WARNING: Discussion of New Year's Resolutions


Last night (this morning) when I finished all the cleaning, I was almost ready to stop working when I thought about the clothes in the basement bedroom. The closet is full of blazers, slacks, and suits of smaller sizes...clothes I dream of fitting back into...clothes that I wore quite comfortably before I first started taking prednizone for the severe asthma attacks. Within a month of taking that drug, I had ballooned sixty pounds...and have struggled with my weight ever since. The final tally was finding myself nearly 100 pounds heavier than before I got asthma...then arthritis.

Well, I have stopped taking steroids and would be hard pressed to put them into my body again. I am down 46 pounds. And I am making a concerted effort to continue that trend, despite having what could possibly be labeled the world's slowest metabolism. However, given my earlier battle with anorexia (decades ago but that disease is such a stealthy thing), I do not believe that I should really try to get back down to a size six on a 5 foot 7 inch frame. So, I decided to donate all that professional ware (with the exception of my absolute all time favorite black, pin-striped suit) to Dress for Success, a non-profit that helps women dress professionally for job interviews. After much choosing, I came up with 32 pieces of clothing. I bagged them up, drafted a item description, and took them to the drop-off site today. A long goodbye for me...a good thing for those women.

So, where does that fit with New Year's Resolutions?

Well, for starters, I was so exhausted when I finally rolled into be at 6:00 AM (I had gotten up on Saturday at 2:45 PM) that I was in such pain I struggled to fall asleep. Lying there, pain shooting throughout my back and legs, I started thinking about how I should have just written myself a sticky note and popped into bed instead of staying up another 3 and 1/2 hours. I would have had time today to pack up the clothing and still get it to the drop-off place before it closed.

I also thought about the things that I have accomplished and that which I wish I had done in the six months I have been unemployed. So...here goes:

My First New Year's Resolution List As An Adult

1. Read through the bible two times.
2. Continue to memorize a passage of scripture each week.
3. Read an academic book at least once a month to keep my hand in my former profession and feed the scholarly portion of my brain that has been starved of late. [After all, I have a whole closet full of them from my professor days.]
4. Create a spreadsheet of all of my books, with sections for author, title, publication date, genre, reading level, a short annotation, and where they are located in my house (over 2,000 of them among several book shelves).
5. Put all the annotated index cards of children's and young adult books I read working on my Ph.D. into a spreadsheet (over 1,000 of them).
6. Finish my Christian Historical Fiction novel.
7. Write at least another 100 pages on my Young Adult Fantasy novel.
8. Do something as a volunteer (even if it means working on a friend's home improvement project) each month.
9. Stop overworking myself when attacking projects.
10. Reduce, Re-use, and recycle more (especially by changing out some of my regular light bulbs).
11. Visit Skyline Drive.
12. Lose at least 15 more pounds.


Hmmm...do you think I can do it all by December 31, 2007?