Into the New Year

You may be wondering: where has Dr. Crazy been since posting about resolutions? Well, the lame and short answer is, first, that on New Year's Eve I had fully intended on making some phone calls and watching the ball drop. But, now officially an Old Lady, I accidentally fell asleep at 10 PM on the sofa, only to awaken at 2 AM having missed the transition into the New Year with the television blaring. Woops.

Other than that, I've been busy getting the New Year off to a good start. My goal for January is to make it to the gym every day except for the days I will be out of town, not because I believe it's necessarily sustainable to go to the gym 7 days a week for the rest of my life, but because I think that changing the way that my brain feels about working out means that I've got to think of it as part of my daily routine. After much thought, it seems that the only way to begin thinking that way involves actually making it part of my daily routine in a serious way. Now, I'm not getting all crazy here - I'm not saying I'll work out for 2 hours per day or some nonsense. The aim is not to transform myself into a Hollywood starlet, just a better and healthier me. And so I'm shooting for 30-45 minutes per day, and if I'm having a bad day, as little as 15 minutes is cool. The point is, there is no room for negotiation about going (because I do like to negotiate with myself): there is no room for "oh, I won't go today and I'll just go for an hour tomorrow instead." See, I lie to myself, and so once those sorts of bargains start, the next thing I know I owe myself 10 hours of working out and I'm sitting on the couch eating mashed potatoes with a side of Cheetos.

I've also been cheffing up lots of delicious and nutritious (and low in fat, low in bad carb) food, with my Knives of Tenure (more on these in a moment) and my food mill (which really is an ingenious device).

So the Knives of Tenure. If you do not own great knives, take the following as my testimonial. You know how when you flip to the Food Network and somebody is chopping? Like say an onion? And they can do that thing where they just lightly hold their fingers on the onion, curled under, and they fly through slicing and dicing, as if it's the easiest thing in the world? And you know how you've probably thought that you're just a shitty chopper, and that this is because this is something that they teach people in culinary school, and you have not been to culinary school? Or because your mom taught you how to cut things with knives, and she doesn't do it like those professional chef people? Ok, I'm not saying that you'll transform into Chef Morimoto or something if you get great knives, but it turns out that at least 75% of this whole "I'm a whiz in the kitchen with a knife" thing is not training or coordination but rather it's having a freaking knife that is well-balanced and sharp. WHO KNEW? I swear to you: although I'm not typically one for big, self-indulgent purchases, this was the absolute best purchase I've ever made.

But anyway, so back to the food stuff, I've also started again with keeping a food diary, though this time I'm doing it on a super-secret non-public blog. I've found in past attempts that I end up not being able to continue with a food diary - or to do it consistently - when I'm not home very much. The problem is that I'm not good with remembering a regular little notebook and taking it with me places, for I'm always either leaving it at school or leaving it at home, and then I forget to update it. So. I've decided that using the Magic of the Internet will mean that I don't need to remember to carry anything with me, and it will allow me easily to compare day by day the sorts of things that I'm eating and the exercise that I'm doing and to see how those things correspond (or not) to weight loss (am still doing The Google 15 which I find really useful).

But so anyway, the time is fast approaching where I need to get my butt in gear and start doing some work. I both want and don't want to do work, because on the one hand I think it's been good that I've been giving myself some time to focus on things other than that, but on the other I have begun to feel a little antsy. So I think that this weekend I'm going to work on getting things together for my classes (tweaking syllabi and assignments, maybe attempting to get ahead a bit with some reading) as well as to take care of some correspondence for a professional organization that I now head. I also need to comment on BES's thesis, and to comment on another thesis. Then, Monday, I'll begin in earnest on my revise and resubmit, which I'd really like to send off by the end of the month.

Yep, so I think that's the plan for the coming days/week. But whatever the work plan, the self-care stuff is a non-negotiable. Even if the work doesn't get done as I'd hope it would. Because I must learn to let that go. Must, must, must.