Rose’s List of 2014 New Year’s Resolutions/Goals: To be fair, only a few of my resolutions are book related. Here they are in no particular order:
- Walk Maddox at least once a day, every day. For those who do not know, Maddox is my 1 year of Doberman puppy. To say he is full of energy is an understatement. I have taken him for an off leash walk around our walking trails in our community. It takes about 45 minutes. I come back exhausted. He comes back spritely and with an exuberant spring in his step. So yes, I am also considering a treadmill for my doggy. He needs more exercise than one 45 minute run can give him. So I finally got a treadmill. Now I just need to train Maddox to walk on it. He is curious. I will call the dog trainer back out for that. I don’t want to scare him with it. I want him to love the treadmill. Coincidentally, I plan to use the treadmill myself. YAY! Also, for anyone planning to get one, do NOT pay for ifit. It is a major rip off. I love my treadmill, but am mad I paid extra for ifit and the iftit app and the ifit service and it doesn’t even work half of the time. But yeah, still like the treadmill. Okay, as for walking, the other day, the boyfriend and I went to take Maddox for an off leash run. We were just finishing up and Madddox was back on his leash when a Husky that had gotten loose came charging toward me! Maddox was all prepared to meet this challenge. I was so scared! I am so glad that my boyfriend was there to scare the Husky off because I would have had a fight on my hands. Yikes! Maddox is friendly, but this dog was not approaching in a friendly manner. He was bolting towards us! So scarey. I have not been out on walk since. I am scare. I don’t want to get hurt. We have a neighbor who can’t control his pitt bull either and the dog has charged people. He is scary. This is why I got Maddox professionally trained. I can handle my dog. Problem is, most other people can’t handle theirs.
- Ride Kissy (my horse) at least 10 hours/month. I did a 30 hours in 30 days challenge last June and the difference in my horse was astounding. I would love to ride that often all the time, but the shorter days are really a drag on my time. (Although the arena has lights, so perhaps the shorter days is a poor excuse.) The biggest hardship with riding my horse is the long congested commute. It takes usually a little over an hour to get to the horse barn. Since I get home at 5 and want to be in bed by no later than 10, that is pushing it. I have not met this goal at all. I am currently unable to ride at this time as I have separated my shoulder and possibly have a labral tear in my shoulder. So no riding for me. I was just finishing up with my physical therapy when for no reason that I can think of, my shoulder rotated out of place again (it does that from time to time, since the auto accident, the shoulder joint is no longer stable, hence physical therapy) and after several sessions in which the PT put it back in place, I have made another appointment with the shoulder doctor. Next step is most likely an arthogram. Fun Fun. I am so ready to be done with this crap. Worse part is the pain and no fun stuff like riding my horse. I am going to see her tomorrow and let the boyfriend ride her because she needs the exercise.
- Speaking of bed, I am making my bedtime of 10pm a priority. In fact, I really want to make my bedtime 9 since I get up at 5 and that way I could get 8 hours. We shall see. Right now I am setting 10pm as my bedtime and well, its 10:14pm as I type this so go figure. I got a new app called SleepBot that helps me track my sleep and I have been getting much more of it now. Mostly in the form of naps, but I am working on getting 8 hours a night. I feel so much better when I at least get 6 hours. I seem to automatically wake up after 6.
- Give up the soda. I am one of those people that has to drink a coke every morning. It is my morning coffee. Well, this past year has seen me gain over 20 pounds, so I am definitely going to be cutting back on the soda. I do not know if I can ever give it up completely, but right now I am weaning off of it. This is such a tough one for me. I need to try harder on this one. I find that I get headaches if I do not drink soda. But I also find that I get headaches when I drink too much soda. And for me, my soda of choice is Coca cola in a bottle.
- Working out more and getting into better shape. I bought a treadmill. Lets see if that helps? Also, a new app I got called My Fitness Pal is great for tracking your eating and exercising and keeping a record of your progress. I lost 2 pounds this week! YAY!
- Finish writing 2 books. Self-publish 2 books? Because I could say that I would do just one. Lets add more work on there. I have been working on a new word count goal of 500 words a day and now have 5000 words on a new WIP.
- Improve my Netgalley ratio. Doesn’t every blogger have this goal? I made a list of the netgalley books I intend to read this year and vowed to myself to not accept any more arcs from netgalley until I have gotten to at least 80%. (hmmmmm…)
- Read 50 new books this year. Scaling it back a little from last years goal of 100. That was tough! I am right on target to finish this goal this year with having read 21 books this year so far.
- Get my home library organized and on my goodreads shelves. I am doing this with hopes of preventing duplicate purchases. I just get so excited when I see a book on sale for $1.99 that I immediately click! I do not want to miss out on such a steal, right? But then it turns out that I usually already have at least two copies of the same book….go figure! I so want to get this organized, but its tough… there is never enough time in the day.
- Use night time moisturizing eye cream. Because you can have silver hair, but no one likes wrinkles around the eyes. Or at least that is what I have been told. I really just want to avoid dying my hair, so I am holding off as long as possible… lol. So I choose to focus on my eyes right now and the hair can go hang. er something… …So I use this when I can remember. But I don’t know that it really does anything except sting whenever you accidentally get it in your eye. So how did ya’ll do on your New Year’s Resolutions? I think revisiting these goals on a monthly basis might help me to maintain my focus and possible even achieve one or two of these goals. I am curious to hear how everyone else is doing at this point in the new year.
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Rose, I’m sorry you haven’t been able to ride Kissy. I wish I lived closer, I would exercise her for you.
I’m going to check out the SleepBot app. I’m always trying to make sure I get enough sleep. I’ve found being consistent is the key. And here I sit 20 minutes after the time I usually unplug and start reading, responding to your post!
Terri M. LeBlanc recently posted…Review: Snow by Áine Greaney
haha, I find it so difficult to go to bed early. There is never enough time in my day to do all the things I want to do… I find myself up saying, I will comment on just one more blog… and an hour later, I am still up and commenting away! Where do you live? have I already asked this? for some reason I am thinking you live in Canada? Amiright?
There was many a time we wanted to get a doggy treadmill for our Westie Snowball who could incessantly play fetch.
Great job with your health goals and writing goals. We have a goals linky if you would like to link up your updates each month and cheer on other bloggers trying to meet their goals too!
Tanya @ Mom’s Small Victories recently posted…April Achievements and May 2014 Personal Goals
Thanks Tanya! I will check out the linky. Did your Westie ever calm down? or did he forever remain hyper???