The Devil's Chasing Me

So Christmas has come and gone, can't say as I miss it. On with the business of living, I guess. On the upside, I did hang out at a friend's house and play Star Wars Monopoly. Yes, we are that geeky. Actually, it's really pretty cool- to a large extent the same as regular Monopoly, except you use planetary properties- own all the properties on one planet, you then can build colonies (houses) and spaceports (hotels) and charge exorbitant rent on them. This is actually how I won, franchising out the Death Star for a series of hotels. (The Death Star and Tattooine seemed to be the two hot properties on the board, as everyone was landing on them.) Coryuscant, the HQ planet of the Empire, was equivalent to Boardwalk and Park Place, the most expensive properties on the board. Instead of an electric and water company, there was a reactor and moisture farm, and instead of railroads were various spacecraft. All in all, it was pretty cool, and lots of real estate deals were transacted, resulting in me and a friend's wife owning half of the galaxy respectively. Finally I bankrupted her when she landed on Endor, which I turned from a forest into one of the most heavily colonized planets in the galaxy. And if that sounds completely dorky, well, then you would be right. But who cares, it was a blast!

At any rate- as Tabatha, my lady love, reminded me, I have less than a week to come up with New Year's resolutions. Though the old joke goes that these resolutions don't last much past the first week, I'd like to take them seriously and make it a good time to begin self-improvement. Here is a list of what I've come up with so far-

1. Schedule my time around meditation, not the other way round; this is all too easy, but speaking only for myself, I find meditation and yoga help tremendously with the stresses of the day. And I know perfectly well, the more time I make time for it, the more it'll become a habit, and after a while it'll seem more of a burden not to do it. But a big part of this is adapting the right attitude- it's not a chore, or something you should force yourself to have to do, but rather something you should want to do, as it'll make you feel better and give you that wonderful clear perspective.

2. Keep a balanced viewpoint- neither too lenient on myself or too harsh. Set goals, determine how to achieve those goals, and then take realistic action to accomplish them, then look back and evaluate how that worked.

3. Take better care of myself- this one may sound a little odd, but actually spending a lot of the time getting huge in the gym is all well and good, but I'm thinking I need to balance it out a little more, watch what I eat, keep my space clean, (I tend to be messy on the physical plane, and keep myself mentally organized too) and generally balance all the harsh workouts with gentler ones, instead of coming home barely able to walk, merely because I can bench press my own body weight. (Not that this is a bad thing, but I'm thinking balance would help).

4. Knock off a minute and a half from my 2-mile run, if that's possible. Like I said, I'm in good shape, but the problem is a dense, heavy frame like I have just can't seem to move that fast. Well, for almost all rules there's an exception, so I'm planning on getting on that. This ties in with more balanced workouts.

5. Stop putting things off! This is a big one, probably family members are reading this and saying, about damn time! While that's a big part of it, I mean it in a broader sense, everyday life- lots of things that I don't do because I always end up delaying, finding a hundred other things that need my immediate attention. So again, set goals and with this, some concrete means to judge whether that goal was accomplished or not.

Not that any of these sound that easy, but then again, few things worth doing are easy. So hope you all had a great Christmas, and (yes, once again) didn't drink any Tenafly Viper! May your new year be one of hope and promise, and pickles. Pickles are good.