Making new year resolutions is a common practice. Normally, I don’t make resolutions because I really hate setting myself up for failure! But this year, I decided to try something different: I’m going to make my resolutions and I’m going to write them down and share them — hence this post! My hope is that by writing them down and making them public, I stand a better chance of keeping them. So here goes — the ambitious and the mundane.

1.) Take my running to a new level by training for and completing the Chicago Marathon. I find that I am better about taking care of myself when I am training for an event, and I’ve had a hankering to run the marathon ever since I ran the Chicago Half Marathon in 2015. I missed the deadline to get my name in the lottery, so I need to run for a charity, which I really don’t mind — so I chose Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. I’ve done fundraising for them in the past; they’re a great charity. So now I’ve got to find myself a good training plan and get to it! By the way, here’s a link to my fundraising page if you care to donate.

2.) Eat better. At one of my Weight Watchers meetings, the leader told us that we should ask ourselves this question before we eat anything: Is this food worthy of me? I am going to start asking that all the time. I am amazed at how easily I was able to slip back into my atrocious eating habits over the holidays. I am eating so many things that just aren’t worthy of me. Time to respect my body by making sure it is nourished with things that are going to be of value to me.

3.) Lose weight. See 1 and 2 above. By focusing less on losing weight and more on moving and being active and eating the right way, I’m hoping I lose the weight I want to so desperately lose.

4.) Clean up my mouth. No, I don;t mean I’m going to stop swearing — that’s way too big an order for me 🙂 Two years ago, I broke one of my top front teeth. I was horrified. I had this ugly, gaping hole right in the front of my mouth. The tooth that broke was actually one that had a crown on it, and apparently the crown had cracked so the tooth under the crown had slowly decayed until it broke right off. Had I been going to the dentist regularly, that would have been discovered before I lost the tooth. I vowed after getting the tooth fixed that I would get over my fear of going to the dentist and take care of my teeth. I did that until this past fall, when I had to cancel and appointment to get my teeth cleaned. I haven’t rescheduled it yet, I’m not using my SonicCare toothbrush, I’m not flossing — and if I keep that up, I’m headed for something bad, I just know it. So, back to taking good care of my chompers!

5.) Work on my novel. I tried to work on it in November, but just was too busy to get much done. I’m going to try to carve time out every month to write.

6.) Declutter. I’ve got way too much stuff and it makes me anxious — I want to get myself down to just the things I need and have a real love for. Again, I’ll try to carve time out every week to do this — even if it’s just clean out one drawer.

Here’s to 2017 — may all my resolutions be resolved!