I just haven't had the time to sit down and formulate coherent sentences. Sigh... the paradox of blogging. We all know it.

How to have a good day

Get enough sleep.
Take your time getting ready for the day's activities.
Do something spontaneous and different before you head out.
Pack a good lunch.
Spend some time outside in beautiful weather.
After a hard day's work, do a little bit of what you most like to do.
Spare a couple of minutes out of your busy day to catch up with people that you like.
Set aside enough time to have a nice, relaxing dinner.
Figure out one big thing that you need to do and get it done really well.
And at the end of the day...
...take a moment to reflect on how great this day has been.

I want to fall in love

I'm working on my master's and I just realized that I have no plans for after I get my degree. No preference on where I want to live, what I want to do, where I want to work... nothing. I think I always figured that this is the part where the guy's supposed to show up and start factoring into everything.

By the way, this is not a complaint about being single. I love being single. I have freedom, I don't have to worry about taking care of someone else and nurturing a delicate relationship, my time is my own and I can do whatever I like with it.

At the same time, it would be awfully nice to have someone to love and look after, and who loved me back and supported me too. Friends are forever, but that particular kind of companionship is just on an entirely different level.

I highly doubt that I'm going to be married by the time I get my master's degree. So then what? Whoever I marry depends on where I end up going after that. Don't want to mess THAT up. I mean, I'll probably end up going wherever the wind takes me but I sort of want to get married someday, too. I wonder who he'll be, what he'll be like, what sorts of things he'll like to do, what kinds of things he'll like to talk about. How will I find him? What will our story be like?

Are you out there, somewhere? Are you wondering these same things too?

I'm in an uncharacteristically girly and sappy mood. It's too bad it's a Tuesday night and I have homework, else I'd probably be switching on some chick flick right now. Wouldn't that be something?