Personal Goals....

So I feel like I've been treading water a little bit, so they say (and I do it...it works) that putting your goals in writing helps you achieve them.

Well I'm going to put them in writing out there on the interwebs so you guys, my real-and-cyber friends, can harass me and shove me into completing them.  Please and thanks!

1) Have a real job by July.  June is ideal.  By "real job", either working in my ideal field, nonprofit, or swallowing my pride and taking one of the bajillion "receptionist" jobs here in corporate Charlotte (something 40 regularly-scheduled hours, anyway). I've been fighting the latter tooth and nail but it may just have to be a reality, until a nonprofit opportunity comes open, anyway. While I am a complete minimalist and am fine living hand to mouth, my kids' needs and wants are growing exponentially every day, it seems. Now there's baseball...theater...a violin? I need better employment to give them better opportunities, or to at least fully equip the opportunities they currently have.

2) Start pushing out chapters on my book.  Outline is almost done. Need to start fleshing it out and maybe even reaching out to publishing houses.  Either way, by July, I need to have at least the concrete outline and at least the first 3-5 chapters on paper.  I'm so terrified of failure that I'm terrified to start. That's no good.


3) Rock climbing.  Be doing it. There were so many places on my hike yesterday where, if I were properly trained and with a good belay, I would have thrown a rope over right then and there.  Too many cool rocks to climb on this planet, and too many wide, boring trails to avoid them. I don't want to take the safe route...I want to take the road less traveled.

That's me, at peak of Crowder's Mountain, wanting to scale down that big rock..

Curried chickpeas. Yum.

4) Fully ethical eating, all the time. I've been cheating here and there (thanks in part to my fully carnivorous boyfriend...OK, OK, I won't blame him...my will has been weak in the face of Havarti cheeses and shrimp and grits).  No more cheating.  I go back for another cholesterol check in a few months...I need those numbers down, even lower than this last visit (apparently [I'm adopted, so I don't know my medical history], I may be genetically predisposed to higher cholesterol). The sodium and chemicals have a pretty immediate impact on my health, from what I can tell...since cheating, I feel kind of crummy. Gotta bring it on back to Veganville.

I think that's good...no need to cram too much into just a few months.  My stress level has been fluctuating lately, too, and that's not good.  High stress is what got my health all screwed up a couple of years ago and part of the reason I moved, changed lifestyles, etc., so I have got to keep a handle on my stress.  A couple of days ago, I literally, physiologically felt my anxiety rise up and through some yoga & meditation and talking it out with the person involved was able to avoid a full-blown anxiety attack and to level it out without much harm being done.  So I'm trying not to stress too much about these pretty large goals looming in the very-near future.

Words of encouragement are always welcome! :)
~m