Can you Believe its the Middle of March? We are heading closer to April and one of my goals was to be in better health, while practicing my lettering. I can blame no one other than myself for the lack of consistency. This morning I was reflecting on some of my previous goals and comparing them to where I would like to be.
Last year in 2014 I had about five specific goals that I wanted to reach by the end of the year. Some of them, I managed to make others not so much. I still have them pinned to the side of my wall. Do I look at them everyday?, not so much but I realize that writing them down helped me.
One of the major things that I have wanted to do is to get better with my health and eating habits. I think this is most difficult when your parents have a different style of eating than you do. You see I come from a Haitian background where most of our dishes contain rice. Rice as the main dish and meats and veggies as the side dish. Rice is a carb, carbs break down to sugar, and when you aren't moving much, those sugars if not used for energy are then used to store fat.
So what I've been doing is drinking more water, eating more salad dishes and eating less rice. My mom isn't so happy with that as the contents in salad can take up some space in the fridge. Our fridge isn't the biggest and we have a pretty large family. I want to stop eating out so much, which I was trying to do the no spend November - At least I didn't shop during black Friday. I have been trying and trying and I stumbled across a Hot 97 interview where they pretty much say it's either you try or you don't, you do or you don't. I think that sometimes we make these really big goals with no real idea on how we are going to achieve them. Every goal will take you on its own journey and every journey begins with one step. I've been logging my food in my fitness pal, but it hasn't been completely to scale. I'd actually love to try that, know what my actual body fat percentage is, all the macros, the numbers the nitty gritty details. Its time that I really commit and do this thing for real.
How this all ties with hand lettering. Going out to meet people, making time for yourself, and time to practice all takes time. We often forget this. We want to see overnight results - but just like hand lettering it takes time. It takes dedication, It takes deliberate and intentional practice. These things don't come over night. Often times I find that I am in need of a reminder of my own. At times I need to re-evaluate where my time is going and how I spend it.
I want 2015 to be a balanced year, to be filled with much growth; spiritually, financially, physically, mentally, socially, and most definitely relation-ally (which still ties into spiritually). These commitments that I am making are primarily to myself and I know that often times when kept to ourselves there is no reason to upkeep fitness goals, because if we fail, its OK, we haven't disappointed anyone else. I want to dream bigger than before, and have the privilege and opportunity to provide for other people. I want to be able to motivate other people to get it together, and to think more than just themselves. we are such selfish people, that we would choose to not care when we disappoint ourselves. Lets be better to ourselves lets learn to stop being lazy. Drop the excuses and learn to live in the now.
previous goals:
get more organized (in progress, few things organized but many not)
pay off MSU
Pay off AMEX
Save 1k for spending
sell more paintings and jewelry
get back to a size 6/8 Healthy weight for my age
land a paying design job/internship
while I didn't get to everything on this list my goals are still possible to reach. I think I did pretty damn good.
For 2015 I want to take more risks, make more things, have a healthy living, save more money, find ways to generate more income doing things I enjoy and to live in the now! I want to learn more about investing both in myself and in the stock market. I also want to venture out and just get out of the crowd that I am used to. 2014 had its ups and downs, and only God knows where 2015 will take me. If its in His will, its going to be a great year, it starts now.
A book was recommended to me, How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life by Scott Adams, I'll be reading (Audio Version). Where are you with your goals?