To Resolve or Not?

I know that most New Year's resolutions are little more than wishes, forgotten by the end of January, but I'm actually in the yes camp.

I had three resolutions last year. Here's my accounting.

1) Read the Old Testament: I only made it through Leviticus, so 15%. Pretty much a fail there.

2) Run the St. George Marathon: did it, although not very fast. :)

3) Daily photo: I took around 7,152 photos and videos on 271 different days. I blogged 237 days, and hope to get something up for the missing 34 days soon. When I do, I'll be at 74% success for that goal. Not bad.

I've been giving a lot of thought to my resolutions this year. I loved President Uchtdorf's talk, Of Things That Matter Most last general conference.

"As we turn to our Heavenly Father and seek His wisdom regarding the things that matter most, we learn over and over again the importance of four key relationships: with our God, with our families, with our fellowman, and with ourselves. As we evaluate our own lives with a willing mind, we will see where we have drifted from the more excellent way. The eyes of our understanding will be opened, and we will recognize what needs to be done to purify our heart and refocus our life."

I'm not sure my eyes have been opened, but this is what is coming to mind.

1) Relationship with God: My goal is to go to the temple at least once a month. Pretty weak, I know, considering how close we live to so many temples, but I'm just being realistic.

2) Relationship with my family: More family outdoor adventures. I know that's not very specific, I'm not sure what sort of number to put on this. The snowshoes should help us get out more in the winter, and I'm looking forward to more hiking this summer. If we hang out with the Stringhams our numbers should skyrocket. :)

3) Relationship with my fellowmen: Invite friends or neighbors over for dinner at least once a month. When we lived in the Stratford Ward we did this—we'd invite one couple we already knew, and one or two couples we didn't know well. It was great, even though Rob and I are both introverts we loved it.

4) Relationship with myself: So many possibilities here—positive self talk, less sugar, fixing my back, becoming a better photographer, journaling... But I've decided to go with the most cliché resolution, and lose weight. Body fat, specifically. I'd like to get to 20% body fat. I do remember the days I was at 15% with fondness, but again, trying to keep it realistic. I just scheduled family photos in March, that ought to help with motivation, and I'm working on appointments for my back and shoulder, so I can exercise again. This goal is mostly about good health, but to be truthful, there is some vanity involved too. Hopefully the other goals will compensate for my shallowness.

Anyone else resolving this year?

Resolutions revisited

Supposedly accountability is key in achieving goals. So I posted three of mine on January 1st.

Here's an update on how things are going so far:

1) Read the Old Testament—I figured that I'd need to read 5 pages a day, with about 60 days built in to slack off. Well, I've now used all of my slacking days and then some. So far I'm only on page 19. But I'm on page 238 of my commentary book, which has been helpful. So I've re-figured, and if I read 6 pages a day, I can still accomplish this goal. Of course if I want to understand what I'm reading there's a lot of commentary pages on top of that. I think I'll try to do this reading before I let myself read anything else. If that doesn't work nothing will.

2) Another marathon—I'm not doing great on this one either. I signed up for the Moab half-marathon and bailed because six weeks of being sick really took a toll on my training. But I've got my plan for St. George and am keeping my fingers crossed for the lottery. Still plenty of time for this one.

3) Photo of the day—YES, one goal that I feel really good about. I don't always get my photo posted on the day I took it, but overall this is working. I love that I'm capturing more of our daily life, and not just the big events. Also, it's so much easier to take five minutes a day than to feel overwhelmed because I need to catch up. There have been days that I haven't been in the mood or have been at a loss for something to photograph, but again, that just corroborates the real life experience that I'm trying to document.