I’m not one for resolutions though I am certainly resolute.   My father says I’m stubborn like my mother, my mother says I’m pigheaded like my father – I prefer the term ‘determined’.  What I’ve determined is to do is make a few changes in my routine, step things up and one of the things I started doing back in September is budgeting my time.

Now that I have a system to log and track certain activities, I’m determined to make a few changes to my weekly routine.  We’re not talking earth-shaking changes here, we’re talking basic simple ones.

The first is to go back on the primal/gluten free menu system that helped me lose all that weight a few years back and to get rid of the weight that I’ve put back on.  To do that, I need to change two things – first I need to set a very definite menu so that I have fresh food in the kitchen, prepared meals in the freezer so I have a fall back on days I don’t want to cook and second, I need to cut out the junk.   I need to stop skipping meals which is hell on the waistline and start to go back to the five small meal method that works so well for me.

The next change is getting back in the habit of regular schedule physical activity and that means starting with walks.  So three times a week, I’m going to start doing laps around the quad and I’m going to have to pick Mavie’s brain about low impact starting activities to get me going.

Another change that I plan on making and I’m budgeting one day off a week to this at first is purge.   If I haven’t used something in over a year, it’s gone.   The encyclopedia set, miscellaneous things in the closet, old clothing that is worn, it’s all going going going… and will be gone by February.   With all that space, I can get off my duff and budget that day for purge to become a day for projects.  I need to start making pottery again, I have garb I need to sew, I need to start practicing my calligraphy again.  I want to learn to knit, I want to learn more than three stitches in crotchet.

While I say that I plan on going back to a basic food plan, I also plan on baking.   I love to bake, I enjoy baking, it relaxes me and I want to start making things more frequently but smaller batches.  Nothing says that I can’t have the occasional fruit hand-pie and stay faithful to my food plan.  It’s just a matter of doing it.

And that brings me to my last change, which the purge thing plays a small part in.   Letting things go.  There are many ways you can read that and I probably mean most of them.   Part of thing about embracing change is knowing that some things you cannot change and you shouldn’t even try.  There are things, events, people, that you have to let go in order to be happy and that’s what I’m doing.   No one is invested in making me happy, I have to make myself happy and I can’t do that if my happiness is based primarily in things outside my own control.