It’s five days into the new year – time to see if I’ve done ANYTHING about those goals!
1) Clean up the home office – just about an hour ago I set about beginning the task of clearing out the office. I pulled out a folder that I have not looked at since 2009 – it is all the personal paperwork I kept at my old job before I got laid off. I literally packed up my desk, brought home the folder, and then never looked in. Until today. I found a bunch of junk not worth saving, a few things worth saving that will get appropriately filed, and $54 in cash. Score! No idea how the cash ended up in there, but it was a nice surprise.
2) Begin walking/jogging/running again – Today I had every intention of going out for a nice long inaugural walk, but gravity had other plans. I slipped after putting something away in the shed in the back, and landed on my knee. Pain resulted, which has since gone away, but now my right hip hurts from the sudden drop and half-split as a result of the fall. So no gym. But what I DID do was download RunKeeper to my phone (I use Runtastic, which is great, but RunKeeper might have a usable plugin so that I can post my stats here. Upon downloading the app, I promptly signed up for a training plan on the app so that beginning Monday I’ll start a C25K type of program. By March I should be jogging 3 miles with no hesitation. At that point I’ll sign up for a C210K so that I can build up to a 10K. Then I’ll sign up for a half-marathon training program. Why am I doing all this? Because I decided to go all out in 2014 and signed up for a 24-hour Ultra run. Basically, for 24 hours you run a 1.5 mile loop and go as long as you want. A friend of mine did it last year. It involves setting up a tent, camping for the night, and trying to go as far as you can for 24-hours. Insane? You bet. But also incredibly thrilling that I have such a lofty goal for 2015. My hope is to do 50 miles in 24 hours (sleep and rest is included in that 24 hours).
3) Read more than 40 books by December 31 – I’m about finished with my first book of the year, which is actually a re-read. I read “Slaughterhouse Five” by Kurt Vonnegut when I was in high school, and remember loving it (although I enjoyed “Cat’s Cradle” much more). After hating the book with which I closed out 2014, I decided to go for a familiar read. Unfortunately, I don’t like it nearly as much as I did when I read it in 1986. In 1986 I found Billy Pilgrim to be charmingly innocent and naive. Now he’s just driving me nuts because he has very little sense and is definitely more a misfit than I remembered. Thomas Wolfe was right: you can’t go home again (or read books that you read 30 years ago and expect them to resonate in the same way).
4) Read through the entire Bible – I’m on Day 5 and it’s going well. The only hiccup was on Day 4 when my email decided that emails from YouVersion were spam, therefore dumping my daily reminder in my spam folder instead of my inbox. But that has been resolved and today I received my Day 5 reminder right on time. We’re already up to Exodus. One book down…
